The silence that followed Kharzoth's dissipation was not merely an absence of sound, but a kind of charged void, as if the world itself were still trying to readjust after being forced to endure something that didn't entirely belong to it, while the residual heat of the white flames still slightly distorted the air above the devastated crater.
Strax remained motionless for a few seconds, his eyes still fixed on the exact spot where the demon had ceased to exist, as if confirming, not out of necessity, but out of habit, that it was truly over, that no fragment remained capable of recomposing itself or escaping to some lower plane.
Then he exhaled.
A long, heavy sigh, not of physical exhaustion, but of something more subtle, like someone who had just dealt with a particularly persistent and, at the same time, slightly irritating inconvenience.
The energy around him began to recede.
