CHAPTER 233 — THE WORLD BELOW BREAKS
The first thing that shattered wasn't the ground. It was the silence. For one fragile, suspended heartbeat after the five radiant rings aligned, the entire battlefield seemed to hesitate, as if the world itself had paused, unwilling to move into whatever came next. The winds didn't slow—they stopped. Torn currents froze midair, lightning hung suspended in the clouds like unfinished strokes, and even sound disappeared. The collapse of buildings, the rumble of earth, the distant echoes of chaos—all of it faded into something hollow and wrong. Then something pressed through everything at once. Not from above, not from below, but through the world itself. A sound followed, not heard but felt deep in the body, like reality grinding against something it could no longer resist. And then the sky changed.
