The Void Edict was not announced with ceremony.
There were no banners, no proclamations carved into stone, no envoys riding across borders to spread its words. It was delivered the way all effective commands were delivered—quietly, efficiently, and with the expectation of obedience.
Vale first learned of it through absence.
Three days after leaving the archive, a Sound Clan patrol failed to return from a routine boundary survey. The terrain they were assigned to was stable, unremarkable, and well within controlled territory. No beasts were recorded in the area. No storms. No fluctuations in mana density.
They simply did not come back.
By the second day, the elders assumed misfortune. By the third, they began to worry. By the fourth, Elder Rin ordered Vale to accompany a retrieval party.
They found the patrol site untouched.
Tents stood upright. Equipment lay where it had been placed. Food stores were intact. Even the resonance markers remained active, humming softly as if their owners would return at any moment.
But the air was wrong.
Vale felt it immediately.
There was no disturbance, no void field, no visible suppression. Sound traveled normally. Mana flowed. Yet something fundamental was missing, like a rule quietly removed from reality.
"This area has been edited," Vale said.
The elders stiffened.
"What do you mean?" one asked.
Vale crouched and pressed his palm against the ground. His Aether Ring contracted, precise and alert, but refused to resonate.
"Interaction has been restricted," he said. "Not blocked. Refused."
They found the bodies farther in.
The disciples lay where they had fallen, expressions neutral, as though they had simply stopped existing mid-action. There were no wounds. No mana burn. No signs of struggle.
Only emptiness.
Elder Rin knelt beside one of them, his jaw tightening.
"This is void enforcement," he said quietly.
Vale stood slowly.
"This isn't hunting," he said. "This is declaration."
Back at the clan, confirmation arrived within hours. A sealed document, delivered through neutral channels, bearing no insignia yet recognized by every authority that mattered.
The Void Edict had been enacted.
Its contents were brief.
An anomaly has resurfaced.
All deviations from established elemental doctrine are to be observed, contained, or nullified.
Unauthorized conceptual phenomena are subject to immediate erasure.
Compliance ensures stability.
Vale read it once.
Then again.
"This edict doesn't name anyone," he said.
Rin nodded. "It doesn't need to."
The Covenant had moved.
Not against him directly.
Against the idea that he represented.
Vale folded the document and handed it back.
"They're not afraid of rebellion," he said. "They're afraid of precedent."
Rin's gaze sharpened. "And now they've reminded the world what happens when precedent appears."
Vale looked out across the Sound Clan courtyard, where disciples trained as usual, unaware that the rules governing their existence had just narrowed.
"The void has spoken," Vale said quietly.
And for the first time, he understood that silence, once imposed, could be weaponized just as effectively as sound.