The Nothingness was never truly silent.
It only pretended to be.
Aegriya stood at its center, her luminous form steady, composed, every line of her presence drawn into disciplined symmetry. Layers of faint, translucent glyphs hovered just beneath her surface, rotating slowly, each one a dormant seal waiting for a threat that had not yet arrived. To any lesser being, she would have looked serene.
But she was not at ease.
A ripple moved through the void.
Not a wave. Not a distortion.
A hesitation.
Aegriya's eyes narrowed slightly. Her senses—older than time, sharper than causality—brushed against something that did not belong. The Nothingness did not shift without reason. It did not flinch.
Yet something had just flinched.
She inhaled, a slow, measured draw of essence, and the glyphs around her brightened by a fraction.
"Thanamira," she said calmly, her voice carrying without sound. "You're closer than you were a moment ago."
For a heartbeat, there was nothing.
Then a shape bled into existence a short distance away—smoke congealing into a woman-shaped silhouette, edges flickering like dying embers. Thanamira's form was half-there, half-not, her body composed of drifting shadow, pale spectral light pulsing where a heart might have been.
She smiled.
It was not a warm expression.
"Am I?" Thanamira replied, her voice soft, layered, echoing from places that did not exist. "Or are your senses… tightening?"
Aegriya did not move, but a thin ring of protective light slid outward from her form and dissolved into the void like a sonar pulse.
"You vanished without transition," Aegriya said. "That isn't your usual behavior."
Thanamira tilted her head, the motion slightly delayed from the rest of her form, like a ghost desyncing from itself.
"Observation noted," she murmured. "But you always were… meticulous. Paranoid, some might say."
The word paranoid lingered unnaturally long, vibrating faintly in the Nothingness.
Aegriya felt it then.
A hairline fracture in her perception.
Not a thought. Not a sensation.
A suggestion.
She suppressed it instantly, but the fact that it had appeared at all made her eyes harden.
"You're unstable," Aegriya said. "Your essence pattern is stuttering."
Thanamira's smile widened.
"Funny," she whispered. "I was just thinking the same about you."
Another ripple passed between them. This one carried pressure.
Aegriya's glyphs rotated faster, responding to a threat that had not yet formed.
"You've been phasing in and out of coherence for several cycles," Aegriya continued. "You're drawing too close to the Crack. You know what it does to Primordial alignment."
"Do I?" Thanamira replied lightly. "Or is that just what you tell yourself to justify tightening your grip on everyone else?"
That again.
A subtle emotional spike.
Aegriya frowned. "You think I'm trying to control you?"
Thanamira drifted closer, her form stretching, thinning, reforming as if the void itself were struggling to keep her contained.
"I think," she said softly, "that you've been watching me far too closely."
Aegriya's protective field pulsed once.
"I watch everyone," she said. "That is my function."
"Is it?" Thanamira's voice dipped, almost intimate. "Or is it obsession disguised as duty?"
The Nothingness darkened by a shade that should not have been possible.
Aegriya felt something inside her tighten.
"You're not speaking like yourself," she said. "Your thought cadence is off by—"
"—three percent?" Thanamira cut in sharply.
For the first time, her smile faltered.
Then snapped back into place, wider than before.
"You really are tracking me that closely."
That was wrong.
Aegriya's mind ran a diagnostic sweep of her own essence seals. All active. All stable. No external intrusion detected.
And yet—
A faint whisper brushed the edges of her consciousness:
She knows too much. She's hiding something.
Aegriya clenched her fist.
"No," she said firmly, more to herself than to Thanamira.
Thanamira drifted in a slow circle around her, leaving faint afterimages that dissolved seconds later.
"You feel it too, don't you?" Thanamira murmured. "That pressure. That itch under your seals. Like something inside you is… leaning forward."
Aegriya pivoted to face her, eyes glowing brighter.
"Stop this," she commanded. "Your essence is agitated. You're destabilizing the local field."
"Am I?" Thanamira asked again, but this time her tone sharpened. "Or are you projecting?"
The air—if it could be called that—between them thickened.
"You've been reinforcing your barriers more frequently," Thanamira continued. "Stacking predictive glyphs. Preemptive containment layers. Internal fail-safes."
Aegriya stiffened.
"That information is classified."
Thanamira's eyes gleamed.
"Is it?" she whispered. "Because I can feel them. All those beautiful little cages you build. Always preparing for betrayal."
Aegriya's voice dropped.
"You're overstepping."
"So are you," Thanamira snapped suddenly, her form glitching violently for half a second. "You think I don't notice the way you look at me lately? Like I'm already an enemy."
Aegriya hesitated.
That hesitation felt… wrong.
"I'm concerned about you," she said carefully.
Thanamira laughed.
It sounded hollow.
"Concern," she echoed. "That's what you call it now."
Her laughter faded into something colder.
"You're afraid of me."
"I am not," Aegriya said immediately.
But the Nothingness did not believe her.
Neither, it seemed, did Thanamira.
"You are," Thanamira said quietly. "I can taste it in your seals. You've already decided I'm a risk."
Aegriya's glyphs flared brighter without her consciously commanding them to.
That, too, was wrong.
"You're letting the Crack influence you," Aegriya insisted. "Step back. Stabilize your essence. We can—"
"—No," Thanamira cut in.
The word hit like a blade.
"I'm done stepping back."
The void pulsed.
Not with force.
With intent.
"Every time something goes wrong," Thanamira continued, her voice trembling now, "you tighten your walls. You build more cages. You decide who needs watching. Who needs containing."
Aegriya felt her own temper flare.
"And every time something threatens existence," she shot back, "you disappear into instability and call it freedom."
Thanamira's form rippled violently.
"So that's what you think of me now."
"That's not what I said."
"It's what you meant."
A third whisper crawled through Aegriya's mind:
She's already lost. You're just waiting for proof.
Her jaw tightened.
"Something is manipulating both of us," Aegriya said. "We need to disengage and report to Artemis."
Thanamira went very still.
"…Artemis."
The name echoed unnaturally long.
"Of course," Thanamira said softly. "Run to her. Let her tell you what to think."
"That is not what—"
"You always defer to her," Thanamira snapped. "You always trust her judgment over your own."
The void shuddered faintly.
"You think she doesn't see you as a tool?" Thanamira continued, voice rising. "A living wall to throw in front of problems she doesn't want to deal with?"
Aegriya's glyphs flared violently.
"That's enough."
Thanamira's eyes burned.
"You're already preparing to seal me, aren't you?" she whispered. "Just in case."
Aegriya froze.
That single heartbeat of silence was all the curse needed.
Thanamira's form twitched.
Not into an attack.
Not yet.
But her essence sharpened, condensing, her spectral claws faintly visible through the smoke of her form.
Aegriya's protective aura thickened instinctively.
They stood like that.
Two Primordials.
No blows thrown.
No essence discharged.
But the space between them felt tighter than any battlefield.
The curse had done its work.
And both of them, deep down, knew it.
The silence didn't return after their standoff.
It rotted.
Aegriya's glyphs remained flared, rotating faster than necessary, burning brighter than threat assessment justified. Thanamira's form twitched in micro-flickers, her silhouette phasing in and out of coherence like a dying signal. Neither of them moved closer.
Neither of them stepped back.
"You hesitated," Thanamira said quietly.
Aegriya's jaw tightened. "I was assessing."
"No," Thanamira replied. "You were deciding."
"That's not—"
"You were deciding whether I was already too far gone to be worth saving."
The words hit deeper than they should have.
Aegriya's defensive field thickened another layer without her consciously meaning it to.
"I was deciding how to stabilize the situation," she said firmly. "Which includes you."
Thanamira laughed again, but this time it cracked midway through, dissolving into something bitter and sharp.
"Listen to yourself," she hissed. "You don't even hear how cold you sound anymore."
"You're projecting."
"No. I'm remembering."
Aegriya frowned. "Remembering what?"
Thanamira's form surged, stretching taller, her shadow bleeding outward like ink in water.
"Every time someone spiraled," she said, voice rising. "Every time one of us wavered. You always stood there with that same look—calculating, measuring, deciding who was still 'safe' enough to be allowed their freedom."
"That's my role," Aegriya shot back. "Someone has to think about consequences."
"And someone always has to be the jailer?" Thanamira snarled. "Funny how that someone is always you."
The Nothingness rippled hard enough to distort distance.
"You think I enjoy this?" Aegriya snapped. "You think I want to be the one who has to put up walls when the rest of you tear reality apart?"
"Yes," Thanamira said instantly. "I do."
Aegriya stared at her.
"You like it," Thanamira continued, voice shaking now. "You like being the one who gets to decide who's dangerous. Who gets contained. Who gets labeled a threat."
"That's a lie."
"Is it?" Thanamira barked. "Then why do you look relieved every time someone finally gives you a reason?"
That whisper returned to Aegriya's mind:
She's accusing you because she's guilty.
Aegriya clenched her fists.
"You are not thinking clearly," she said. "Your essence is destabilizing. You're letting the Crack and Arae's curse—"
"Oh don't you dare," Thanamira interrupted, her voice spiking into a shriek. "Don't hide behind that excuse."
She drifted forward a step.
Then another.
Aegriya's glyphs flared brighter, projecting a thin warning ring between them.
"Stay back."
Thanamira stopped just outside the ring.
Her eyes burned with spectral light.
"So now you're already drawing lines," she whispered. "Already treating me like an active threat."
"You're escalating."
"No," Thanamira hissed. "I'm finally being honest."
The void pulsed again, heavier this time.
"You've never trusted me," Thanamira said. "Not really. Not since the Rift Epoch. You smiled. You nodded. You said you understood. But inside your perfect little seal-layered soul, you were already preparing contingencies for when I 'inevitably' lost control."
"That is not true."
"You built internal containment arrays specifically calibrated to spirit-phase entities," Thanamira snapped. "Don't lie to me. I felt them."
Aegriya stiffened.
"That was a universal safeguard."
"Bullshit."
The word ripped through the Nothingness like a tear.
"You built them because of me," Thanamira said. "You just didn't have the courage to admit it."
Aegriya's temper finally cracked.
"I built them because someone has to plan for worst-case scenarios!" she shouted. "Because you—of all of us—operate on instability, on intangibility, on rules that barely hold you in one piece!"
Thanamira recoiled like she'd been struck.
"…So that's how you see me."
"That's not what I meant."
"That's exactly what you meant."
The curse surged.
A wave of intrusive thought slammed into both of them at once:
She will betray you.
She always was a liability.
You should strike first.
Aegriya staggered half a step, shaking her head.
"No," she whispered. "This isn't me."
Thanamira wasn't so lucky.
Her form convulsed violently, her spectral claws extending fully now, smoke pouring off her hands in thick coils.
"You've always thought I was broken," she growled. "That I was something you needed to fix or contain."
"That's not—"
"Say it," Thanamira demanded. "Say you don't see me as a ticking disaster."
Aegriya opened her mouth.
Hesitated.
That was all it took.
Thanamira screamed.
Not in rage.
In heartbreak twisted into fury.
"I KNEW IT."
She surged forward—
Not to strike.
To test.
Her hand phased halfway through the warning ring, brushing the edge of Aegriya's barrier.
The seal flared violently.
Pain ripped through Thanamira's arm as black smoke curled off her burning essence.
She hissed, jerking her hand back.
Aegriya gasped. "Don't do that! I didn't raise it to hurt you!"
"You raised it because you were already expecting me to attack."
"That's not fair!"
"Nothing about this is fair!" Thanamira screamed. "You never gave me a chance to just be without being monitored like a bomb with a countdown!"
The curse pressed harder.
Aegriya's mind filled with another whisper:
She just proved she's dangerous. You were right.
Her glyphs expanded outward another layer.
Thanamira saw it.
And something inside her snapped completely.
"You've already decided," she whispered, voice going eerily calm. "Haven't you?"
Aegriya shook her head.
But she didn't lower the barrier.
Thanamira's form darkened, condensing, becoming sharper, more defined, her claws fully solidifying.
"You don't get to cage me," she said softly. "Not again. Not ever."
Aegriya's voice trembled. "Thanamira, stop. You're letting it control you."
"Then maybe I'll let it control everything."
The Nothingness screamed.
Thanamira vanished.
Not phased.
Not drifted.
Erased.
Aegriya's instincts detonated.
Every seal flared to maximum output.
"THANAMIRA—"
A hand erupted out of the void behind her.
Straight for her throat.
The first blow of the war had begun.
Thanamira's hand missed Aegriya's throat by a fraction of conceptual distance.
Aegriya twisted mid-instinct, her barrier collapsing inward into a condensed shell that snapped shut around her form. Thanamira's claws raked across it instead, tearing long black scars through the luminous seal.
The impact detonated outward.
The Nothingness buckled like stretched fabric, rippling into warped concentric rings.
Aegriya was hurled backward, spinning through the void, glyphs scattering like shattered glass around her.
Thanamira didn't pursue.
She teleported.
Not phased. Not moved.
She simply ceased to exist in one location and manifested directly above Aegriya, both hands forming a spectral guillotine.
The strike came down.
Aegriya slammed her palms together.
A circular sigil erupted between them.
The blow hit the sigil head-on.
A thunderless shockwave exploded outward, compressing the void into a screaming vacuum funnel. Thanamira was flung upward; Aegriya was driven downward. Both tumbled in opposite directions, stabilizing only by force of will.
Neither paused.
Thanamira snapped her arms outward.
The void around Aegriya fractured into a lattice of shadow-veins as dozens of spectral claws erupted from empty space, lunging for her limbs, her neck, her core.
Aegriya spun.
Her barrier unfolded into a rotating halo of sigils, each glyph igniting into a razor-edged defensive seal. The claws struck and disintegrated on contact, bursting into black vapor that immediately re-coalesced into new hands.
Thanamira blurred into motion, darting through her own swarm.
She punched through one of Aegriya's seals from the inside.
The barrier imploded.
Aegriya gasped as the backlash ripped through her essence, bloodless fractures racing across her form.
Thanamira drove her knee into Aegriya's ribs.
The impact bent Aegriya's torso at an unnatural angle.
She coughed — a spray of luminous essence bursting from her mouth.
But she held.
Aegriya grabbed Thanamira's leg mid-strike.
Sigils flared up her arm like burning chains.
Thanamira snarled as the seals latched onto her limb, burning deep into her spectral flesh.
She tore free by dissolving her entire leg into vapor.
Aegriya staggered as the limb in her grasp evaporated into nothing.
Thanamira reformed instantly, her leg snapping back into existence as if time itself had rewound.
She lashed out again.
This time, her claws bypassed physical space entirely.
They pierced straight into Aegriya's defensive logic.
Glyphs detonated.
Three layers of Aegriya's internal seals ruptured simultaneously.
She screamed as her perception fractured, her predictive arrays short-circuiting.
Thanamira capitalized.
She slammed both hands into Aegriya's chest.
Not to strike.
To invade.
Aegriya roared and detonated a point-blank containment pulse.
The blast obliterated the space between them, ripping both of them apart into scattering fragments of essence.
They reconstituted mid-air.
Both visibly damaged now.
Both breathing harder.
Thanamira's shoulders twitched erratically, her form flickering as if struggling to hold cohesion.
Aegriya's sigils were misaligned, rotating out of sync, bleeding unstable light.
Neither retreated.
Thanamira split into five overlapping versions of herself.
Each one attacked from a different temporal angle.
Aegriya countered by splitting her seal-net into a five-dimensional lattice, projecting defensive fields into past and future frames simultaneously.
All five Thanamiras struck.
All five were blocked.
The collision detonated a spiraling vortex of black and gold energy that shredded the Nothingness into torn ribbons.
Thanamira screamed and drove straight through it.
She tackled Aegriya at full spectral velocity.
They slammed into each other, grappling mid-void, rolling in a blur of claws and glyphs, strikes and counters.
Thanamira bit into Aegriya's shoulder.
Not flesh.
Conceptual anchor-points.
Aegriya shrieked as entire defensive subsystems went dark.
She retaliated by branding a containment sigil directly onto Thanamira's face.
The seal burned into her essence like molten iron.
Thanamira howled and headbutted Aegriya.
The impact fractured both their skull-structures simultaneously.
They tore apart again.
Thanamira hurled a compressed soul-lance.
Aegriya intercepted it with a folding barrier that inverted the projectile mid-flight and hurled it back.
Thanamira caught it with her bare hand.
It detonated in her palm.
Her entire arm disintegrated to the shoulder.
She didn't slow down.
She reformed the arm mid-charge and drove it straight into Aegriya's abdomen.
Aegriya doubled over.
Thanamira followed with a rising uppercut that sent Aegriya spinning.
Aegriya recovered mid-rotation and unleashed a storm of preemptive seals.
Each one detonated milliseconds before Thanamira arrived.
Thanamira ran through them anyway.
Each explosion tore chunks off her body.
Each step reassembled her.
She reached Aegriya and grabbed her by the face.
The void around them collapsed inward.
Thanamira screamed and unleashed a point-blank soul rupture.
Aegriya countered by collapsing every remaining seal into a single omnidirectional discharge.
The explosion annihilated everything between them.
Silence fell.
Then both Primordials reappeared at opposite ends of the rupture zone.
Both were visibly worse.
Thanamira's body was unstable, flickering violently, chunks of her essence failing to fully reform.
Aegriya's barrier systems were reduced to fragmented halos, barely holding shape, bloodlike light dripping from her mouth.
They stared at each other across the torn Nothingness.
Neither had gained ground.
Neither had yielded.
The curse pulsed again.
And both of them surged forward at the same time.
The curse pulsed again.
Thanamira's flickering form stabilized—not into clarity, but into something denser, heavier, wronger. The shadows around her began to curve, as if the Nothingness itself were being dragged inward toward her presence.
Aegriya felt it before she saw it.
Her remaining sigils jittered, their predictive threads scrambling.
"…That pressure," Aegriya muttered, tightening her stance. "You're distorting the void itself now."
Thanamira tilted her head, a crooked, hollow smile tearing across her face.
"Good," she whispered. "Then you finally understand what I'm becoming."
She raised one hand.
The void collapsed.
A sphere of absolute darkness formed above her palm—no light, no essence, no conceptual leakage. It wasn't absence.
It was hunger.
Aegriya's eyes widened.
"…A spirit singularity?"
Thanamira closed her fingers slightly.
The black sphere deepened, space curving around it into a spiraling funnel.
"I'm done clawing at your walls," Thanamira hissed.
"I'll pull you apart instead."
She hurled it.
The black hole screamed forward.
Aegriya snapped both arms outward.
A full barrier cathedral exploded into place—layer upon layer of golden seals interlocking into a hemispherical fortress.
The singularity struck it.
The impact didn't explode.
It ate.
The outer layers of the barrier vanished instantly, devoured into the gravity well like dust into a drain.
Aegriya screamed and reinforced the seal, dumping raw essence into the structure.
"No—no—no—HOLD—!"
The black hole bored through seven layers in under a second.
Aegriya dove sideways as the remaining mass tore through her defenses and carved a swirling wound through the Nothingness behind her.
She hit the void hard, skidding backward, glyphs scattering like broken wings.
Thanamira was already moving.
She lifted both hands.
Two more singularities formed.
Then four.
Then eight.
Each one smaller, faster, orbiting her like a halo of death.
"You protect everything but yourself," Thanamira taunted softly.
"That's why you're losing."
She flicked her wrists.
The swarm launched.
Aegriya threw up a rotating lattice-shield and spun it like a turbine.
The first singularity hit and detonated into a crushing gravity bloom.
The second punched straight through the lattice and clipped Aegriya's thigh.
Her leg folded.
She screamed as her knee dislocated backward, her protective field warping from pain feedback.
The third slammed into her back.
Her spine arched violently.
Essence burst from her mouth in a luminous spray.
She tried to stand.
Thanamira didn't let her.
She teleported directly in front of Aegriya and slammed a palm into her chest.
A localized gravity well detonated inside Aegriya's ribcage.
Bones imploded.
Organs compacted.
Aegriya vomited light and dropped to one knee.
"Stay—down—!" she gasped, forcing seals into place to hold her torso together.
Thanamira leaned close, her face inches away.
"I told you," she whispered.
"Walls crack."
She opened her mouth.
And screamed.
The scream wasn't sound.
It was a soul-collapse wave.
Aegriya's inner seals shattered in sequence.
Her containment grid failed.
Her predictive algorithms went blind.
She clutched her head and screamed as her consciousness destabilized.
Thanamira rose into the air.
She spread her arms.
The void around her began to rotate.
Dozens of micro-singularities bloomed into existence, spiraling into a massive gravitational storm.
"Look at you," Thanamira said, her voice echoing from every direction.
"Still trying to protect a reality that already hates you."
The storm surged.
Aegriya tried to raise a full dome.
The gravity ripped it apart mid-formation.
She was lifted off the void, her body stretched unnaturally as opposing gravity wells pulled her limbs in different directions.
Her shoulder dislocated.
Her left arm tore partially out of its socket.
She screamed in raw agony.
"ENOUGH—!" Aegriya roared, detonating a desperate omnibarrier pulse.
The blast wiped out half the singularities.
Thanamira staggered back, hissing as chunks of her essence shredded away.
But she laughed.
A broken, euphoric sound.
"Yes… yes, that's it," she breathed.
"Fight harder. It makes the collapse sweeter."
She clenched her fists.
The remaining singularities merged.
A massive black hole formed above her.
It warped the Nothingness into a spiraling disk.
Aegriya's feet lifted off the ground.
Her remaining barriers screamed under the strain.
"…You're insane," Aegriya rasped.
Thanamira's eyes burned hollow-white.
"We all are now."
She slammed both hands downward.
The super-singularity dropped.
Aegriya screamed and poured every last reserve into a full-spectrum defensive seal.
The impact was catastrophic.
The barrier shattered like glass.
The black hole slammed into Aegriya's chest.
Her ribcage collapsed inward.
Her spine bent into a grotesque arc.
Her organs compacted into a dense core.
She vomited a torrent of luminous blood and was hurled backward like a broken doll, tumbling endlessly through the void.
She finally crashed into nothingness and didn't get up.
Thanamira descended slowly, her form towering above the fallen Primordial.
"You always thought defense was strength," she said quietly.
"It's not."
She raised one trembling hand.
Another singularity formed.
Aegriya weakly lifted her head.
"…You win," she whispered.
"But you'll never break me."
Thanamira smiled.
"We'll see."
The black hole swelled.
The curse pulsed again.
And Thanamira brought it down.
The void had fallen silent.
Thanamira hovered above the crumpled form of Aegriya, her black-hole storm flickering in anticipation. She expected defeat. She expected compliance.
She didn't expect this.
Aegriya's body trembled violently. The golden seals around her shattered under her own internal pressure. Her chest heaved, not with panic, but with something deep, feral, primordial. A growl, low and guttural, rolled from her throat. The sound didn't belong to her. It belonged to something ancient, something buried.
The air of the Nothingness itself vibrated as her bones creaked, reshaped. She arched her back, and from her spine, a skeletal tail lashed out like a whip of living bone, each vertebra snapping into existence with a sharp click that echoed across the void. The golden blood she had spilled began to retract, flowing upward along her bones, knitting shattered limbs back together, reforming muscles, organs, even joints that had been crushed, dislocated, or compacted by Thanamira's assault.
Her eyes snapped open — not calm anymore, not serene. Wild. Predatory.
Thanamira faltered slightly.
"You… what is this?" she hissed, though the question carried more dread than curiosity.
Aegriya rose to her feet, but she didn't just stand. Her bones began to protrude through her skin, not grotesquely, but purposefully — rib-like spires jutted outward, forming jagged cages around her chest and shoulders. Each movement flexed the bone like a weapon, like living armor designed to kill. Her tail whipped behind her with precision, each vertebra a sharpened spike.
Her aura had shifted. The calm, calculated light of protection had been replaced with something primordial, raw, and unapologetic. Aegriya's shields weren't just magical or conceptual anymore. They were extensions of her body — bone, sinew, essence, erupting into spiked fortresses that twisted outward in jagged layers, a skeletal lattice that glimmered with protective energy.
"…Impossible," Thanamira whispered. Her confidence wavered for the first time.
Aegriya growled again. The sound wasn't a threat; it was an announcement. She flexed, and the barrier protrusions slashed outward, tiny bone spikes shooting toward Thanamira, tearing at the edges of her black-hole singularities. The void distorted wherever Aegriya's new form interacted with it, bending reality as if the laws of existence themselves were obeying her feral will.
Her tail lashed again, spinning through space with terrifying speed, colliding with the gravitational pull of one of Thanamira's black holes and distorting its orbit. Singularities that had been stable for seconds wobbled, their collapse accelerating as Aegriya's primal force pushed against them.
She didn't speak. She didn't strategize. She responded. Reflexively, instinctively, as though the core of something trapped inside her had awakened and claimed command.
Her skeletal claws scraped the void itself, carving rifts that snapped the edges of black-hole horizons. Thanamira faltered, stumbling back as the bone barrier around Aegriya expanded and grew — each spike a weapon, each protrusion a defensive matrix. The very concept of protection had evolved into something that should not exist: living, moving, predatory.
Aegriya's tail whipped one last time, catching Thanamira mid-teleport. The impact sent a ripple through the Nothingness, tearing space and scattering remnants of the singularities.
For the first time, Thanamira felt fear. Not for her life — but for what Aegriya had become.
"…What… are you?" she whispered, eyes wide.
Aegriya tilted her head, skeletal jaw clicking softly. The feral aura around her pulsed like a heartbeat, raw, ancient, and unstoppable.
And yet… beneath it all, something remained hidden. A seal. Something more terrifying than what had just awakened, waiting deeper inside, biding its time.
She didn't reveal it. Not yet. Not until it was needed.
All Thanamira could do was stare, realizing she had misjudged the Primordial of Protection entirely.
Aegriya's feral form wasn't just survival. It was a promise. And the battle was far from over.
The void shivered under her presence.
Aegriya's skeletal tail whipped through the nothingness like a living whip, slicing rifts into Thanamira's black holes, tearing fragments of gravity into the void. Bone spikes sprouted and contracted along her arms, forming jagged cages that both protected and struck, each movement a dance of feral precision. Her claws, elongated and serrated, raked through singularities, forcing them to collapse prematurely.
Thanamira recoiled, staggering for the first time. "Impossible…" she hissed, her voice trembling, a whisper of dread carrying across the void. "How… how are you—?"
Aegriya didn't answer. She growled, a deep, resonant sound vibrating through her chest and tail. Every movement was predation incarnate: she didn't calculate; she hunted.
With a sudden burst, she lunged, skeletal tail arcing like a pendulum, catching one of Thanamira's black holes mid-formation and shattering its core. Droplets of compressed void essence scattered like shards of glass. Thanamira screamed, phasing herself into ten dispersed forms to evade the barrage, but Aegriya's claws struck with impossible precision, rending three of them before they could coalesce again.
Her tail lashed again, this time striking the edge of another singularity. The black hole twisted violently, its gravity imploding in on itself, leaving only residual dark energy floating in fractured spirals. Thanamira's eyes widened; her control was slipping.
Aegriya's body shifted in a blur — skeletal armor clanking, bones snapping into new positions, tail cracking in arcs of lethal force. Her golden protective aura had merged seamlessly with her feral bone spikes, forming a moving fortress, unstoppable and untouchable.
"You… you cannot—" Thanamira screamed, trying to summon more black holes, but her attacks became desperate, wild, chaotic. Aegriya moved like a predator sensing fear: fluid, precise, inhuman. Every swipe, every strike disrupted Thanamira's focus, forcing her to retreat.
Her tail struck again, sending Thanamira tumbling through a fragmented black hole, which collapsed behind her in a silent implosion. The void quivered, reality itself destabilizing under the pressure of their clashing powers.
"Enough," Aegriya growled, baring her serrated skeletal teeth in a silent snarl. She crouched slightly, tail coiled like a spring, claws extended, muscles tense. The beast inside her had fully awoken — controlled, refined, lethal.
Thanamira blinked, circling back, black holes forming erratically around her like jagged storm clouds. Her breaths came in harsh bursts. "You… you may have survived, but this is far from over," she hissed. "I can still—"
Aegriya's roar interrupted her. The sound echoed through the void like bone against stone. Her body glowed faintly with the essence of protection fused with primal rage. Every vertebra of her tail, every spike of her skeletal armor, every clawed finger was taut, ready.
She leapt, spinning through the void with a predator's grace, forcing Thanamira to retreat, black holes unraveling as she dodged. With each swing of her tail, she pushed her foe farther back, tearing apart the edges of the void with every motion.
Blood essence, shattered void, and fragments of collapsed singularities littered the nothingness. Both Primordials now moved with warped perception — time stretching and contracting as their attacks collided and missed, the void itself bending under their power.
After a final crushing strike of tail and claws, Aegriya forced Thanamira to a stop. The Primordial of Spirits floated back, wary, gathering her remaining singularities, clearly preparing for something desperate. Aegriya, chest heaving, skeletal tail coiled and ready, claws extended and bone spikes bristling, backed up slightly as well.
Both stood in the void, circling each other slowly, injuries and exhaustion clear but their aura radiating unstoppable power. The air — or what passed for air here — seemed to hum.
Aegriya's eyes narrowed, golden light flickering along bone spikes. "You won't get past me again," she growled.
Thanamira hissed, forming smaller black holes as she mirrored Aegriya's movements. "And yet… this is only the beginning," she spat.
For a moment, the void was still. The clash had ended — but both were merely stepping back to prepare their ultimate strikes.
The silence spoke volumes. Energy crackled. Bones bristled. Gravity twisted. This was not just a battle of power. It was the prelude to annihilation.
And the final strike… the one that would decide the outcome of this Primordial duel, hung in the tension of the void like a predator's fangs, waiting to bite.
The void itself seemed to hold its breath.
Aegriya and Thanamira circled each other, wounded and bristling, the shattered remnants of black holes and bone fragments floating between them like the aftermath of a storm. Every pulse of energy, every twitch of skeletal tail, every ripple of water from her opponent reminded them both: this was the culmination.
Thanamira hissed, voice dripping with malice. "You cannot hide behind walls forever. I will enter… and unravel you from within."
Aegriya's golden eyes narrowed, the feral beast inside her stirring. Her claws flexed, tail coiling tightly. "I've been expecting you to try that," she growled, voice low and primal.
Without warning, Thanamira lunged, not physically, but mentally. Her essence tore toward Aegriya's mind, ethereal, intangible, a blade of pure intent slicing through the void between them. Her fingers of shadow stretched into Aegriya's consciousness, seeking to claim it.
Aegriya's mind flared. Inside, her inner sanctum — a labyrinth of bone, light, and protective wards — glowed fiercely. She had anticipated this. Every projection of herself, every skeletal spike and internal barrier, had been prepared for this exact intrusion.
Thanamira laughed, a soundless echo that warped the void. "So clever… but cleverness will not save you from being unmade!"
The shadows breached the first layer of Aegriya's mind. For a heartbeat, she felt a flicker of pressure, a push from an outside consciousness trying to dominate her. But the trap activated: the moment Thanamira crossed the threshold, one-way seals ignited, flowing like rivers of golden bone through the inner sanctum.
"No exit," Aegriya whispered, her voice low, resonant, primal.
Thanamira realized too late. The moment her consciousness touched Aegriya's core, the trap slammed shut. Impossible barriers of light and bone wove around her essence, fracturing her hold and anchoring her in place. She struggled, twisted, attempted to split into multiple shadows, but every path was blocked. Every exit vanished.
Aegriya's mind remained calm, a storm of precision and feral instinct fused together. Thanamira's essence battered the seals, shredding fragments of her spectral hands, yet each strike only reinforced the trap. Her claws struck bone and light; her voice screamed through the void, yet the internal labyrinth could not be breached.
Outside, Aegriya staggered, bleeding essence along the tips of her claws, from her tail, from the protruding bone spikes. Each strike, each moment of containment, cost her, but she did not falter. Her body — now a feral fusion of beast and Primordial precision — tensed and roared, glowing with the last reserves of her domain.
Thanamira's screams echoed, twisting the void in tortured spirals, black holes forming and collapsing around her trapped self. Every attempt to escape was met with instantaneous lockdown. The Primordial of Spirits, once so fluid and terrifying, was now a prisoner of the very entity she had sought to destroy.
Aegriya's voice, steady and almost serene despite the feral chaos around her, whispered across the void:
> "There is nowhere to run. No part of you will escape. You are contained — not destroyed, but nullified."
The void itself seemed to hum at the finality of her words. Thanamira thrashed in impossible angles, trying to manipulate her bonds, trying to merge with fragments of the void. Every effort failed. The trap worked flawlessly.
Slowly, agonizingly, Aegriya's body bled essence — strands of protective energy dripping into the nothingness, her tail snapping against the void in exhaustion, skeletal spikes dulling slightly as the cost of victory weighed down on her. Her golden light dimmed along the edges, flickering. She had won… but not without paying a price.
Thanamira, trapped inside, could scream endlessly, her essence screaming and twisting in the labyrinth. She was alive, aware, and infinitely trapped. Sealed within the mind of her enemy.
Aegriya fell to one knee in the void, tail coiled loosely, breathing — bleeding — but victorious. The primal force within her had been enough to seal a fellow Primordial.
The void was silent now, save for the faint drip of essence and the echo of a trapped spirit screaming endlessly inside.
And yet, in that silence, Aegriya's golden eyes glimmered with something unspoken: the war was not over. But she had endured. She had survived. She had conquered.