The silence that fell in the Sanctum of Shadows was more profound than any that had come before. It was the silence of a failed god, of a broken ritual, of a war that had ended not with a bang, but with a terrifying, quiet whisper of absolute power. Kael knelt on the crystalline floor, holding Aria’s unconscious form, his heart a frantic, painful drum in his chest. She was breathing. Her skin was warm. She was alive. The storm was over.
He looked up at the man who had been Malakor. The former Lord Regent stood frozen, a statue of his own failure. His eyes were wide and vacant, staring at nothing, his mind lost in the infinite abyss between godhood and mortality. He was a shell, the architect of a generation of fear and tyranny reduced to a drooling, mindless husk.
The spell of the moment
