Elsewhere.
The vastness of the cosmos seemed to hold its breath.
Between living nebulas and slowly rotating constellations, a rift opened in the fabric of reality. From it emerged a presence that did not walk… but burned.
Her body blazed with the light of a thousand stars, and her skin, translucent like incandescent crystal, pulsed with the heat of creation. Her hair—long tongues of solar fire—floated behind her in waves that rippled space itself. Wherever she passed, comets disintegrated in golden flames. Distant galaxies adjusted their orbits to respect her approach. Even light seemed to follow her.
Nothing about her demanded attention.
But it was impossible to look away.
Pyralis was fire.
Not merely what burns… but what is born from combustion.
As she crossed a forgotten layer of the cosmos, her solar pupils narrowed.
Something approached, or perhaps awaited her.
A sudden chill pierced eternity.
The veil of reality bent, and then silence coalesced into a form.
From a corner that should not exist, Erebor arose.
His form was made of neither flesh nor energy.
It was absence.
A void with only suggested contours.
A hole in existence.
He emitted no sound, cast no shadows. He simply… erased.
Before her, the universe's heat seemed to hesitate.
The cosmos trembled between two extremes: the first flame and the final shadow.
Pyralis landed on the void with astonishing lightness. Her feet touched nothing, yet space bent beneath them.
"Did you come to fetch me… or merely to be burned?" her voice cut through the silence like a supernova's breath.
Darkness pulsed.
Erebor did not speak with sounds. His presence vibrated directly in the layers of the mind.
"You have kept the flame. But the flame cannot prevent the end."
She lifted her chin, a faint smile forming on her flaming lips.
"I did not come to prevent the end… I came to prolong the beauty of the middle."
Then, the cosmos shattered.
Pyralis raised her arm. The light in her chest intensified, and from the center of her hand sprang a spear made of stellar plasma—thick as a pillar, vibrating like the heart of a newborn sun. She threw it with the ease of a casual gesture, yet the space behind her recoiled in waves.
The spear crossed dimensions.
Constellations unraveled in its wake.
Stars recoiled in panic.
As it neared Erebor, everything fell silent.
Then the void opened.
The spear vanished.
It did not explode.
It did not resist.
It simply ceased to be.
What followed was a pause of a second—a lifetime in that field of tension.
Pyralis felt the impact in her soul.
"He did not nullify my technique… he erased its existence."
She clenched her fists, the heat in her skin erupting outward in spiraling flames.
Erebor advanced. Reality around him folded as if the universe allowed him to be wherever he desired. Dense, living shadows snaked forward, consuming heat and extinguishing even the glow of galaxies.
Pyralis spun in midair. A flaming wave burst from her body in a ring shape, burning the surrounding darkness.
The two met at the center of the torn space.
Their clash made no sound—but the plane itself seemed to tremble.
Shadows coiled around Pyralis like blind serpents, attempting to erase every molecule of her existence. In response, she exploded in light. She burned—not just externally, but internally. Her blood evaporated into stellar plasma, and her bones pulsed like atomic nuclei.
She danced.
A spin, a burst, a leap.
Each movement left trails of fire that did not extinguish.
The void around her ignited and refused to return to its natural state.
Erebor resisted.
His form fragmented, then reassembled.
He was the silence between screams.
For long minutes… or millennia? The two fought.
Nearby galaxies ceased to exist.
Time hesitated to advance in that region.
But Pyralis knew: this was not enough.
She closed her eyes.
Placed her hand over her own chest.
"I am the flame. But there is something that burns before me…" she murmured.
Her body bloomed into light.
From the tips of her fingers, from the center of her spirit, something small emerged.
A spark.
She did not create it. She merely released it.
The First Star.
The light that preceded creation. The flame no god dared touch. The energy that could only be invoked by one willing to burn alongside it.
Around her, everything stopped.
Space folded, trembling as if swallowing its own origin.
The shadow faltered.
Erebor retreated for the first time.
The First Star grew in silence.
And then—she released it.
The First Star collapsed in on itself.
The explosion was not a normal expansion—it was an eruption of creation itself. The light it spewed not only outshone galaxies: it rewrote the laws of that plane.
Entire nebulas were converted into golden dust. Constellations abandoned their orbits. Planets did not burn—they were undone, dismantled molecule by molecule. Space's structure cracked like glass about to shatter.
At the center of the calamity, Pyralis stood unmoved.
Her eyes were closed. Each beat of her heart cost enough energy to burn a moon. Each breath was a negotiation between her body and eternity.
'Burn… until the end.'
Light swept over Erebor.
But the shadow resisted.
Fragmented, hesitant, his form returned—each time smaller, more unstable, yet insistent.
It was the end of the light that fed him.
It was absence trying to survive the birth of everything.
Gradually, he tried to gather his dispersed parts. He spread like a veil over a dead star.
But the First Star was not merely destruction: it was transfiguration.
The spark touched his essence and did not just burn—it penetrated.
And there, at the core of the god of shadows, light found something he did not even know existed: regret.
Not an emotion… but an ancestral echo. A buried sensation predating even time itself.
The desire to exist… not as the end, but as something more.
And that was enough.
Light infiltrated.
The shadow trembled.
Then, Erebor exploded.
In silence.
The void folded over itself.
And for the first time since the beginning of cosmic cycles, silence wept in the divine plane.
Pyralis collapsed.
Her body floated in the illuminated vastness, surrounded by golden embers that seemed to shield her from a chill creeping between spaces.
The universe had paused to witness her. And now, it breathed again.
Her eyes opened slowly.
The First Star had vanished.
All that remained of it was a new, vibrant constellation where darkness had once been.
She smiled, weary.
Her body shook from exhaustion.
The flames around her grew subtle.
Every gesture pained her.
But something was new: a gentler silence. A kinder absence.
'Perhaps he was the necessary pause for light to understand its worth.'
Pyralis did not celebrate. She did not raise her fists or proclaim victory. She merely closed her eyes once more and allowed herself to be carried by gentle cosmic currents, as if sleeping in the hands of the universe.
No one knows how much time passed.
Perhaps days.
Perhaps eons.
When she awoke again, she no longer floated in the void.
She felt ground beneath her feet—a damp floor covered in ancient roots.
The forest around her was deep, dense, alive in a primal way.
The trees rose like colossal vegetative towers, their canopies closing the sky, filtering light into shades of green and gold. The air was heavy, scented with the aroma of a life that knew nothing of the heavens, yet whispered timeless wisdom.
Pyralis rose slowly. Her eyes still burned, but now less like suns and more like torches ablaze from within. Her stellar armor was cracked in places, but her posture remained straight, fierce, divine.
She walked among the trees.
She felt the ground vibrate—not with fear, but with recognition.
The forest accepted her.
Soon, she found a structure partially consumed by the roots of time: an ancient palace, covered in moss, its columns carved from golden crystal and its murals long faded. The jungle embraced it like a beloved corpse too cherished to be forgotten.
Crossing through the broken gates, she sensed something dormant inside.
Something ancient.
Something… familiar.
Pyralis stopped before a cracked mirror, covered in cosmic dust.
There she saw herself—and yet did not.
The woman in the reflection was more serene.
Less fire, more light.
'I am still destruction… but now I understand why I burn.'
A noise echoed through the palace's depths.
She raised her head.
A new presence.
Or perhaps a calling.
Something—or someone—awaited her.
A forgotten secret? An ally? A slumbering enemy?
She walked forward, unafraid.
Pyralis, who had burned the shadows, now ventured into a silent world. Not in search of war. But of purpose.
And as her footsteps echoed between broken pillars and statues draped in vines, the universe—out there—recorded: the goddess of cosmic fire had descended to the world.