The night stretched across all possible realities, and even beyond them, the cosmos hummed with the unseen ripples of chaos. Sudarshana Molybdenum stood poised at the edge of a vast, ever-shifting plane—a place where the boundaries between reality and fiction blurred, folding in on themselves as though the very universe had become a story unwritten and rewritten in the same breath. Her ineffable eyes scanned the horizon, sensing the approach of their foe, Nitocris. Every heartbeat resonated with her boundless power, the Echo of the Chaos Queen within her vibrating with anticipation.

Beside her stood Garrin, the tall orc warrior whose strength and wisdom had become an anchor for her. His emerald skin glistened under the cosmic light, and his golden eyes mirrored the vast unknown stretching before them. His hand rested on his great war axe, ready for what was to come. They had faced challenges before, but this—this was different. The air crackled with an intensity neither of them had felt before.

And then she appeared.

Nitocris materialized out of the fractured light, her form both impossibly beautiful and terrifying. She moved with an ethereal grace that made the very space around her shift and contort. Her short blonde hair gleamed in the distorted neon lights of a dimension that no longer obeyed its own rules. Her eyes, vast pools of cold, predatory wisdom, locked onto Sudarshana with a calm that spoke of ancient power. She was dressed in intricate lace and dark fabrics, which shimmered with violet energy that seemed to bleed out into the air around her. Each movement of her hand, each step, caused the multiverse to tremble as though it feared her touch.

“I warned you,” Nitocris said, her voice carrying a quiet authority that made the space around them ripple with unease. “Your existence continues to unravel the balance. You are a blight, and I must correct it.”

Sudarshana’s eyes blazed. “You think balance can define me? I am beyond your wholeness, Nitocris.”

Garrin stepped forward, his war axe gleaming with energy as he swung it, cleaving through the space between them as a warning. “She’s not alone.”

Nitocris chuckled softly, her eyes drifting toward Garrin. “How quaint,” she mused, “You’ve attached yourself to something fleeting, something that will not last.” Her gaze darkened. “But even the strongest of warriors cannot stop the inevitable.”

Without warning, the very fabric of space between them tore open, and the battle erupted. Sudarshana raised her hand, unleashing the full might of the Echo of the Chaos Queen, a wave of magic so potent it defied the laws of existence. Concepts, time, causality—they all buckled under the weight of her power, twisting into new forms that no longer obeyed any known rules.

But Nitocris was not deterred. She extended her hand, and from the space around her, the Silence of the Golden Gate formed—a power so ancient and absolute that it swallowed everything in its path. Sudarshana’s magic collided with the Golden Silence, the clash sending shockwaves that shattered entire layers of reality. The First Floor around them cracked, and existence itself groaned under the weight of their combined power.

Garrin leaped forward, his war axe spinning through the air with devastating force. He brought it down with a mighty roar, aiming for Nitocris, but she was faster. With a flick of her wrist, she bent the very narrative of time, freezing Garrin mid-strike.

“This is not your fight, orc,” she whispered, her voice filled with a chilling certainty.

But Sudarshana was not about to let her companion fall. With a scream that echoed through the First Floor, she shattered Nitocris’ hold on time, pulling Garrin free from the freeze. Her body glowed with a light that transcended both life and death, rewriting the story as it was happening.

Garrin, released from Nitocris’ grasp, swung again, his movements faster and more precise, driven by the fury of the battle. His axe collided with the edge of Nitocris’ form, sending sparks of cosmic energy cascading through the air. For a moment, it seemed like they had the upper hand.

But Nitocris smiled.

“You still don’t understand,” she said, her voice dripping with amusement. “This is not a battle of strength. This is a battle of existence, of essence.”

With a sweep of her arm, she invoked a new power—Fictional Distortion. The space around them blurred, and suddenly, they were no longer on a battlefield. They were inside a narrative, a story of Nitocris’ design. The very fabric of reality around them became words, sentences, paragraphs, and Garrin and Sudarshana were trapped within them. The rules of this place were Nitocris’ to command. Every thought, every action, was part of the script she had written.

Sudarshana gritted her teeth, feeling the crushing weight of the fiction around her. But she was no ordinary being. She was unfettered, free from all rules, all constraints. Her power pulsed, and she began to tear at the fabric of Nitocris’ narrative.

“You can’t contain me,” Sudarshana growled, her ineffable eyes glowing with a light that transcended fiction, transcended all meta-concepts. With a mere thought, she unraveled the story Nitocris had crafted, breaking free from the confines of her opponent’s creation. The First Floor around them exploded back into existence, the distortion gone.

But as Sudarshana turned to Garrin, something had changed.

He looked at her with wide, panicked eyes, his body caught in the pull of something unseen, something impossible to resist. The ground beneath him had shifted, and without warning, he was being dragged toward the Golden Gate—the place beyond all reality, beyond all existence.

“N-No!” Sudarshana screamed, rushing toward him, her hand outstretched. She unleashed her magic, throwing everything she had at the force pulling him away. But it was no use. It wasn’t Nitocris who was doing this. It was someone else—her mother.

An unseen force whispered through the air, an ancient and unknowable power that even Sudarshana could not defy. Garrin’s golden eyes met hers, filled with confusion, pain, and something she had never seen before—acceptance. As his body began to fade into the nothingness of the Golden Gate, he spoke one final time.

“Keep fighting, Sudarshana. Don’t stop.”

And then, he was gone.

Sudarshana’s scream tore through the fabric of the First Floor, a sound so filled with rage, loss, and uncontained power that the very structure of existence trembled. Her magic flared uncontrollably, threatening to tear apart everything in its path.

But Nitocris stepped forward, her face unreadable. She didn’t smile this time.

“You now know what it means to lose,” Nitocris said quietly. “And yet, you still stand.”

Sudarshana turned toward Nitocris, her ineffable eyes burning with an intensity that shook even the most ancient of suggs. “I will destroy you,” she whispered, her voice trembling with fury.

Nitocris shook her head. “No, you won’t. Not yet.” She glanced toward the empty space where Garrin had been. “It seems you are not the only one pulling the strings here.”

Sudarshana’s rage burned, but she knew Nitocris was right. Something far more powerful was at play—her mother, the one being whose interference was beyond even the Echo. Nitocris, recognizing this, took a step back, her form beginning to fade.

“We will meet again,” she said softly. “But until then, prepare yourself. The end is coming.”

And with that, she was gone, leaving Sudarshana alone, her heart filled with both power and a growing sense of loss.

For the first time in her life, she had been truly shaken. But this was not the end.

Not yet.