For a heartbeat after the noble student's body dissolved into scattered particles of light, the clearing fell into a silence so deep that even the rustling of the jungle seemed to vanish.
The fractured mana surrounding the battlefield continued to crack and distort, the air rippling like shattered glass suspended in space while the dimming sky above bled slowly into a dull gray twilight. The two core breaches hung in the air behind Damon like open wounds in reality itself, their swirling distortions pulsing faintly as if the world had begun to unravel around them.
The only thing that moved—
Was Damon.
No one saw the moment he began to move.
One second he stood still.
The next—
He was gone.
The space he had occupied shattered like a broken reflection as his body vanished into a blur of motion so fast that the eye could barely follow it.
The first scream came an instant later.
"A—!"
