The silence in the cavern was heavier than the mountain above it. The only sounds were the faint, pulsing hum of the Crystal Orb in Roewi’s hand and the ragged, broken whispers coming from Ereun Solas. The Division Zero prodigy was curled on the stone floor, a shattered monument to his own rigid ideology. He cradled his withered, age-spotted hands, a cruel, self-inflicted wound from his own reflected power, and rocked back and forth, his eyes wide and unseeing, trapped in the horror of his own unraveling.
Victory was a hollow, aching void in Roewi’s chest. There was no triumph, only a cold, settling dread. The power that had coursed through him, the effortless way he had bent time and reality itself, felt less like a tool and more like a possession.
[The subject Ereun Solas represents a
