The forest fell into a terrifying, absolute silence as the two powers peaked. On one side, General Kaelen's Great River's Final Judgment manifested as a massive, coiling serpent of high-pressure water, its scales shimmering with the life-essence he was burning away. Opposite him, Piet—using Vincy's body—held the Void-Cutter aloft. The blade wasn't just black anymore; it was a hole in reality, weeping violet lightning and white-hot Star-Core radiation.
"Drown in the depths!" Kaelen roared, thrusting his hands forward.
"Collapse," Piet whispered.
The collision was not a bang, but a soundless shockwave that stripped the bark from every tree for miles. The water serpent slammed into the gravity-well, but instead of splashing, the liquid was instantly compressed into a super-dense mist and then incinerated by the Primeval Fire.
The ground beneath them couldn't hold. The earth groaned and shattered, creating a massive, jagged crater that swallowed the clearing. A permanent "Dead Zone" was etched into the map of the Whispering Woods—a scorched, circular wasteland where gravity remained erratic and the air tasted of ozone and burnt iron.
Kaelen was thrown back like a ragdoll, his azure armor shattered and his meridians ruptured by the sheer backlash of his own technique. He lay in the dirt, gasping for air, his eyes fixed on the center of the crater where the boy stood.
Piet's control snapped. The strain of channeling such vast power through a mere mortal frame had reached its limit. Vincy's eyes flickered from abyssal black back to violet, then turned dull as he collapsed into the ash. Nearby, Seraphina lay unconscious, her silver hair stained with soot, her rapier snapped in two.
Kaelen struggled to crawl toward them, his fingers clawing at the dirt. "My... sons..." he wheezed, his voice a broken rasp. He reached out a trembling hand to seize the boy, to take his vengeance even in defeat.
But he never reached them.
The sky above the crater rippled. The two observers—the woman of starlight and the man of chime—descended with the silent grace of falling leaves. They didn't touch the scorched earth; they hovered inches above it, their auras so vast that Kaelen felt like an ant beneath the shadow of a mountain.
"He has potential," the man remarked, looking down at Vincy's limp form. "But he is far too loud for his own safety."
"The Archive has waited long enough," the woman replied. With a gentle wave of her hand, a pillar of soft, golden light enveloped Vincy and Seraphina.
Kaelen watched in horror as his prizes—his only link to his sons' killers—began to float upward toward the firmament.
"Wait!" he shrieked, coughing up blood. "They are... mine! The Great River... the Myriad School... you cannot take them!"
The man in the sky looked down at the broken General with a gaze of cold indifference. He didn't speak a word, but the pressure of his look alone pinned Kaelen to the ground, crushing his remaining ribs.
In a blink, the light vanished. The two figures, the boy, and the girl were gone, leaving behind only the smoking, silent crater and the ruins of a forest.
Kaelen was left alone in the dark, surrounded by the bodies of his disciples, with no one to hear his cries and no trail to follow. The "Sparrow" had flown beyond the reach of the rivers, into the heights where only Sages dare to tread.