The silence held like a breath between worlds.
A silence not born from peace, but from shock. A silence that carved itself into the bones of every noble present, leaving behind the echo of what they had just witnessed.
Edran the Hollow Fang—slayer of beasts, warden of pits, blood-forged in a hundred battles—lay crumpled like a discarded animal at Ian's feet. A crater carved beneath him, fractured stone radiating out from his body like a death bloom.
The nobles did not speak.
They didn't know how to speak.
The scene defied sense. It went against everything they knew—against the logic of strength and hierarchy that the Arena, had been built upon.
Because Edran was no amateur.
No drunk brute paraded before the courts. No expendable pawn. He had been—was—one of Duke Lugard's finest. At the very least equal to Torkas, The Butcher. And yet here he lay.
Broken. Unmoving.
By a single blow.
Not even a blow. A gesture. A movement so fast, so absolute, it left nothing to interpret.
