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Silence.

A crushing, suffocating silence descended upon the battlefield like a funeral shroud. The wind dared not blow. The smoke hung low, curling in lazy spirals over scorched earth and shattered stone, as if the world itself was holding its breath.

A few soldiers—lucky or cursed, it was hard to tell—had somehow survived the bloodbath. But they stood frozen, eyes wide and hollow, their faces pale as ash. It was as if something had been torn from within them.

They looked at Damien—not with hatred or fear—but with a haunted emptiness.

The kind of emptiness left behind when the soul has gone missing.

Their strongest warrior, their living legend, their pillar of power—the Supreme Golden General, a Channel Forging Realm expert—had been slaughtered without a chance to resist.

It wasn't just the death of a man.

It was the death of an ideal.