Chapter 169 - Chapter One Hundred and Seventy One- The Breath That Refused to Break.

‎The silence did not settle gently after Dorian vanished; it pressed down on the field like something alive, something watching, something waiting to see what would happen next. No one moved at first, not because they didn't know what to do, but because nothing they had been trained for applied anymore. The rifles lowered slowly as uncertainty replaced precision, and the officers who had just fired stood frozen, their eyes fixed on the empty space where a man had existed only seconds ago and then ceased to obey the rules that should have ended him. The ropes still swayed slightly against the tree, the blood still marked the bark, and yet the body that should have completed the scene was gone, leaving behind a gap that logic could not fill.