The Moment Time Stopped
Ethan felt it the instant the Death Sea Scroll activated.
Not an attack. Not energy.
Something absolute.
Something final.
One moment, he was standing—his golden-shadow aura flaring, his breath steady, his heartbeat hammering in his ears.
And the next—
His heartbeat stopped.
His breath ceased.
The world around him became nothing.
Not darkness. Not silence.
Absence.
The battlefield, his friends, the weight of the war—all of it vanished in an instant, leaving only a crushing, suffocating emptiness that wrapped around him like unseen chains.
He wasn't just dying.
He was already dead.
---
The Others React
Mia's dagger slipped from her grip, clattering uselessly against the ground.
Orion's rifle trembled in his hands—then fell, as if suddenly stripped of purpose.
Kieran's visor glitched violently, scanning the battlefield over and over—searching for a reading, any reading, where Ethan had stood just a second ago.
