The world narrowed to a single point of light. The crystalline lens on the Warden's arm wasn't just glowing; it was breathing. A soft, rhythmic pulse that matched the low, bone-deep hum now vibrating through the soles of their boots. It was a sound that felt older than stone, a frequency that promised not death, but erasure. A complete and total unmaking.
Yingluo didn't think. She moved. She threw herself sideways, a desperate, scrambling dive across the black glass. A millisecond after she moved, a beam of pure white light, silent and impossibly thin, lanced through the space where her heart had been. It struck the ground with no explosion, no sound. The black stone simply vanished, leaving behind a perfectly circular, smoking hole that glowed with a faint, residual heat.
