The God of Nothing.-Chapter 45: Beneath the Weight of None

The wind stopped.

Ash froze mid-air.

Farren's eyes widened from the edge of the ring. "...Oh no."

Because for the first time — Rejection was no longer confined to Caelith.

It was expanding.

Not violently.

Not explosively.

But undeniably.

Aurex moved.

He didn't hesitate. The prince didn't believe in hesitation. His foot barely touched the stone before gravity warped again — warping space in a curve to accelerate his descent.

Scimitar glowing like a curved piece of dawn, he lunged toward Caelith's exposed side.

Faster than before.

Sharpened with intent.

His hand passed through the edge of Caelith's growing aura—

And his power vanished.

No gravitational pull.

No increased velocity.

Just... nothing.

Aurex's eyes flashed with confusion. Then comprehension.

He retreated mid-lunge, forcing a redirect, landing light on his feet like a dancer choking on his own steps.

He looked at his own hand.

The glow was gone.

His jaw tightened.

"...He's disrupting my field."

He didn't say it loudly.

He didn't need to.

Those with ears to hear — the champions, the heirs, the instructors — they already knew.

Because mana hadn't just faded near Caelith.

It had disappeared.

Obliterated.

A hollow zone had bloomed around him.

Silent. Wide. Growing.

Caelith didn't grin. Didn't gloat. His breath still rasped in his throat, and the pain in his ribs burned like fire across dry parchment.

But he felt it.

The shift.

The edge.

He had brushed something buried beneath the rules of the world.

He's been using the world's weight to crush me...

Then I'll remove the world.

His fingers tightened on Ashthorn.

Rejection poured from his pores now — not like steam, but like gravity reversed. Space warped around him, not through pressure, but absence. The heat from nearby flames was snuffed out. A line of wind swerved around his back and failed to reconnect. The crowd felt the chill without understanding the cause.

The mana around him was... gone.

It didn't recoil. It didn't resist.

It died.

One foot forward. A single step. The earth beneath his boot crumbled into dust — not from impact, but from rejection. Even the structure of matter obeyed the aura's will.

The champions encircling the arena edge watched with narrowed eyes and unreadable expressions.

Jorun licked his lips, muttered something under his breath, then backed up a step.

Vessia had stopped taking mental notes. She was watching now, eyes wide, scroll forgotten.

Lysara's ash receded. Not as a retreat. As preparation.

Theryn exhaled once. Then didn't blink again.

Only Serika narrowed her stance further, one finger tapping her glaive, as though trying to measure the exact reach of this... void.

Farren?

Farren was the only one smiling.

"Ohhhh," he whispered. "Now it gets interesting."

And in the center of it all, Caelith raised Ashthorn. Slowly. Calmly.

No words followed.

But the air no longer carried Aurex Vykrall's weight.

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It belonged to Caelith.

For now.

And the prince knew it.

The prince stepped forward, slow and deliberate.

No sound followed.

Not because the arena was quiet, but because sound had forgotten how to exist in the space between them.

Caelith stood at the edge of his own control — Rejection bleeding from his skin like steam off molten stone, warping the air around him into something not quite dead, but not alive either. The color around him had dulled. Light bent. The edges of the arena's wreckage frayed like cloth unraveling at the seams.

Ashthorn trembled in his grip.

It wasn't excitement.

It was certainty.

Across from him, Aurex rolled his neck once. A sharp pop. His red eyes never blinked.

"So," he murmured. "The game's changed again."

He didn't charge this time. No step, no feint, no windup.

One blink later, they collided mid-arena — force without warning, power without preparation.

And Caelith didn't move faster.

He moved with intent so pure the world forgot how to resist him.

His feet barely touched the ground. Rejection didn't flare — it whispered. A silent veil, parting just enough to let a body shaped by fury and resolve glide forward. Each motion was a decision already made. There was no hesitation. No buildup.

Only movement.

Ashthorn rose in one hand, not as a weapon — as an extension of what must happen.

Aurex's scimitar came first. A horizontal arc meant to tear through Caelith's shoulder and end the match in a spray of gore. It was fast. Flawless. Perfectly timed.

Until it wasn't.

The moment the blade entered Caelith's aura — it slowed.

No, not slowed.

It disconnected.

The gravitational buff meant to enhance the prince's edge broke apart like mist under heat. The scimitar dipped, wobbling off its intended path, distorted by the invisible perimeter now surrounding Caelith's body.

Aurex's eyes widened—just slightly.

And Caelith ducked beneath it.

His boots caught cracked stone. Pivot. Rise. Torque loaded into his hips. He spun upward like a rising current breaking through the ocean floor.

Aurex read the counter and landed clean on Caelith's head, expecting him to fall.

The prince's lead leg was already rising to perform a kick and give him space.

However, Caelith didn't react. His hand shot forward.

Ashthorn followed.

Not in a blur.

In a gleam.

Silver. Clear. Clean.

The sound wasn't metal.

It was finality.

A flicker of red split the air.

Just one line.

At Aurex's neck.

No pain. No reaction. Just... silence.

Then the blood came.

Not a river. A single drop.

It welled, hung suspended for a heartbeat.

And fell.

The world stopped breathing.

Farren's eyes were wide, mouth half-open. Somewhere in the distance, one of the three-star elites dropped their weapon. A gasp echoed high in the seats. Then another. The chain reaction of disbelief passed like a wave through the crowd.

Prince Aurex Vykrall — the living heir of Igaria. The storm-bearer. The gravity tyrant.

Was bleeding.

Aurex's thoughts spun like stars crashing through the night.

'He did it.

He wounded me.'

It wasn't pain that shocked him.

It was the fact.

He hadn't been struck in a year. Not since the Central Continent. Not since he'd returned.

And yet — here.

This battlefield. This bastard.

This man had made him bleed.

The plan was to tear down the academy and begin preparing for the advent of that. This tournament was just meant to assess the talents of Igaria.

Yet he had found a gem that would bring about change.

Caelith didn't lower Ashthorn. His shoulders trembled — but not from weakness.

From the effort of standing.

His chest heaved. His knuckles ached. One arm hung lower than the other — pulled by bruises, cracked bone, maybe worse.

But his eyes held nothing of defeat.

Only one thing.

Now you know what I am.

Aurex raised a hand.

The proctors surged from the sidelines, threads of spell light already prepared — but the gesture stopped them cold.

"The next time we fight, we'll do it properly," Aurex said.

Not angry.

Not mocking.

Just... resolved.

The crowd erupted. Screams. Chants. A thousand voices crashing like waves against a storm wall.

But in the eye of it all stood two figures.

One bleeding. One breaking.