The Citadel of Echoes did not witness a battle. It witnessed a systematic erasure.
As Alhen stepped deeper into the grand hall, the air itself seemed to scream—not with sound, but with the sudden, agonizing vacuum of his presence. Cardinal Malphas roared, a sound amplified by Tier 4 [Abyssal Resonance], and raised his obsidian staff.
"Kill him! Tear the life from his marrow!" Malphas shrieked.
From the vaulted shadows, fifty Inquisitor Templars descended. These were the elite, each a Tier 3 or Tier 4 master of the "Flow." Their armor was etched with glowing violet runes that granted them superhuman speed and strength. They moved like streaks of purple lightning, their spears whistling toward Alhen's throat from every angle.
Alhen didn't even draw his black-iron slab. He simply kept walking.
As the first wave of Templars entered the six-foot radius of his Nullification, the horror began.
The glowing runes on their armor didn't just flicker—they turned into dull, cold ash. The magical propulsion that gave them their Tier 4 speed vanished mid-lunge. Suddenly, they weren't elite warriors; they were just men in heavy, cumbersome metal, falling forward under their own momentum.
"My Mana... it's gone!" one Templar gasped, his hands clawing at his throat as if the very air had turned to lead.
Alhen moved.
His movements were a blur of raw, mechanical force. Without the "Wave" to resist him, he was faster than physics should allow. He caught a spear mid-air, the violet enchantments on the tip dying the moment he touched it, and snapped the shaft like a dry twig.
[Null-Style: Void Palm]
He struck a Templar in the chest. There was no explosion of light. Instead, the man's Tier 4 [Iron-Skin] spell simply blinked out of existence an inch before impact. Alhen's physical hand, hardened by three years of volcanic forging, slammed into a chest that was now just soft, unprotected bone.
CRUNCH.
The Templar was sent spiraling into his comrades, his internal organs collapsed by the sheer physical weight of a strike that could no longer be dampened by magic.
"Form a circle! Use Projectiles!" Malphas screamed, his face contorting in terror.
The remaining thirty Templars retreated, chanting in unison. They combined their Essence into a [Grand Void-Bolt]—a sphere of concentrated dark matter the size of a carriage, capable of leveling a fortress gate. It roared toward Alhen, swallowing the light of the torches as it flew.
Alhen finally reached over his shoulder and gripped the hilt of his nameless, black-iron slab. He didn't take a stance. He just swung it in a lazy, horizontal arc.
[Nullification: Event Horizon]
The black-iron slab collided with the massive ball of dark energy. To Lira and Kaelen, watching from the shattered entrance, it looked like a miracle. The sphere didn't explode. It didn't push Alhen back.
The moment the iron touched the magic, the sphere deflated. The purple energy was sucked into the "Nothingness" of the blade, vanishing into a pinprick of grey light before winking out entirely.
The silence that followed was deafening.
Alhen didn't stop. He sprinted into the center of the panicked crowd. He was a reaper in a field of dry wheat. He didn't use techniques; he used Physics. He swung the heavy slab of iron with the strength of a Tier 5 body, and because his opponents no longer had their "Mana-Shields" to protect them, the results were a massacre.
Shields shattered like glass. Swords snapped like toothpicks. The elite Templars of the Inquisition were reduced to a pile of broken, powerless bodies, their eyes wide with the realization that they were dying as ordinary, terrified men.
"Stay away from me!" Malphas backed toward his throne, his hands shaking as he tried to weave a [Teleportation Gate].
The purple sparks of the gate sputtered and died the moment Alhen stepped within ten feet.
"You spent your life building a throne on a lie, Cardinal," Alhen said, his white hair ghost-like in the shadows. He stood over the priest, the black-iron slab dripping with the blood of men who thought they were gods.
"I... I am a servant of the High Inquisitor!" Malphas blubbered, his Tier 4 dignity stripped away. "He will skin you alive! He will—"
Alhen didn't let him finish. He grabbed the Cardinal by the front of his silk robes and lifted him off the ground. The violet glow in Malphas's eyes faded into a dull, human brown.
"Tell Malakor," Alhen whispered, his voice vibrating with the coldness of the grave. "Tell him the silence is coming for him next."
He dropped the Cardinal, who scrambled toward the back exit, his spirit completely broken. Alhen didn't bother killing him. A man who has tasted absolute power and then had it erased is already a living corpse.
Alhen stood in the center of the hall, surrounded by the wreckage of the Inquisition's elite. He looked up at the ceiling, sensing the true darkness waiting in the floor above.
"Father. Lira," Alhen called out without turning around. "Wait here. This next part... the world doesn't need to see what I do to him."
He stepped toward the spiral staircase that led to the High Spire. Every step he took left a grey, dead footprint on the obsidian floor. The appetizer was over.
The main course was waiting at the top of the tower. High Inquisitor Malakor.