The air thickened in the banquet hall, dense like molten lead as their auras clashed. Space itself trembled slightly, as though the tension between the two entities was too much for the real world to bear. Candles flickered violently, goblets of wine shook, and many of the assembled elites had trouble breathing.
Like a wave of void energy intended to smother all light, the cloaked leader's abyssal aura surged upward. He was like a spiritual black hole trying to destroy Apollo's will and obliterate him through sheer force.
But Apollo stood unmoved.
If the leader's aura was a black hole, then Apollo's was a celestial blade suspended in eternity—silent, honed, peerless. It didn't expand. It didn't explode. It simply existed, and in that existence alone, it cut through all falsehoods.
Crack.
