Silence covered everything.
No sound of an explosion remained. No roar of mana, not even the tremor from the collision of two powers that could erase a country from the map. Everything had suddenly gone quiet.
The massive dust cloud that had covered the sky slowly cleared, as if the world itself dared to see what was at the center of the battlefield with hesitation.
And then all those watching from a distance froze.
The forest had been destroyed. Mountains that had stood for thousands of years no longer existed. The ground was split for kilometers, its lower layers exposed like a massive wound.
But right at the center of all that destruction, the cursed tree still stood. Its roots slowly moved in the soil, and the glowing fruit above the branches pulsed like the heart of an ancient being.
