The battlefield became exceedingly quiet.
It was not the heavy, ringing stillness that typically followed a catastrophic kinetic impact. It was not because the shadow's colossal void hand had just been violently shattered into millions of shimmering spatial fragments, nor was it because reality was still groaning as it tried to repair the ruptured firmament.
The profound, absolute silence descended upon the ruined plaza because the First King looked nervous.
He looked genuinely, indisputably, tactically unsettled.
This was the singular figure who had stood unyielding before the total collapse of entire star systems in the First Era. This was the master architect who had designed the ultimate cosmic containment vessel and bound his own soul to its foundation stone for ten thousand years.
Yet, at this exact moment, he was taking small, meticulously calculated steps backward away from a single woman.
