The silence came first.

A silence so complete it felt born, not from peace, but from the world forgetting how to breathe. Smoke drifted through the broken arches of the Vale like mourning veils, thin and searching. The air still thrummed with the echo of the serpent’s shattering — a vibration that hummed beneath the stones, beneath the skin, beneath the sky itself.

Where the rift had collapsed, only a crater of silver dust remained. It pulsed faintly, like the aftershock of a heartbeat ...