The goblin mage's shoulders sagged with relief as if a noose had been cut from his throat. He slid backward at once, returning to what he truly was. The spine in the dark, the hand that arranged deaths from afar.
The Covenant-Breaker took the front.
He raised his staff.
It now looked like a knot in the void that had been forced into a shape and the longer one stared at it, the more the world behind it seemed to rot.
Void Corruption Staff.
It radiated a corruption that was not miasma alone. It was something deeper. It did not stain energy. It stained the space that energy relied upon.
Astraea's eyes narrowed the moment she felt it.
That was the reason why her first exchange had gone wrong.
A storm needed a sky to argue with. Pressure, motion, gradients, a world that agreed to have direction.
The staff did not "block" Tempest.
It sabotaged the stage Tempest performed on.
Around the Covenant-Breaker, the air became dead.
