It was well past noon when Lumi'Nae stirred beneath the silken canopy of her bed, its latticework shadows dancing across her alabaster features. The stillness that pervaded her chambers—ensconced upon the 4,406th floor of Lucidia's obsidian citadel—was near-sacred in its profundity. Too perfect. Too poised. And then—something shifted.

  A sensation tickled beneath her skin. Not pain, not pressure, but something stranger still—like phantom sinews flexing just beneath her armpits. Intangible, yet insistent.

  Her eyes snapped open—twin sapphires, gleaming beneath ghostlight.

  Without a sound, she rose. She glided through her adjoining chambers with the eerie elegance of a being for whom grace had long ceased to be a choice and become nature itself. All lay precisely as it should: ancient grimoires slumbered on levitating shelves; artefacts pulsed with quiet, dormant magicks; the ever-burning candelabra flickered with its usual rhythm, indifferent to time or tide.

  Then—a grunt.

  "I am present, Mistress of Ruin."

  The voice was not spoken. It resonated from within—an echo etched into thought. From the folds of Lumi'Nae's Void-Cloaked Mantle, an eldritch, muscular arm slowly unfurled. It was massive, adorned with sigils that predated scripture, knowledge, and meaning itself. It reached out—not in challenge, but in greeting. Reverent. Familiar.

  And then it dissolved, vanishing like mist before a sunrise.

  Lumi'Nae reached out with her own eldritch arm—black and iridescent as the void between stars—and brushed the spot where it had emerged.

  "Well," she murmured. "That's one hell of a bicep. It's been a while... monster arm."

  "I was once called Nightmare's Nemesis," came the reply. The voice was both lyrical and grave. "Though you have renamed me many times. The last was Theoktonos. A Deicide. One of your Void Destroyers."

  She turned slowly towards a mirror of polished obsidian. The mantle on her back stirred—shifting like something alive. From the inky fabric, a single purple eye formed. It blinked once. Then again.

  "A conversation deserves a form," Theoktonos said.

  From the mantle poured nightmare particles—black, violet, and shimmering with paradox. They spiralled upwards, weaving a form from raw voidstuff: a barbarian god wrought of purple-hued armour, flesh of outer gods, and a presence that bent the light around him. He knelt—not in submission, but in solemn reverence. Even kneeling, he loomed taller than Lumi'Nae, who herself stood at a modest 607 centimetres.

  "At last, we meet again, Lady Finality," he intoned, his voice a distant tide crashing against the shore of worlds. "I have slumbered far longer than intended. Bound as I was, it took me more than forever to return."

  Lumi'Nae regarded him with the cool detachment of one who had watched empires rise and stars die. "You may rise, purple giant," she said flatly. "Though I confess, I don't remember ever meeting a muscle monster whose arm is roughly the size of my entire body."

  Theoktonos lifted his gaze. His eyes—strange and voidlit—carried grief older than time.

  "I have known you since before you took Imminent Form," he said. "You have forgotten. Everything. Even the divine breath you once exhaled into being—and nonbeing. But perhaps that forgetting was mercy. I grew weary of senseless destruction."

  She said nothing. Her expression betrayed neither thought nor reaction.

  "The only creation I recall," she said after a pause, "is Sathiel of Gehenna. Pestilence Incarnate. Most recently appointed Destroyer—guardian, I mean—of Finality."

  "Aye," Theoktonos murmured, turning towards the vast window. Below, through enchanted glass, clouds roiled in slow, apocalyptic spirals. He pressed one colossal, amethyst-armoured hand to the pane. "Sathiel is the most recent. But you, Mistress... you forged more than plagues and protectors."

  He turned back, voice shifting like tectonic plates beneath oceans.

  "You gave me purpose. A wordless purpose no tongue can capture. Across omniverses, I've been called the Elder God of Famine. To the scholars of the Endscript, the Dark God-Emperor who wrought two Primordials: Fate and Paradox."

  He stepped forward, shadows dragging behind like sulking children.

  "Though once, you named me the Incarnation of Unknowable Existentialism."

  Lumi'Nae rested her chin upon her palm, her stare hollow and ancient. "Morgrath's insight rarely errs," she murmured. "And yes... you are far more than a stitched-on accessory to my cloak."

  "Morgrath does resemble Eloharis," Theoktonos agreed. "Mischief hiding wisdom. Wit cloaked in humility. A dangerous mind."

  A pause.

  "Aeons ago, Morgrath spoke of venturing beyond Lucidia's bounds. His reasons were nonsense—but mine are not. A journey across the veiled omniverses, to seek the Unknowable Diva. Perhaps now... that journey must begin."

  But before Lumi'Nae could reply—

  Knock. Knock. Knock.

  Three deliberate strikes. Measured. Unmistakable.

  The obsidian doors creaked open, admitting a flicker of warmth into the void-lit chambers.

  In stepped Sathiel—sunlight given form, striding across eternity with a tray in hand. Her brown hair spilled like sand through a celestial hourglass, and her black armour shimmered with a heartbeat not her own.

  "Oi, Lady Lumi'Nae!" she called, a grin dancing on her lips. "You up yet?"

  In one effortless hand she balanced a ruby tray. The scent of wyvern broth and elderfruit filled the chamber like an embrace made of home.

  "Brought you breakfast! Or maybe lunch?" she added with a wink. "Hard to tell with your celestial napping schedule."

  Lumi'Nae accepted the ruby tray with a nod of silent gratitude and placed it atop a floating table—a slowly turning spiral of dark matter, nebulae, and star-pollen, shaped like a miniature galaxy caught mid-birth. She reclined with languid elegance into a chair sculpted to resemble a black hole, its seat cushioned by dimensional spider-silk spun from the threads of ruined timelines.

  With a flick of her wrist, she conjured a spoon forged from silver flame, and dipped it into the steaming broth.

  The aroma of wyvern bone and elderfruit drifted like perfume through the chamber. She sipped. Time shivered politely in the background.

  A glint caught Sathiel's eye.

  Barely visible beneath Lumi'Nae's raven-dark hair, a dark crystal earring sparkled—a fragment of Gehenna's cursed opal.

  "You're wearing the earrings I bought you from Gehenna!" Sathiel exclaimed, beaming—until her eyes narrowed, mood shifting faster than the phases of the Infernal Moon.

  She had seen him.

  Theoktonos stood like a stone carved by cosmos, partially obscured by the towering effigies of forgotten beasts. Though his presence lacked malice, it radiated a disquiet that unsettled even the foundational laws of physics.

  Sathiel blurred forward. Her gauntlets ignited in wrathful crimson, spikes sprouting like blooming thorns forged in demonic furnaces. She landed in a fighter's stance—poised, perfect, executioner-sharp.

  "Who's the monster loitering in a demon's dining room?" she barked. "Doesn't seem right. Shoo! Go back to your own monster den!"

  Theoktonos, unmoved, tilted his head.

  "Appearances deceive," he said with composure carved from eternity. "Like you, Sathiel, I serve Lumi'Nae. I am one of her Deicides. A Void Destroyer."

  Sathiel's pupils dilated. "One of hers? Deicides?! Destroyers?! I—I thought I signed on as a guardian! Oh no. My poor celestial branding. My origins as the former Goddess of Light are weeping. I'm going to be associated with the name Satan forever, aren't I?"

  Lumi'Nae set her spoon aside with the gravity of someone placing a pen upon the final line of a forbidden scripture.

  "It couldn't be helped," she said, folding her eldritch arms. "I sort of... rewrote your job description. Guardian felt too passive. Dull. Lacking gravitas. My winions deserve to sound like main antagonists of an arc no one survives. Think of it this way: as the former Goddess of Light, you now get to mercifully obliterate threats before they even emerge. Beneath my Void Destroyers lie not heaven and hell, but unreality itself."

  She looked disturbingly proud of this.

  Theoktonos cleared his throat. "Indeed. The title Destroyer is significantly more honourable. Guardians wait. Destroyers act. It's proactive benevolence... with collateral damage."

  "I can't believe what I'm hearing," Sathiel groaned. "Do you two think I'm an idiot?! I'm at least omniscient! I just... haven't finished learning the unknowns I'm yet to comprehend—but that's beside the point!"

  Lumi'Nae raised a pale hand, cutting through the rising chaos.

  "We are leaving this realm. The time has come to traverse the omniverses and the paths beyond—because, well, why not?"

  She gestured vaguely. "Oh, and about what Theoktonos and I discussed earlier—nothing much. Just the usual eldritch memory-loss, divine betrayal, reawakening of purpose, etcetera."

  As her voice drifted into the ambient silence, the galaxy-table beneath her trembled. Its stars spun faster, constellations rearranging themselves as though whispering secrets too ancient for sound.

  A journey had been declared.

  And somewhere deep within the citadel of Lucidia, the Sovereign of the End began to awaken anew.

  Sathiel's eyes lit with stardust.

  "I'm in!" she grinned, radiant as a supernova. "Let's go cosmic questing! I even packed snacks this time."

  Lumi'Nae's eyes flicked toward Theoktonos. Her tone grew eerily casual. "I'm thinking we head straight to the end of the story. Just destroy the Unknowable Diva and be done with it. Right now, preferably."

  Theoktonos didn't answer immediately. His gaze was distant, as though consulting an invisible chronicle written between the syllables of time.

  "Wherever your instincts lead," he said slowly, "for you, Lumi'Nae, are the Meta-Creator—the Source of All Things..."

  He hesitated.

  "But perhaps don't do that just yet? I have a better itinerary. Something a little more scenic. We could even revisit a few critical past events. You know. For closure."

  In that moment, the chamber exhaled.

  The marble walls rippled like oil on a cosmic pond, melting into abstract potential. Space itself unraveled, and in its place, a panoramic tapestry unfolded—a vista of pure imagination.

  Lumi'Nae stood at the very edge of creation, her silhouette backlit by the bloom of a thousand omniverses opening like books mid-sentence. Each realm glittered with impossible architecture—cathedrals of paradox, cities stitched from music, mountains carved from ancestral memory.

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  Infinity had become a boutique, and she, the lone connoisseur.

  Sathiel's voice broke the reverent hush.

  "Lady Lumi'Nae... is this real?" she whispered. "No jokes, please."

  Lumi'Nae tilted her head, eyes dancing.

  "As real as dreams, probably," she said. "These are the threads of everything, spun on the Great Loom of... um, Possibility. Something something metaphysics. Gigasis Genesis. Eternal Dao-wow. Big Bang. Boom."

  Sathiel leapt onto Lumi'Nae's back in a chokehold. It did nothing.

  "This behaviour is unbecoming of a guardian," Lumi'Nae declared. "Theoktonos, I command you—destroy this false Goddess of Light at once."

  "Now I'm a guardian?!" Sathiel sputtered. "And false?! I was a genuine goddess, thank you very much!"

  Theoktonos sighed, arms crossed like twin obelisks.

  "My Mistress has... changed since we last met. But at least she's not obliterating reality on a whim. May she remain like this forever. Peace is, after all, a rare and beautiful thing."

  The vistas shimmered with infinite strangeness—each more intoxicating than the last.

  Worlds forged from pure sound spiralled into harmonic spirals, where sonatas became cities and choirs sang the laws of gravity. Nebulae swayed to lullabies composed by extinct gods. Forests, vast and silver-leaved, hovered rootless in the cold vacuum of space. And drifting amidst it all were leviathan-bone metropolises—monuments to civilisations that had never known a ground to stand on.

  Sathiel, breath caught in her throat, reached forward.

  Her fingers brushed against a vision: a luminous meadow bathed in moonlight the colour of snow. The petals of its flowers shivered like living crystal, each one humming with a note of forgotten emotion.

  She plucked a blossom—its texture impossibly soft, its glow a whisper of bygone warmth.

  "This one..." she murmured, cupping it in her palms. "It's beautiful. What does it mean?"

  She looked—pointedly not at Lumi'Nae.

  "Theoktonos. I'm asking you. Not Lady Void-And-Vague."

  Lumi'Nae's boots glided noiselessly across the airless dreamscape. She stopped abruptly.

  "Why," she said with complete neutrality, "am I giving you a shoulder ride again?"

  Sathiel, firmly perched on Lumi'Nae's back like a divine gremlin, didn't answer. She was still waiting.

  Theoktonos, ever composed, regarded the flower with eyes that had seen galaxies live and die between heartbeats.

  "It means different things to different souls," he said, voice veiled with memory. "To some—purity. To others, remembrance. And to me..."

  A pause.

  As if he were listening to the echo of a song only the cosmos remembered.

  "To me, it feels like the echo of an era—when the stars were still young and destiny hadn't yet learned cruelty."

  He fell silent.

  Theoktonos stood apart, distant, a shadow cast by suns long extinguished. His gaze lingered on the shifting landscapes as if trying to trace scars only he could see—wars fought, prayers unanswered, civilisations atomised before they even dreamt of survival. Sathiel clutched the flower to her chest.

  And Lumi'Nae...

  Nothing.

  Not because the memory had been buried, somewhere in the marrow of time, but because she simply lacked feeling.

  Time was toothless.

  And memory was a ghost that always stayed dead.

  Without warning, the vision fractured.

  From beyond the lattice of realities, something immense tore through—shattering space like brittle porcelain.

  Nihilignis.

  The Cosmic Dragon of Oblivion.

  He erupted into being with a roar that transcended language, his scales like opaline planets, his wings vast enough to eclipse constellations. Each movement of his titanic form shredded metaphysical realms into cosmic parchment. Destruction was his art. Each rupture birthed a metanova—an explosion that rewrote cause and effect in a countless timelines.

  The void screamed.

  The very air howled like a star system being flushed down an existential drain.

  Lumi'Nae's mantle writhed, lashing against the celestial winds. Her black hair flared behind her like the wake of a comet. Sathiel gripped her shoulders tighter. Theoktonos, motionless, stood as if he were carved from the very bones of fate.

  And then—she remembered.

  Not a grand revelation. Just a voice. A moment. A memory soaked in ash.

  "Daughter of Silence," the great beast had once rasped, bowed before her in twisted reverence. "Burn it all. Obliterate the stars. Leave nothing."

  Theoktonos saw it too—etched across the sky like holy graffiti.

  He stepped forward, placing a calm, deliberate hand on Lumi'Nae's shoulder.

  "You made the right choice," he said gently. "You denied the Oblivion Flame. And in doing so... you preserved the possibility of meaning."

  The chaos fell away.

  The storm ceased.

  And in its place—memory.

  They now stood within a battlefield fossilised in time, carved into the ribcage of a dead god. The bones arched above like cathedral spires. Within this cathedral of death, two figures danced through the flames of creation and apocalypse.

  Lucidia. Monarch of Pride. Blazing. Terrible. Beautiful.

  Her twin blades—the Celestial Scourge—whirled with the fury of a divine supernova. Light and shadow spun in perfect arcs. Her eight wings, ablaze with divinity, beat like war drums against reality itself.

  And before her—Eloharis.

  The Enigma. The Saint of Sincerity and Sarcasm. Crown askew. White robes marred with dried miracles. Her orange hair flowed like wildfire given personality, and her smile... that smile... was impossibly warm.

  They fought not as foes, but as myths trying to rewrite each other.

  Holy water spiralled at Eloharis's command, transfiguring the field into chaos incarnate. From the kaleidoscope of her will, plushie armies marched, mecha-shaped omniverses clashed with unicorn-class warships, and clouds erupted with divine glitter-jetstreams.

  "Quite the spectacle for a pacifist goddess!" Lucidia roared with wild joy, blades carving sigils into space. "They've literally cut off your balls, Yahweh!"

  "My almighty balls were too heavy," Eloharis replied, sidestepping with liquid grace. "You'd understand if you had any, Lucifer." She beckoned teasingly. "Keep talking—it improves morale."

  Their clash blurred into legend.

  Even the photons paused to watch.

  From the edge of that sacred memory, Lumi'Nae watched—Sathiel still on her shoulders, Theoktonos at her side.

  Then—a shift.

  Eloharis faltered.

  Her eyes—one violet, one rose-gold—glanced beyond the battle, beyond the moment. They saw the onlookers. Recognised them.

  "Satan. Big purple bastard. Finality...?"

  The words slipped out like prophecy from a broken radio.

  And Lucidia—divine instinct unrelenting—struck.

  "Fool—your defences are breached!"

  Twin blades pierced Eloharis's chest.

  One of light. One of shadow.

  The impact echoed like a bell tolling for the end of all things.

  Eloharis let out a very human scream. And then—laughter. Soft. Warm.

  There was no hatred in her gaze. No fear. Just the serenity of someone who had always known how it would end.

  Her arms opened—not in retaliation, but welcome.

  She pulled Lucidia close.

  And there, suspended in a cathedral of bones, god-blood mingled in the air like ink in sanctified water.

  "Is this what you wanted from me all along?"

  Eloharis's voice was soft, barely a breath against the storm of memory. She leaned close to Lucidia, her lips stained with divine blood, her whisper feather-light and laced with something bittersweet—half exhaustion, half exultation.

  "The evil I once purged from myself. My shadow. My pride. My... Evil Seraph."

  Her smile, small and fleeting, curled like the final note of a forgotten hymn.

  "Strength veiled in sorrow. Fury concealing a heart that only ever wanted to be seen."

  Her fingers curled gently around Lucidia's wrists, not to resist, but to feel.

  "This endless war across shattered dimensions... it's been the most exhilarating symphony I've known in aeons."

  Lucidia froze.

  The war angel who had once cleaved planets from principle and battled archons into submission now stood like a statue caught in the moment after the killing blow. Victory tasted wrong. Her breath hitched—rage still clung to her bones, but beneath it now was something quieter. Older. Ache. Recognition.

  Eloharis tilted her head, watching her former adversary with curious softness.

  "Like you, I'm no longer welcome in Heaven. But... I didn't mind. I was free. Freed from the roles, the worship, the weight. Were you lonely all this time?"

  That was all it took to snap Lucidia back.

  "You absolute dickhead," she hissed—though her tone was laced with something dangerously close to affection. "Now that you're a fair maiden and in my grasp..."

  She released her grip on the twin swords.

  Then, with the absurd gravity only a fallen seraph could muster, Lucidia lunged forward and groped Eloharis's arse.

  "Feel my wrath!" she declared with the solemnity of a declaration of war.

  Eloharis gasped—half laughter, half pain.

  "I-I forgive you!" she moaned, both affronted and profoundly unsurprised.

  From the edge of the vision, Theoktonos did not blink.

  His voice emerged like a hymn intoned by a cathedral of stars.

  "The present and 36,572nd Supreme God Sovereign," he said, eyes locked on Eloharis. "One of the 79 Royals of Light. Hailed by many as the rightful heir over Lucidia."

  He turned slowly toward Lumi'Nae.

  The gaze that met her was reverent, grave, and impossibly ancient.

  "But the Throne of Omniverses does not heed the noise of worship or war. It bends only to the will of the true architect of reality."

  A pause.

  The silence wasn't empty—it was an unveiling.

  "It was not Lucidia. Nor Eloharis. But you, Mistress. You forged the Throne. You chose Eloharis as Sovereign. You are the Paradox that birthed all creation."

  The words struck like a cosmic gong, vibrating through the marrow of existence.

  Sathiel blinked rapidly, her expression caught between divine panic and existential disbelief.

  "I... wasn't told any of this," she muttered. "I mean—I knew she made me. But shouldn't I have... known more? I was the Goddess of Light."

  Theoktonos inclined his head, his tone now soft, almost parental.

  "Even the divine are shrouded in the fog of forgotten truths. There are chambers within Mistress Lumi'Nae's essence that defy comprehension—by mortals and immortals alike. What you know... is only what she remembers."

  Lumi'Nae said nothing.

  But the silence surrounding her rippled—like a thought rising from the deep.

  Images flickered across her mind like starlight through water: faces without names, names without voices, empires she might have ruled or ruined. Time twisted around her like a cloak made of paradoxes.

  'Cool,' she thought, with characteristic ambiguity.

  The vision trembled.

  Reality cracked once more—colours inverting, light tasting like memory, shadow humming with the scent of ancient dawns. Dream bled into world. Sound became shape.

  And then, as if the cosmos exhaled—

  Stillness.

  They stood atop a snow-swept hill beneath a sky the colour of mourning silk. The air was quiet, reverent. Snowflakes drifted like whispered thoughts, slow and silent. Below, a forest of crystalline trees shimmered faintly, their branches pulsing with the faint afterglow of forgotten light.

  Sathiel wrapped her arms around herself.

  "Where... are we now?" she asked, voice quieted by awe.

  Theoktonos surveyed the landscape, his eyes reflecting a memory buried deep in the marrow of the multiverse.

  "Wherever she remembers," he said. "And this memory... is my destination."

  He turned his gaze toward the forest below.

  "A fellow Deicide remains here. Or something that was once one."

  Lumi'Nae lowered her gaze to the snow. One flake landed on her palm—crystalline and ephemeral. It melted instantly.

  But within her eyes, something stirred.

  Not fear. Not hesitation.

  But a soft, shrouded beginning.

  The beginning... of forgetting.