The prince continued walking as if the two Lords were weather.
The Shade Lord struck first for the third time, abandoning precision in favor of absolute volume. Darkness detonated outward in a spherical wave, dense enough to crush stone into powder and erase lesser beings from existence. The wave closed around the prince from every direction at once, a perfect, lightless prison designed to unravel anything caught inside it.
The prince took one more step.
The darkness split along clean geometric lines, forming a narrow corridor that matched his exact path. He passed through the heart of the technique without his pace changing. Behind him the sphere collapsed inward on empty air and dissipated with a sound like tearing silk.
