The girl inclined her head.
It was not a bow of submission, nor one of reverence—but a gesture of acknowledgment, measured and restrained, as if she were greeting an equal rather than a superior.
"My name," she said calmly,"is Nyxara Eirene."
The name settled into the void like a harmonic frequency, stabilizing fragments of unreality around her. It was not a true name in the authorial sense, nor a title granted by gods. It was something older—chosen, not assigned.
Leo did not relax.
His eyes narrowed, emerald irises sharpening as suspicion crawled through his posture. His stance shifted slightly, weight redistributing as if preparing for impact that might never come.
"Yahweh," Leo said slowly, voice low, dangerous, "sent you?"
The name carried no reverence when it left his mouth. Only weariness. Contempt shaped by repetition.
For a fraction of a second, Nyxara froze—not in fear, but in offense.
Then she shook her head.
Fast. Firm. Decisive.
"No," she replied immediately. "I do not serve the God of Gods."
The way she said it—God of Gods—was not worshipful. It was clinical. Distant. Almost dismissive.
"I do not work for Yahweh," she continued. "I have never bent to him. And I never will."
Leo studied her face for microexpressions, searching for narrative inconsistencies, authorial echoes, divine tells. He found none.
"…Then what are you?" he asked.
Nyxara exhaled softly.
"I come from a cosmology known as Aethryx Null-Veil," she said.
At the name, the void reacted.
Not violently—but uneasily.
Aethryx Null-Veil was not a hierarchical cosmology. It was a discard-zone—a place where failed gods, incomplete absolutes, and rejected creation laws were sealed away and forced to stabilize themselves or collapse entirely.
A cosmology built not by intention—but by survival.
Nyxara continued, eyes steady.
"And you," she said, "are from the cosmology governed by The Almighty Goddes."
Leo's expression flickered.
He nodded once.
"…Yeah."
The confirmation changed something between them.
Nyxara's shoulders relaxed—just slightly. As if a long-held hypothesis had finally been proven.
"Then you understand why I'm here," she said.
Leo frowned.
"No," he replied. "That's exactly what I don't understand."
Why would an entity from a discarded cosmology seek him?
Nyxara's gaze drifted—not away from Leo, but through him, as if recalling something etched into trauma rather than memory.
"I've tried to reach you before," she said quietly.
Leo stiffened.
"…When."
"During your battle against Azgoth."
The name hit like a buried landmine.
Leo remembered.
Azgoth—an entity that had no true form, only output. A creature that weaponized Afterlight, pushing illumination beyond divine tolerances. The battlefield had not been a world, but a collapsing pantheon-space layered with demons, sub-gods, and half-written authorities.
Nyxara continued, voice lowering.
"You were fighting him when the Afterlight peaked."
The scene unfolded around them—not as an illusion, but as a contextual echo.
White.
Not pure white—but overwritten white. Light so intense it devoured contrast, depth, and perception. Afterlight poured outward in sheets, fracturing visual reality itself.
Demons screamed—not in pain, but in sensory collapse.
Gods clutched their eyes as perception failed. Divine sight burned out. Conceptual vision—gone. Even beings immune to blindness were reduced to disoriented shells, their awareness stripped of reference points.
Nyxara appeared there—flickering at the edge of the catastrophe.
"I was almost blinded," she admitted. "Not physically. Ontologically."
Her hands lifted.
Green light erupted around her—not chaotic, not violent.
Telekinesis.
But not the crude kind.
This was Emerald Telekinesis—precision-based, spectrum-controlled force manipulation that wrapped around photons themselves.
The green glow clashed against the white Afterlight, not canceling it—but bending it, folding lethal luminance away from vulnerable perception layers.
The contrast was staggering.
White screaming outward.Green holding it back.
Nyxara gritted her teeth, emerald eyes blazing as she compressed the Afterlight field, redirecting it upward, sideways, anywhere it wouldn't annihilate cognition itself.
"I countered it," she said, voice steady despite the memory. "Barely."
Around her, demons lay blind. Gods collapsed, screaming or silent. Entire choirs of entities lost sight—not temporarily, but permanently.
Nyxara moved among them.
Her hands glowed again—this time soft, restorative.
Healing.
Not regeneration of flesh—but restoration of perceptual frameworks. She rewove vision, rebuilt divine sight matrices, repaired sensory axioms that had been burned away.
It was godlike.
Not because it was miraculous—but because it was precise.
"I healed as many as I could," she said. "Before Azgoth fell."
The echo faded.
Silence returned.
Leo stared at her.
"…And that's why you couldn't reach me?" he asked.
Nyxara nodded.
"You were fighting something too catastrophic. Anything that got close to you would have been erased—or worse, rewritten."
Leo exhaled through his nose.
"…Figures."
Nyxara's expression hardened.
"But now," she continued, "my cosmology is next."
Leo's eyes sharpened.
"Aethryx Null-Veil," he repeated. "What about it."
"It's being marked for disposal," she said.
The word disposal carried weight.
Not destruction.Not conquest.
Deletion.
"Gods inside my cosmology are panicking," Nyxara said. "They're turning on each other. Reinforcing hierarchies. Sacrificing layers. Trying to prove relevance."
Her fists clenched.
"But it won't work."
Leo already knew the answer before she finished.
"They're going to throw it away," he said.
Nyxara nodded once.
"And the god responsible," she said quietly, "cannot be reasoned with."
She looked at Leo directly.
"That is why I came to you."
The void seemed to hold its breath.
"I need your help," Nyxara said. "To destroy the god threatening my cosmology."
Leo did not answer immediately.
He looked away—not into the void, but inward. Calculating not power, not odds—but cost.
Finally, he closed his eyes.
A long pause.
Then—
He nodded.
"Alright," Leo said.
Nyxara's shoulders loosened, relief flashing across her features before she could suppress it.
The void shifted.
The path forward—dark, inevitable—began to form.