The sky ruptured—not in fury, but in submission.
Clouds bled out of shape. The sun fled behind unnatural dark. Even the light seemed to recoil, curling away from the place where Ashen stood with arms raised, cloaked in a silence that was older than time itself.
No ceremony. No grand incantation.
Only command.
Beneath his feet, the land cracked in a slow, deliberate spiral. Not an explosion—an unmaking. The kind of fracture born not from force, but from purpose. The ground didn’t resist. It yielded, as if remembering something older than life. The air thickened, turning to paste. The winds grew still, listening. Animals within miles dropped dead—some from terror, others from the soul-deep recognition of what was coming.
Ashen whispered one word.
It wasn’t in any known tongue, but the
