Chapter 51 — What Choice Cannot Stop
The first sign that something was wrong came without warning, without ideology, without permission.
The world screamed.
It was not a sound that traveled through air. It was not vibration or thunder or any known resonance Kael could name. It was closer to pain raw, unfiltered, immediate like nerves exposed across the skin of existence itself.
Kael woke with a violent gasp, bolting upright in bed as power tore through him like lightning trapped beneath flesh. Every muscle seized. His vision flared white, then fractured into shards of half memory and sensation. The familiar hum the living cadence of the world he had learned to hear, to converse with, to temper was gone.
Not silent.
Broken.
It felt wrong in a way silence never had. Silence had shape. Silence could be respected.
This was absence with teeth.
