The hall held its breath.
Richardus’s mouth had opened to continue his argument, the next phrase of it already forming, and it stayed open without producing sound, the minister visibly recalibrating in real time as he registered what was being offered and understood, faster than most in the room, exactly what it meant.
Haryntha raised both hands before her, palms outward, and the air between her hands and the open space of the hall folded inward on itself and then unfolded again into something new.
A screen of light appeared.
It wasn’t quite light and it wasn’t quite solid, a transparent layer that hung in the air above the hall’s central floor, large enough that every person present - from the Emperor on his dais to the lowest-ranked attendant near the doors - could see it clearly without needing to move. It shimmered faintly at its edges, the way heated air shimmers above stone, but at its center the image was perfectly clear.
The Blackmoss Spire.
The corrupted chamber inside it, vast and dark, its walls thick with pulsing moss. Two enormous figures - the dukes, black and ashen, horned, their pale, cold eyes catching whatever light existed in that terrible place.
And Jolthar, standing at the center of it, Knashii drawn and blazing with silver-white light.
Every single individual in the hall could see the image and they held their breath for a second.
The image moved with the clarity of memory perfectly preserved, every motion crisp, every detail rendered with the precision of something that had not been reconstructed but simply replayed.
The vision played out with impossible clarity. It did not feel like a memory or an illusion but a window into another moment in time. Every movement, every sound, every detail seemed real enough to touch. The sheer vividness left them frozen in place, their eyes fixed upon the scene without even the instinct to blink.
They watched Jolthar move through the opening exchanges, watched the first duke take the wound across its forearm, and watched the floor crater open beneath the Abyssal Void Storm of Ascent.
They watched the fight escalate, watched both dukes adapt and press and fail to press effectively, and watched the moment when Jolthar planted his feet and drew breath and the chamber around him seemed to hold still in anticipation of something.
"Void Requiem of the Black Heavens."
The words carried from the image itself, Jolthar’s own voice, quiet and certain, and then the silver-white sphere expanded from Knashii and swallowed everything.
The second duke simply ceased.
No transition, no collapse, no death in any sense. The watching court understood death - one moment it existed, mid-motion, mid-intention, and the next moment the space it had occupied was simply empty, the absolute white-silver light passing through where it had been and leaving nothing, not even the memory of resistance.
The sphere continued outward.
The floor of the chamber disappeared in expanding rings, smooth, concave walls of nothing replacing solid stone.
The first duke, caught at the edge, lost both legs to the knee in an instant, the silver light eating upward with patient inevitability.
The hall was no longer breathing as one collective unit.
Several people had risen from their seats without seeming to notice they had done so, drawn upright by what they were watching, their bodies responding before their minds had finished processing.
The image continued.
Jolthar walked across the ruined floor, telekinesis pinning the first duke’s remaining form against the rubble of a collapsed wall, the final strike of Knashii arriving with everything that remained of his reserves concentrated into a single committed motion.
The silver-white light consumed the duke’s arm, then shoulder, then torso, working with the same unhurried thoroughness that had taken the second duke until what had been an ancient, centuries-accumulated entity of concentrated malice simply was not anymore.
Two dukes, erased so completely that nothing physical remained to prove they had ever existed at all - except for the fact that the entire imperial court had just watched it happen with their own eyes.
The image held for one final moment on Jolthar standing alone in the ruined chamber, Knashii still in hand, the silver light fading from the blade as the technique completed itself.
Then the screen folded inward on itself the way it had unfolded and was gone, leaving only the ordinary light of the hall and the ordinary air of the hall and several hundred people who had just watched something that none of them had words readily available for.
Wymar made a sound. Not quite a word, it sounded like a squeal from watching something spectacular. It was an outburst that carried more enthusiasm and disbelief than he had clearly intended to display in a formal setting.
Milan made a similar sound, both of them too overwhelmed by what they’d witnessed to maintain full court composure for that first instant.
Andrion and some of the women who shared their moments with Jolthar.
Everyone else simply stared.
Several ministers remained standing, having risen at some point during the display without seeming to register the movement, their formal postures abandoned entirely in favor of simply staring at the empty space where the image had been, as though it might reappear if they looked at it long enough.
Duke Hernais Rothgard’s son had gone pale.
Bahste Fatler’s laced fingers had come apart and were now resting flat on the table before him, his expression for the first time since Jolthar’s arrival showing something other than careful calculation - something closer to the bare reaction of a man who had just seen something he had not believed was possible and was struggling to integrate it.
Richardus stood with his mouth still slightly open, the argument he had been building, the careful logical structure he had assembled about absence and evidence and unverifiable claims, sitting in his throat with nowhere left to go.
The hall remained silent.
Several long moments passed, and nobody in the entire assembled imperial court - not the ministers, not the nobles, not the guards along the walls, not even, for a moment, the Emperor himself - found anything to say.