Prologue: The Weight of Nothing
It didn't feel like a victory.That was the first sign.
The demons died — and stayed dead. No pulsing stasis. No seething birthfields. No flickering black bone or spectral regrowth.
Just corpses.
And for the first time in living memory, the lines didn't shift. No territory lost. No ground retaken. No calendar of blood.
At first, people celebrated. Quietly. Cautiously.Then, not at all.
Because the silence didn't end.
The reports came in backwards. Not of attacks — but of absence.
No movement on Sector 3.
No resurrection pulses in the Yathel caves.
No signal from the south — because no one had died there.
And then:
No requests for reinforcements.
No casualty updates.
No messages.
Not because things were better.Because there was nothing left to say.
The generals shifted uneasily. Priests rewrote their doctrines mid-sermon. Economists faked numbers to keep the rations moving.
And far from the front lines, two twin children vomited blood during a harvest festival, with no sickness, no reason.
No one connected it yet.
But someone would.
They started calling it The Still.Not a peace. Not a miracle.Just a pause. Long enough to wonder:
If resurrection is over...then what part of the world is breaking to pay for it?
And somewhere, beyond the maps and prayers,a boy who once lived through everythingwas watching.
Still.