The universe trembled.
Not like when stars are born or die, but as if the very fabric of history realized that something was about to erase it.
Elisa advanced through the ruins of what had once been Vita, her body shining with the same light that had shaped the cosmos. Before her, in the midst of the silence, lay Astrid, sprawled out and motionless. Her breathing was barely a sigh, and she looked completely battered. The rift behind her continued to pulse, extending black threads that crackled with golden lights.
Elisa raised her hand. Energy gathered around her palm: primordial force, the same power that had restarted the multiverse. There was no hatred in her gesture, only sadness.
"Forgive me," she whispered.
And she launched the attack.
But the beam did not reach its target.
Space distorted, the air turned to smoke, and Astrid, just before receiving the attack… disappeared.
Elisa felt a presence behind her.
When she turned, her breathing stopped.
Astrid was there, standing upright, transformed.
Her skin shone with an impossible golden radiance, her eyes now resembled two suns, and her hair —now a suspended flame— floated like a crown of fire. Behind her, the air evaporated; her silhouette seemed to merge with the rift and with something else, something that breathed from the other side.
And when she spoke, her voice multiplied.
There were three voices: hers, and two others, deep, distant, ancient.
"What… is… happening… to me…?" she asked the void, astonished and exhilarated at the same time.
Her hands trembled, but not from fear.
From power.
The brooch shone like a solar core in her chest, with a radiance so great it could blind anyone.
Elisa took a step back, horrified.
"No…" she whispered. "It can't be… they're here."
Astrid looked at herself, fascinated. Her fingers passed through the flames of her own hair without being burned. Her voice changed in tone, her exhilaration turning into gratitude.
"Thank you…" She looked toward the rift, smiling. "Thank you for this opportunity. For this power."
Her gaze settled on Elisa, and for an instant, her star-like eyes seemed like holes through which light seeped.
"Now you're standing before the end, Elisa. I told you it wouldn't be the same as the last time we fought."
Elisa held her gaze. Her face was filled with pure pain.
"Astrid, seriously… I understand you. I swear I understand you. Your loss, your anger, the confusion. But you're seeing everything backwards." Her voice broke. "I used my gifts, the same ones I had hated my entire life, to restore what had been lost. To bring new life, not to erase."
Astrid tilted her head.
"New life? Or an artificial life that obeys you?"
"It's real!" Elisa replied. "The Second Existence is alive, it breathes, it thinks, it dreams. You do too. That proves there is hope. But what you're doing now will destroy everything. You will become the same echo that the Guardians and the primordial gods once were. The voices you're hearing in your head are nothing more than their vile consciousnesses speaking to you."
Astrid laughed, and that laughter was accompanied by a double whisper, the echo of Lyra and Zefaniel tangled within her voice:
"And didn't we warn you, Elisa?" they said, overlapping one another. "We told you we would get out. We told you we would never lose hope of meeting you."
Elisa took a step back.
"You…"
"She freed us," they answered through Astrid. "She finally opened the door for us."
Astrid smiled, but the smile was not hers alone.
It was the reflection of three consciousnesses sharing the same body.
Her gaze was both human and divine, chaotic and serene.
The two stared at each other for several seconds, as if waiting for the other to launch the first attack. Astrid, simply wanting to test her power once more, attacked first.
On nothing more than her index finger, Astrid formed an accumulation of pure condensed existence inside a sphere the size of a marble.
A marble that encompassed every concept.
Existence.
Time.
Space.
Even dimensionality, cardinality, and anything that could be named.
"Conceptualization."
Astrid launched the sphere with something that transcended speed, a completely inevitable attack that could not be measured by distance or time.
And yet, Elisa, being a divinity herself, reacted.
With a sharp movement, she raised her hand and deflected something that was not tangible.
Elisa repelled the attack, and it ended up striking a distant planet.
There was no explosion.
And when Elisa turned to see what it had destroyed, it seemed as though the attack had destroyed nothing.
But that was because what it had destroyed could no longer be conceived, leaving behind only a blur in reality.
A cold sweat ran down Elisa's body as she understood what was coming.
Then the two stared directly at each other.
Elisa wore a fearful but determined expression.
Astrid had a challenging, almost mocking gaze.
There was no sound at first.
Only the sensation that everything in existence was vibrating.
Then,
the explosion.
The two launched themselves at each other: Elisa wrapped in darkness, Astrid wrapped in fire.
Their fists collided, and existence took time to process the impact.
Time stopped.
It fractured.
It began mixing with its own echo.
Elisa won the clash of fists, the impact so powerful that it destroyed the arm Astrid had attacked with, along with half of the universe on Astrid's side.
Elisa was surprised to see that Astrid's arm had been completely pulverized and believed she had already won.
But Astrid merely looked at her mutilated limb with intrigue and strange excitement.
She remembered the first time she had fought Elisa, when the same thing had happened to her.
But Astrid, with her triple voice, simply laughed and repeated to Elisa that, as she had said before, things would be different this time.
Her arm proceeded to become engulfed in blazing flames, only to reappear completely regenerated once the flames dissipated.
Elisa couldn't believe what she was seeing.
Even for her, it was completely astonishing.
But she did not let herself be affected and quickly regained her composure.
She raised her hand, causing all the light in the universe to go out, leaving everything in darkness.
She moved like a shadow, striking Astrid from blind spots.
But Astrid counterattacked by shining and overpowering the darkness.
Then she increased her radiance even further and began burning Elisa with it.
Elisa responded by creating a gigantic black hole to swallow Astrid's light and then launched it toward her.
The collision generated an explosion of light and shadow that illuminated the entire multiverse.
And then the two began an endless exchange of powers.
Astrid launched stars without stopping, and Elisa responded by disintegrating every single one and returning them as cosmic dust that overwhelmed Astrid.
When Astrid was completely surrounded by ashes, Elisa took advantage of the opportunity and launched herself at an incomprehensible speed, striking her and deforming history itself with the impact.
Past, present, and future trembled.
For a second, it seemed as though both of them had regained their human forms.
Elisa struck again, breaking the universe and sending them into another one.
Once again, it seemed as though history itself had been shattered.
This time, for a second, both appeared to become children.
Elisa was already preparing to strike her again, but Astrid blocked it with one hand this time and retaliated with another blow.
History suffered once again.
For a blink of an eye, they even fought literally with their souls.
Elisa summoned another black hole, attempting to absorb Astrid's very soul and separate her from the gods.
But Astrid endured it with the help of Lyra and Zefaniel, who kept her in place and helped her counterattack.
Astrid unleashed a pulse of power through her eyes, projected directly from her soul.
It struck Elisa and sent her flying to the opposite end of the multiverse, shattering space itself when she landed.
She got back up and charged forward once more.
Every attack from Astrid moved the stars.
Every response from Elisa rearranged the memories of creation.
The battle was not taking place only in space.
It was happening within the narration itself.
The words failed.
The sentences repeated themselves.
The story corrected itself.
Past versions watched the battle: a child Elisa witnessed the annihilation of everything; a young Astrid watched her world disappear, not because of a rift in her planet, but simply because of their presence.
The battle was so apocalyptic that history itself could not withstand it.
Narration and coherence lost meaning before it.
Astrid spread wings of fire and light, cutting through the shadow projectiles Elisa launched, cleaving galaxies apart and beginning to fire bursts of flame from them as well.
Elisa dodged by creating dimensional voids, and every black hole she generated to absorb the attacks invoked new laws of physics.
Astrid launched explosive spheres of power that detonated upon the slightest impact.
But Elisa fearlessly threw herself toward them and cut them apart with a beam of darkness she had formed from one of her arms, causing everything to explode and the smoke to spread throughout the universe, leaving everything blind.
Astrid lost sight of Elisa.
It wasn't until she felt something pierce her chest that she saw her again.
Elisa had taken advantage of the tremendous curtain of smoke to drive her beam through Astrid's chest.
Astrid spat blood from her mouth that shone like a ruby.
But once again, she simply laughed and said:
"Oh, Elisa. How innocent you are to think that piercing me there will do anything. You have to aim for the head, because the other one stopped beating a long time ago."
Astrid said it with a bloody smile that disturbed Elisa slightly.
"Besides, remember that there are three of us now."
Astrid, Lyra, and Zefaniel said it simultaneously.
Astrid created an explosion around herself that pushed Elisa away.
And when the power dissipated, Elisa could see Astrid's chest regenerating, just like her arm.
The fight continued.
The entire multiverse watched.
History could not sustain it.
Timelines were cut or erased, and beginning and end became confused.
In some places, Astrid disintegrated her by summoning flames that swept across planets.
In others, Elisa dispersed Astrid like sand.
And in all of them, history suffered the consequences.
The multiverse had already been completely deformed.
Now, inside a dimensional dome formed from the remnants of different universes, Astrid and Elisa faced each other.
Both accumulated power throughout their bodies, forming a sphere around themselves, and collided against one another.
The echoes of Lyra and Zefaniel resonated powerfully.
"Look what you did, goddess," they said through Astrid. "You thought you could contain us, and you turned us into a memory. But memories always return."
"Enough!" Elisa shouted. "Don't use her!"
"We're not using her," they replied. "She chose us."
Astrid smiled.
"You're right. I did. I was the one who listened to them, the one who called them, the one who freed them. And now, Elisa, it all ends here. The story ends here."
Astrid ultimately won the clash of powers, shattering Elisa's sphere and sending her toward the edges of the dimensional dome they had formed.
The dome eventually broke apart, causing all those universes to expand together in a single second, forming an amalgamation of different worlds.
Both were enveloped by the remnants of dimensional dust from the dome, and it was clear that Elisa was already suffering from the damage caused by the battle.
She was exhausted.
"You don't have to keep going down this path," Elisa said with a trembling voice. "I don't want to lose you. Despite everything… you're still part of what I loved."
Astrid lowered her gaze, almost tenderly.
"You were too…" she whispered. "But the love you offered was always just another kind of prison."
And she raised her hand to launch another attack.
Astrid formed a white hole and hurled it toward Elisa.
Elisa raised both hands, ready to withstand the assault.
She could feel her hands burning and nearly being torn apart by the pressure and energy of the power.
So, as a last resort, she decided to make it explode, knowing she would not be able to undo it.
The attack exploded, destroying the malformed collection of worlds they were in.
Now only blank sketches remained.
Elisa fell to her knees, exhausted, her hands smoking and slightly burned by the attack.
But Astrid gave her no respite.
She advanced and struck her with a blow that recreated everything once again, sending her crashing into a moon.
The brooch burned, and the echoes of Lyra and Zefaniel, laughing maniacally like a choir of resurrected gods, guided her.
Elisa got back up, now almost completely out of strength, trying to resist.
She created new realities around herself as shields.
She created shadow clones to try to overwhelm Astrid.
She multiplied time to slow her down.
But Astrid destroyed every layer, every reflection, every defense.
Until finally, she had Elisa directly in front of her.
She grabbed her by the neck and lifted her with one arm, the final blow ready to end everything.
Elisa closed her eyes.
There were tears in them, tears made of pure darkness.
And Astrid, for an instant, felt a tremor in her chest.
Perhaps compassion.
Perhaps nothing.
The brooch shone one last time.
Elisa prepared herself for the end.
She begged Astrid with all her strength one final time, pleading for her to listen to her.
But there was no turning back.
Astrid, with her other hand, began charging a beam combining existence and nonexistence.
With a precise slash, she opened a wound across Elisa's entire torso.
It began to slowly fade away.
Astrid released her.
Elisa continued fading into the air, while raising her hand with all her strength, trying to reach Astrid just as she had the last time.
But she couldn't.
Elisa's life went out, and her existence faded away.