The universe held its breath.
For the first time since the dawn of existence, The Dark—the primordial void that had devoured galaxies with the casual indifference of a tide washing over sand—stopped. Not slowed, not paused, but stopped. Its inexorable advance toward perfect unity, toward the cleansing of consciousness from reality, came to an absolute halt.
The cessation was so profound that space-time itself seemed to stutter, like a heart missing a beat. Across the crumbling battlefield, warriors looked up in confusion as the crushing weight of oblivion simply... hesitated.
Reed felt it in his bones—the cosmic equivalent of a predator suddenly realizing its prey might not be prey at all.
