The Praetorians fire.
There is no sound. No flash of violet light. No concussive shockwave. There is only a sudden, sickening absence.
The blast hits Silas squarely in the chest.
The massive, bipedal wolf doesn't explode. He doesn't bleed. He simply... stops. His silver fur turns a dull, lifeless gray. The glowing amber of his eyes vanishes, replaced by the flat, dead stare of an ordinary animal. His massive muscles atrophy in a fraction of a second, his bones snapping under the sudden, catastrophic loss of magical density. He collapses onto the freezing metal of the scrubber’s dish, a broken, mundane thing.
Silas! Lyra screams through the pack bond, her voice a jagged shard of pure terror.
The weapons don't kill the body, I project, my mind racing as I analyze the magical vacuum left
