[Dominic's POV]
Cough! Cough!
I felt the drain as I balanced myself by stabbing Muramasa into fractured space itself.
The blackened blade trembled faintly.
Not from weakness.
From overload.
My arm felt heavier.
My chest tighter.
Like something inside me had just forcefully reminded reality who was allowed to speak—and my body had paid the invoice.
'…Yeah,' I thought quietly, exhaling slowly through my nose. 'Definitely overdid that.'
The world ahead still rippled.
Fractured layers of space peeled awkwardly around the aftermath of Divine Departure.
The sky above Morningstar Manor looked…
Wrong.
Not destroyed.
Just unwilling to immediately return to normal.
Like existence itself needed a second to process what had just happened.
Far below—
Silence.
Not complete silence.
The kind of silence that followed something catastrophic.
The kind where even confident people suddenly remembered mortality existed.
Cracks spread across invisible spatial layers.
