The silence did not last long.
It never did. Not after something like that. Not when people had just watched something that should not exist dissolve into nothing on a path they walked every single day. The quiet lasted exactly long enough for everyone present to understand what they had seen, and then the sect moved, because the alternative was standing still and letting the understanding sit too long.
Lan Yue felt the shift immediately. Not fear, exactly. Not the kind that made people freeze or run or say things they did not mean. Something sharper than fear, and in some ways worse. Awareness. The kind that settled into people the moment they realized the rules they had been trusting without thinking about them no longer applied.
