(The Time-Stilled World, Dumpy's POV)
Dumpy sat silently on top of a small hill, his twin swords beside him, as he overlooked a vast clearing of untamed wilderness where the Cult's soldiers worked tirelessly to carve order from chaos.
Below him, hundreds of men and women toiled beneath the still gray sky, their shouts faint but steady as they chopped through stubborn tree stubs, burned roots that refused to die, and rolled away fallen trunks to make way for the next stretch of land that would someday house another city.
At the center of the clearing stood a single Refining Pole, its slender structure vibrating in rhythmic intervals, each pulse releasing invisible waves that drifted quietly through the air to purge the corrupted mana surrounding the area.
The soldiers called it the "breathing tower," because when it pulsed, the air itself seemed to sigh with relief, as if the world could finally exhale after centuries of suffocation.
