The basin left by the Titan's fall still smoked. Fragments of his spear glowed like cooling stars, sinking into molten stone. Ash drifted down in sheets.

Across that ruin the next commander stepped. Her form was not large, not armored. Instead, she was absence wrapped in flesh. The air bent around her, light thinning where it touched her cloak. Her movements carried no sound. Every step was a subtraction.

When she appeared fully, a ripple spread across the field. Spells faltered in mid-flight. Chants stuttered. Mages who had been locked in combat turned their heads despite themselves. Their instincts screamed that the void itself had gained shape.

Her pale eyes fixed on Ren. Then, deliberately, they slid to Elara.

Elara drew a breath through her teeth, clutching her ribs. Her golden light sparked faintly at her palms but could not take shape.

Vael spat blood, wiping it from his jaw with the back of his hand. His dagger trembled slightly in his grip. Even he could not fully vanish here. The shadows clung too tightly to her presence.

Ervin straightened with effort. The corpse of the Mage King still weighed his arms like iron. He had no words. He only planted his feet and steadied himself for whatever came.

Ren alone moved without hesitation. The fog at his feet stirred, thickening, climbing. It was not rage. It was inevitability.

The second commander raised her hand.

The air collapsed inward.

Everything within a hundred paces folded toward her palm, as if the world itself had been tugged. Mage-fire bent, stone splintered, even screams were drawn inward and silenced. Then she closed her fingers, and all of it was gone.

Ren's fog surged forward in answer. It collided with the implosion at the center, erasure against absence. For a breath the plain tore itself in two. Half of it vanished into her void, the other half was consumed by his fog. The meeting point screamed with distortion, black fractures crawling through the air itself.

She tilted her head faintly, expression unreadable. Then she vanished.

Ren spun once. The fog followed, but she was already behind him. A blade of compressed nothing slashed toward his spine.

Vael intercepted. His dagger caught the void edge, shrieking as if metal itself were being undone. The clash forced him back three steps, his shoulder splitting deeper. He hissed through clenched teeth but did not fall.

Ren turned, palm snapping outward. The fog swept across her like a tide. For a heartbeat her outline dissolved. Then she reappeared outside its reach, pale eyes fixed on him again.

Ervin clenched his jaw and lifted his hand. His mana reserves were battered, yet he forced the storm to rise once more. Lightning arced from his palm, fire laced in the strike. He aimed not at her but at the ground, detonating the terrain where she reappeared.

The blast carved a crater, yet she walked out untouched, her form flickering between fragments of absence.

Mages screamed all around them. Arkenhall lines strained to reform. Vestige forces pressed harder, emboldened by their commander's descent. Thousands of spells lit the horizon in clashing arcs, the sound like endless thunder.

But in the center, silence held.

Elara forced her hands outward. Golden light spilled from her palms, thin but stubborn. She steadied the ground again where it cracked under the void's pull. Mages who had fallen found their bleeding slowed. Crushed lungs filled again with air. Her body shook, her face pale, but she did not stop.

The commander's eyes lingered on her a moment too long.

Ren stepped into her path, fog curling upward like fangs. His voice was flat, without rise.

"You do not touch her."

The void stirred at his words.

The commander's blade rose again.

The duel of absence and erasure began in full.

★★★

The void commander moved with no haste. Every step she took pulled space tighter, as if the plain itself recoiled.

Ren advanced first. His fog surged outward in a wave, a rolling tide of black that devoured the soil. The world where it touched dissolved into nothing.

She stepped once and was gone. A line opened behind him, too clean to be natural. The air itself had been cut away.

Ren twisted, fog snapping like a whip. The strike consumed the scar she left behind but not her.

Vael appeared at her flank. His blade gleamed with black venom, the edge sharpened beyond reason. His strike was precise, throat-aimed, meant to kill without waste.

Her cloak shifted. The dagger sank in. Then vanished. The weapon had been swallowed. Vael staggered, blood dripping anew from his palm where the void had tried to eat him with it.

Ervin's eyes narrowed. He flung out both arms. Lightning shrieked down from above, jagged bolts spearing her position. Fire burst from the earth below, a rising pillar of molten stone. Wind howled, shaping the storm into a spiral that should have shredded anything caught within.

The commander walked out of it unburned. Flames curved away from her. Lightning bent and folded into nothing. The storm died like a candle pressed flat.

Elara grit her teeth. She pressed both palms into the broken ground again. Golden veins spread like roots, binding cracks, stitching earth into a surface they could still stand on. Her body trembled violently under the strain, but her light held.

Ren did not slow. His hand cut downward. Fog poured like a blade, cleaving through the commander's path.

This time it struck. For an instant her cloak unraveled, dissolving into shredded fragments of nothing. Her body wavered, flickered. Then snapped back whole. She tilted her head slightly, almost curious.

Ren's eyes narrowed.

Vael launched forward again, faster than the eye could follow. His figure blurred, darting through her field of absence, leaving afterimages in the smoke. The dagger in his good hand was new, drawn from the shadow he carried. It curved toward her ribs.

She caught it with her bare hand. The steel corroded. Her palm remained pale, untouched. Vael hissed as the backlash tore through his bones.

Ren moved. Fog snapped across her arm, severing the limb at the elbow. It vanished into nothing before it hit the ground.

She did not cry out. She simply turned, void spilling from the wound like smoke. The limb reformed, smooth as if never cut.

Ervin forced himself forward. His lungs burned, ribs splitting with every breath, but he raised both hands again.

Earth itself cracked as stone spears erupted upward in a forest of jagged teeth. At the same time a wave of water followed, surging through the spikes, freezing solid in an instant. He ignited it, fire threading the cracks until the formation exploded in a blinding storm of shrapnel and flame.

The plain shook.

The commander walked through. Shards of stone vanished before touching her cloak. Water and fire folded into silence.

Ervin's teeth ground until blood filled his mouth.

Elara's light faltered. She gasped, her knees buckling as golden threads dimmed. The terrain she had held steady began to crumble. Dozens of wounded mages screamed as the ground split beneath them.

Ren's voice cut through, sharp as a blade.

"Hold."

Elara's body shook. She pressed harder, forcing blood from her lips. The light flared again, cracks sealing just enough to stop the collapse.

The commander finally moved with speed. She blurred forward, void condensing into a spear in her hands. She thrust directly at Elara.

Ren stepped into the path. His fog met her weapon. The spear dissolved, vanishing into the erasure mist.

Her pale eyes widened for the first time.

Ren's own hand shot forward, seizing her throat. Fog poured directly into her flesh. Her body flickered violently, patches of her frame unraveling.

She raised her hand, fingers spread. The world around his grip collapsed inward, crushing even the fog. Ren's arm blackened to the elbow. He did not let go.

Vael appeared on her back. His dagger, dripping with layered poisons, plunged into the base of her neck. For a heartbeat her body convulsed. The void around her rippled, uncontrolled.

Ervin roared, throwing every element he had left into one strike. Lightning, flame, ice, stone. All collided into a single beam that struck her chest. The impact drove her backward, tearing her from Ren's grasp, hurling her through broken towers of rock.

The explosion flattened the plain.

When the dust cleared she was still standing. Her cloak hung in tatters, her skin cracked with void leaking through. Her movements were slower, but her eyes were the same.

Elara lifted her hand, golden light barely a spark now. The flower she summoned trembled in the air, small, fragile, but real. Its glow brushed Ren's blackened arm, halting the spread of void.

Ren flexed his fingers once. His eyes locked on the commander.

"This ends now."

Fog thickened until the plain vanished under it. Not mist. Not smoke. A void of his own making, swallowing sight and sound.

From inside came screams, the sound of rending, the thunder of collapsing earth.

When the fog lifted, only Ren stood. The commander was gone, not wounded, not broken. Erased.

Ren lowered his hand. His arm shook once before he stilled it.

Elara collapsed to her knees. Vael dropped into shadow to keep from falling outright. Ervin leaned on the Mage King's corpse as if it were a crutch.

The field was not silent. The war of tens of thousands still raged across the horizon. But at the center, one more commander of the Vestiges was no more.

Above them, the flagship shifted.

The next was already coming.

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