Sylen's body lay still.
Headless.
Motionless.
Drained of all light, all fury, all essence.
What remained of him was hardly recognizable. The once-imposing necromancer—draped in arcane elegance and cloaked in authority—was now a fractured shell. His armor, once smooth obsidian etched with forbidden runes, was blackened and warped by cursed flame. The plates had buckled under the pressure of soul fire, bent inward like metal recoiling from a divine hammer.
His limbs were sprawled out at awkward angles, fingers twisted like dead branches clawing at nothing. His form resembled a marionette discarded after its final scene—a stage prop abandoned under the weight of its own tragedy.
And then there was silence.
Then—
FWOOSH!
A violent gust of pressure tore through the air above the ruined arena, followed by a brilliant ripple of golden light.
It was the proctor.
