Her face, ethereal, pale, almost gentle—carried no trace of emotion as she drifted forward, feet never quite touching the ground. She moved as though the world had forgotten how to resist her.
Around her, dark matter oozed like living tar. It clung to her presence, responding to unspoken intent—threading itself through the air, crawling along nothing, folding and unfolding in slow, nauseating patterns. It whispered without sound, a patient thing that had learned how to wait.
She approached the one she had once favored.
The Devourer stopped.
Her gaze lowered.
The woman lay face-down in a ruined hollow, her body bent at impossible angles, the ground beneath her fractured into jagged plates. A weak golden glow pulsed beneath torn flesh, flickering irregularly, as though her soul struggled to remember how to stay contained.
A breath.
A tremor.
Eyes opened.
Deep emerald irises stared back, fractured by veins of molten gold. They burned with pain but not fear.
"Ilyra…"
The name escaped her lips like a prayer already answered. Soft. Trembling. Almost hopeful.
Ilyra did not respond.
She lifted her foot—slender, immaculate, untouched by blood or dust—and placed it upon the woman's back.
The touch was impossibly light.
The world buckled.
Stone screamed as the ground collapsed inward, forming a vast crater that swallowed the horizon. A shockwave rippled outward, flattening what little remained standing. The woman's body convulsed as a broken cry tore free, blood flooding from her mouth in thick, choking streams.
Ilyra leaned closer.
"The end is inevitable."
There was no malice in her voice.
Only certainty.
The body went still.
From the corpse, golden light began to peel away, slowly, unwillingly, stretching into luminous strands that quivered like exposed nerves. Souls. Torn free, radiant and fragile. Before Ilyra could reach for them, they recoiled, then shot skyward in panicked arcs, joining countless others fleeing into the void—remnants escaping a world that had already been condemned.
Ilyra straightened.
She followed their ascent with her eyes.
Dark, silken matter wrapped around her form, enfolding her like a funeral shroud as she rose from the surface and into the emptiness of space. Below her, the planet cracked apart in silence—continents tearing, oceans evaporating, its core unraveling like something long dead finally realizing it had been forgotten.
She hovered there, watching.
Waiting.
Her gaze fixed upon the distant trail of fleeing golden orbs.
A pause.
Then, softly; almost kindly…
"Let the hunted become the hunter."
Another pause.
"Run."