The sword fell.

And with it, silence.

The Mage King's body crumpled, flames guttering like candles snuffed by unseen hands. For a heartbeat, the battlefield itself seemed to pause. The air that had been shrieking with spells, blades, and explosions turned hollow, emptied. Soldiers who had been roaring with bloodlust. Whether Vestige or defender stumbled into stillness as though the world had stolen their voices.

It was not simply a man that had fallen. It was heavy. It was the axis around which the entire battle had turned.

Ervin's eyes tightened, every muscle in his face refusing to betray the turmoil beneath. Beside him, counselors exhaled in disbelief, their composure cracking for the first time. All of them had known the Mage King was powerful. All of them had known he carried arrogance enough to believe he was untouchable. Neither had thought. Neither had prepared for the possibility that he could fall like this.

On the other side of the shattered plain, Vestige commanders raised their weapons. Their formation pulsed as if electrified, morale surging into them like current into a dead circuit. A thousand voices rose, unified, chanting in guttural tones that reverberated across the sky. Victory.

Virion alone did not chant. He did not roar. His blade, streaked faintly with fractures, hung at his side. His breathing came slow, measured, as though to acknowledge that the act he had committed required no celebration. He did not look at the Mage King's corpse. His gaze was already on the battlefield below.

Ervin's thoughts moved with ruthless clarity despite the chaos in his chest.

["The Mage King is gone.

The shield will fail.

The Vestige fleet will press harder.

Arkenhall cannot replace a force like him."]

Every line of logic led to collapse.

The defensive arrays, though formidable, had always been augmented by the Mage King's overwhelming presence. His sheer mana output alone had reinforced the lattice at its weakest junctions. Now, with that support gone, each strike from the Vestige fleet would land harder. And the defenders were already fractured, already worn by parasites. They had no figure to rally behind.

Lark's voice broke the stillness, harsh and unwilling to yield.

"We hold position! All units, re-engage—!"

His order rang out, but it was like water on scorched stone. Soldiers heard him, but their spirits had already begun to erode. To fight when the unbeatable had fallen was not bravery. It was despair in disguise. The collapse would not come at once. It would ripple. Like fractures running across glass.

And then the air shifted.

A soundless weight pressed against the ears, a vibration not carried by sound but by mana itself. The battlefield trembled, not from artillery, not from engines or spells, but from something deeper.

The black-blue mana spread first as threads. Hairline fractures in the air. Then as fog, thickening without origin, rolling across scorched plains, through the broken trenches, swallowing corpses and living alike without discrimination.

Vestige soldiers stopped chanting. Their voices caught, distorted in the fog, as though swallowed by invisible throats. Arkenhall units froze mid-formation, blades half-raised, unsure if this was enemy sorcery or some final curse left by the Mage King's fall.

Ervin narrowed his eyes. His mind cataloged every detail, forcing himself to think where others gawked.

["Coloration: not purely black. Black-blue, with a sheen like oil.

Behavior: not dispersing naturally. It clings. Self-sustaining.

Source: center of the collapse—the Mage King's body."]

His conclusion followed.

"This was not the Mage King's doing.

This was someone else's."

His gaze sharpened. A hand. An actual hand emerged from within the fog, pale against the black-blue haze. The fingers curled around the fallen Mage King's body, lifting it as though it weighed nothing.

And then the figure stepped through.

★★★

For those who watched, the sight was dissonance itself. The fog should have obscured, should have blurred all form and definition, and yet when he appeared, he was sharp. Too sharp. As if the fog bent itself away from him.

The soldiers strained their eyes. Murmurs ran through both sides.

"Who…?"

"Another Vestige?"

"No… he's not one of them…"

The man did not speak. His face was calm, unreadable, the sort of calmness that was neither arrogance nor serenity but indifference. His grip on the Mage King's corpse did not falter. One hand held a fallen titan as though it were nothing more than discarded weight.

And behind him was someone else moved. A second figure, silent, emerging in step. No description carried. No voice. No name offered.

The fog began to recede. Not dissipate. Withdraw. Like a living thing answering its master's call. In moments, the battlefield that had been drowned in black-blue haze was bare again. The corpses, the shattered stone, the scorch marks. All visible once more. Only two things had changed.

The Mage King's body was no longer on the ground.

And those two stood where no one had expected them.

★★★

Ervin's breath caught, though his mind did not. Recognition flared. He had seen that figure before. Not in this battlefield, not in this chaos, but in another moment, another fragment of memory burned into Arkenhall's records.

Ren.

The one who should have been buried in the parasite outbreak.

The one whose squad…the Blue Rats had been erased in sacrifice.

The one Arkenhall itself had written off as lost.

Yet here he stood, carrying the Mage King as though history had bent around him.

For the first time in hours, a new current swept the battlefield. Not hope. Not fear. Something more unstable: uncertainty.

Vestige soldiers faltered, unsure whether to attack or wait. Arkenhall's men hesitated, blades lowered, their grief muddled by confusion. "Was he an ally? Enemy? Why did he come?"

And then a voice cut through the distance. It was not from Ren. Not from the second man. It came from somewhere deeper, resonant, woven into mana itself.

"Now it is our turn…"

"...Elara."

Her presence, disembodied, was unmistakable to those who knew. A shadow moving in parallel to Ren.

Ervin clenched his fists, his expression a mask even as his heartbeat accelerated. If Ren stood here, if Elara spoke, then the battlefield had already shifted. The fall of the Mage King was not the conclusion. It was a prologue.

Ren looked up. His gaze met Virion's across the broken field. No words. No explanation. Just one breath, one release.

And then he spoke.

"Erase."

★★★

The word was not sound. It was the law.

The fog that had withdrawn surged outward again, but this time it was not mist. It was an execution. Black-blue mana rippled, condensing, then vanishing into silence. Where it touched, reality itself folded. Not in explosion, not in ruin, but in absence. Soldiers who had stood. Now they are gone. Some of the ships above are also gone. The very presence of Vestige captains, Virion included—wiped.

Not slain.

Not destroyed.

Erased.

And the battlefield, once thunderous with war, collapsed into an even greater silence than before.

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