The word hung in the air long after Silas had gone, a poison that seeped into the very stone of the guild hall.
*Zero.*
It was not a number. It was an annihilation. It was the sound of a door slamming shut on infinity.
For a moment, no one moved. The seekers looked at one another, then at Elara, their faces blank with a confusion that was deeper than misunderstanding. It was a wound to the soul. They had built a world on the principle of boundless, interconnected value. Silas had not just dismissed it; he had declared it a mathematical certainty that it did not exist.
Elara felt the verdict like a physical blow. The Shard at her chest felt cold, its light a feeble, lonely glimmer against a suddenly vast and empty cosmos. The warmth that had always flowed from it, the connection to the city and its people, seemed to thin, to fray at the edges. It was as if Silas's absolute indifference had created a vacuum around the artifact, isolating it.
