Erasure spread outwards from the entity in clean, expanding rings.
There was no fire. There was no cataclysm. Where the rings of power touched, existence failed to renew itself. Stone, light, the names of rivers hundreds of years old, all peeled away to reveal something far less substantial that had previously been hidden. In the Underworld, the few free spirits not yet claimed flickered once before vanishing mid-scream. Rivers of the dead ran dry, then turned to dust and, finally, into nothing. On Olympus, great halls dissolved into pale dust which vanished a moment later. Across the mortal world, entire cities blinked out in geometric patterns, streets and lives removed with surgical neatness.
The entity did not have to speak, did not have to raise an arm for the sentence to pass.
