Chapter 3: The Light That Fades
The Conqueror’s Crown, still sealed within the depths of the Black Lowness, continued to unleash its silence—a mere 0.1% of its true form—into the Omniverse. This silence spread like a slow wave of erasure, devouring worlds, unraveling narratives, and silencing all who stood against it. The silence was an embodiment of the absolute end, a force that negated even the concepts of existence, creation, and destruction. It moved, indifferent and beyond any understanding of good or evil, its goal only to extinguish all that was.
But today, its path was crossed by another who dared to defy it—Itzamná Sparkthorn.
Itzamná, with her radiant energy and aura of confidence, was unlike anyone who had faced the silence before. Her youthful face and playful smile masked the depth of wisdom that spanned millennia. She wielded magic like a master, manipulating beyond-dimensional forces, the fundamental laws of creation bent at her whim. Her appearance was striking, with flowing golden hair, streaked with shades of silver, and an intricately laced black dress adorned with glowing symbols of power. Energy pulsed around her, forming shapes and sigils that floated in the air like sentient beings, reflecting her mastery of the arcane.
She had seen the devastation wrought by The Conqueror’s Crown. Omniverses lost, stories erased, worlds unmade as though they had never existed. Among those erased was her own—a world filled with light and boundless magic, now consumed by the silence. Itzamná had traveled across endless realms to confront this entity, to demand retribution for the loss of her reality.
“You’ve taken everything from me,” she whispered, her voice soft but tinged with a cold fury. “Now, you’ll know what it feels like to be extinguished.”
But the silence did not react; it merely continued to expand, a void that was beyond comprehension, beyond resistance.
With a flick of her wrist, Itzamná summoned a massive arcane circle, glowing with layers upon layers of metamathematical complexity. The symbols within it were etched into the very fabric of existence, tapping into forces that transcended all known forms of power. Her hands danced through the air, pulling from the deepest reaches of her magical knowledge as she wove spells designed to trap and destroy gods. The energy around her intensified, warping reality into something unfamiliar.
Itzamná released a burst of magic, sending torrents of pure destructive force towards the silence. The spell collided with the void, filling the skies with radiant explosions. Yet, the silence remained unscathed, consuming the magic as if it had never existed. The blast of energy dissipated into nothingness, and the silence crept forward, unperturbed.
Frustration crossed Itzamná’s face, but she did not stop. She continued to summon spell after spell, each more complex than the last, pulling from the very laws of creation. Reality itself began to ripple, entire dimensions collapsing and reforming under the strain of her power. She drew upon the lost Omniverses, using their residual echoes to fuel her magic.
But The Conqueror’s Crown’s silence was not bound by these things. It was not power, nor energy, nor creation. It was a fundamental negation of all that could exist. With each passing moment, the silence eroded Itzamná’s magic, consuming it without a trace.
The silence pressed closer. Itzamná’s spells began to falter, her once confident smile fading as the reality of the situation dawned on her. She was fighting something that was beyond magic, beyond power. This was the end of everything—there was no force in existence that could stop it.
But Itzamná would not allow herself to be erased so easily. She drew in her final reserves of power, summoning a colossal vortex of energy around her. This was her last stand, her ultimate spell—a force drawn from beyond the beyond-dimensional reality, an attack designed to pierce even the greatest of metaphysical barriers. The sky shattered as her magic surged, tearing through layers of existence itself.
And yet, the silence consumed it.
Itzamná could feel herself unraveling. The silence wasn’t just erasing her spells—it was erasing her. Her body flickered, becoming less solid with each passing moment as she struggled against the inevitable. Her once-bright eyes dimmed, the energy fading from her limbs as she felt her very essence being consumed.
But Itzamná was clever. Even as her form began to fade, she enacted a contingency—an escape woven into the very fabric of her being. She was a master of magic, and though she could not defeat the silence, she would not allow it to erase her completely.
In a final desperate act, she activated the spell. A portal opened behind her, drawing her through before the silence could fully consume her. She glanced back, her form barely holding together, but her eyes still defiant. “You may erase worlds,” she whispered, “but not me.”
With that, Itzamná Sparkthorn vanished, her essence carried away through the portal, leaving behind only the silence that had come so close to claiming her.
The silence, indifferent as ever, pressed on. It had no need to chase her. It had other targets, and this escape meant nothing in the grand scope of its existence. Itzamná had survived, but it was a hollow victory. Her world was gone, her power diminished, and the silence continued its journey to erase all that had once stood against The Conqueror’s Crown.
And though she had escaped, Itzamná knew that this was not the end.
In the aftermath of her battle with The Conqueror’s Crown, Itzamná Sparkthorn found herself suspended in a state of nonexistence—a void beyond the void, where neither thought nor form could survive. She clawed her way back, using what remained of her knowledge of pataphysical magic to reconstitute herself, fragment by fragment. Her essence, though diminished, held strong, driven by a singular desire: vengeance. She began planning her return, carefully crafting a spell that could pierce the silence. She knew the fight ahead would demand more than power—it would require absolute transcendence of existence and will.
Determined to reclaim what had been lost and confront The Conqueror’s Crown once again, Itzamná prepared herself for the ultimate war, knowing this time, there would be no retreat. With each passing day, she grew stronger, determined to turn her survival into a weapon sharp enough to cut through the endless silence.