The spire didn't so much collapse as it simply ceased to be. One moment it was a jagged tooth of dark crystal scraping the bruised sky of the Veil, the next it was a cloud of glittering dust. And in the center of that destruction, Kaelis unfolded.
His wings were not just large; they were a new horizon. They didn't blot out the sun—they became the only thing worth looking at. The air didn't bend around him; it held its breath.
The Hunter rose from the rubble. It was like watching shadow congeal, its form reassembling from shards of nothing. It held a blade that seemed to be made of cut-out space, a slice of absolute night.
It didn't speak. It never did. It just moved.
One moment it was across the plain. The next, it was on Kaelis's back, the void-blade driving down between scales that had witnessed the birth of suns.
The sound was wrong. Not a clang or a tear, but a silent, localized collapse. The blade wasn't cutting; it was trying to unmake what it touched.
It failed.
