Kael was gone.
The thought did not arrive all at once. It did not crash into me dramatically the way stories liked to describe grief. There was no sharp realization. No scream lodged in my throat. No immediate breakdown.
It happened slowly.
Cruelly.
Like poison spreading through veins one inch at a time.
I kept staring at the place where the blood pool vanished because some stupid part of me still expected him to come back. Maybe laughing. Maybe coughing blood while making another ridiculous joke about how everyone was overreacting.
The ground stayed empty.
The silence afterward felt unbearable.
Not because it was quiet.
Because it wasn't.
The battlefield still existed around me. Rubble shifted. Wounded players groaned somewhere in the distance. Priests barked healing orders. Armor clinked. Magic crackled weakly in the air.
But all of it sounded distant.
Muted.
Like I had been submerged underwater while the rest of the world remained above the surface.
