The structural geometry of Saint Aurelius did not collapse; it unraveled like a thread of ungrounded calculations.
Where the twelve-foot white limestone monolith had stood pinned beneath Kaelen's jaws, there was now a violent, expanding vacuum of pure white silver starlight. The gold logic wires that had served as his veins cracked one by one, screaming at a high frequency that caused the surrounding basalt rocks to vibrate until they turned to powder. Then, with a final, heavy mechanical sigh that resonated through the deep foundations of the entire floating plateau, the God-King of the old world systematically dissolved into a harmless, weightless heap of pale grey ash.
The high-pitched, systemic purr that had occupied every cubic millimeter of the northern stratosphere for ninety winters abruptly died. The world simply stopped screaming.
