The village should not have existed.
Vale realized that the moment he stepped past the weathered boundary stones. No wards. No resonance hum. No ambient elemental density. Even the ground felt inert beneath his feet, as if mana had once flowed here and been deliberately bled dry.
A dead zone.
Yet people lived here.
Children ran through the narrow paths, laughing. Smoke rose from cookfires. Old men argued over fishing nets. Life persisted, unamplified and unprotected.
Vale slowed.
Anti-magic hunters favored places like this—not as targets, but as proof. Evidence that the world could function without cultivation, without resonance, without power.
He felt eyes on him immediately.
Not hostile.
Assessing.
A woman carrying water paused when she saw him, then nodded politely. No fear. No curiosity beyond what any stranger earned.
They had learned to survive without depending on the world responding to them.
"Interesting," Vale murmured.
He walked through the village, noting the signs. Tools were heavier, overbuilt to compensate for lack of reinforcement. Buildings leaned but did not collapse. People moved carefully, conserving strength.
No one cultivated.
No one complained.
Vale stopped near the center, where a dry well stood capped with stone.
A man sat beside it, mending rope with hands scarred by years of labor. He looked up as Vale approached.
"You're not from the Covenant," the man said flatly.
Vale raised an eyebrow. "How can you tell?"
"They announce themselves by what they take," the man replied. "You haven't taken anything yet."
Vale sat across from him. "What happened here?"
The man tied off the rope and leaned back.
"Mana collapsed," he said. "Years ago. Void teams came first. Then sound inspectors. Then nothing."
"Why didn't you leave?"
The man shrugged. "Where would we go? Everywhere else expects you to carry power."
Vale considered that.
This place was not suppressed.
It was abandoned.
Wind moved here differently. Not freer—but honest. No ambient pressure distorted it. No resonance cluttered space. The air felt plain, unremarkable.
Comfortable.
Vale stood slowly and extended awareness—not to shape, not to adjust, but to listen.
The village responded faintly.
Not as space welcoming a sovereign.
As space recognizing someone who did not demand more than it could give.
A child passed by and stumbled.
Before Vale could move, the child caught themselves.
No intervention.
No phenomenon.
Yet the air felt slightly more forgiving for a moment, as if it had leaned in.
The man beside the well watched closely.
"You did something," he said.
Vale shook his head. "I didn't."
The man studied him, then nodded once. "Good."
Night fell as Vale shared a simple meal with the villagers. No mana flares lit the dark. Only fire and quiet conversation.
When he left at dawn, nothing changed visibly.
But the well no longer felt quite as empty.
And far away, Covenant monitors registered a spike.
Not of energy.
Of absence becoming stable.
Anti-magic had created a void.
Wind had turned it into a place.
That was a problem the Covenant had never planned for.