Chapter 69 – Fractured Resonance

The void and the world collided.

Kael swung, his blade carving a streak of light that should have cut air alone—yet it struck resistance. The General’s formless arm caught it, and the silence cracked like glass. Fragments of sound spilled out in jagged echoes, each one stabbing at the ears of those nearby.

The resonance shook Kael’s bones. Every swing he made was answered not with steel against steel, but with his very essence unraveling against silence itself. The more he fought, the more the world seemed to fray—edges of mountains bending unnaturally, the horizon folding in on itself.

“Break yourself, and you’ll break the world with you,” the General’s voice rumbled, more thought than sound. “Every strike you make feeds the void.”

Mira reached toward him, but even her light flickered when it neared the General’s form, as though hope itself recoiled from the silence. She clenched her teeth and pressed forward anyway, summoning a barrier of pale radiance around Kael.

For a moment, he could breathe again.

But inside, he felt it—the erosion creeping deeper. Each clash left threads of his being unspooled, drifting into the General’s form. His hands trembled. His vision blurred, not from exhaustion, but from being pulled apart piece by piece.

Kael gritted his teeth. If I falter now, everything we’ve fought for ends here.

He steadied his stance, driving the tip of his blade into the ground. The earth pulsed beneath him, resonating with something buried far deeper than his own strength. Not light, not shadow—something caught between.

The General tilted his head, voice curling with amusement.
“You would risk dissolving entirely, just to wound me?”

Kael raised his eyes. The glow in them no longer belonged solely to him, but to every fragment of reality resisting the abyss.
“I’m not just here to wound you… I’m here to tear your silence apart.”

The battlefield shuddered, caught between collapse and awakening. The next exchange would decide not just the victor, but what would remain of Kael when it was over.