Chapter 68 – The Unveiling of Silence

The world had gone still.

Where moments ago Kael had shattered the chainstorm, now only a void hung in the air, swallowing every sound. Not even the clash of soldiers in the distance could pierce it.

The General stood motionless, helm tilted, as though listening to something no one else could hear. Then the metal groaned, splitting down the center. Shadows seeped from the crack, curling like smoke, and with each breath the figure swelled.

The armor collapsed piece by piece, chains slithering back into the darkness as if retreating from what they had contained. What emerged was no knight at all, but a shape that shifted with every glance—half flesh, half absence, wrapped in a cloak of writhing void.

His voice came not from his mouth, but from everywhere at once.
“You think chains are all I am? Foolish boy. Chains were my restraint.”

The pressure deepened. Soldiers staggered, many dropping their weapons, some sinking to their knees as though the air itself had turned to stone. Even Mira struggled to stand, her hand pressed hard against her chest.

Kael’s blade wavered, the glow along its edge flickering. Yet he did not retreat. His shadow stretched unnaturally long across the broken ground, drawn toward the General’s shifting form.

The silence itself seemed alive—pressing, crushing, waiting.

Then the General raised one claw-like hand, and the void rippled outward. The earth cracked in jagged lines, swallowed by an unseen gravity. What had once been the battlefield now became a stage suspended between two existences: the mortal world, and the abyss the General had revealed.

Kael’s grip tightened on his blade. His voice, though strained, cut through the oppressive quiet.
“If this is your true form… then I’ll cut through that silence, too.”

The General of Silence laughed without sound—an expression that rippled through the void like a thousand broken mirrors—before lunging forward.

The clash of the unbound void and Kael’s half-erased soul was about to begin.