The star-streak that Lo Quen, the Starforger Dragon, had become tore through dimensions at a speed that transcended causality, biting down relentlessly on the fleeing Nyarlathotep.
Ahead lay the desolate edge of the universe, an eternal wall of silence where even information itself drifted toward annihilation.
Any ordinary being that stepped into this place would lose itself in a void where concepts grew thin, eventually dissolving into nothing.
But to Lo Quen, this was no obstacle.
And for Nyarlathotep, a creature skilled at moving through chaos, it was meant to be a shield to shake off pursuit.
Nyarlathotep's ever-changing body twisted violently in absolute darkness. The sense of being locked onto, clinging like a parasite to bone, pressed down on it, and fear threatened to spill over.
It had never imagined that its carefully laid scheme, using the Ice-Fire World as a backup to divert Ghroth's attention, would draw such a terrifying existence directly to its door, one that had crushed Shub-Niggurath and Yog-Sothoth with overwhelming force.
"I have to get away from him! I must return to Azathoth's protection!"
Nyarlathotep's chaotic thoughts raced.
It tore through layer after layer of dimensional membranes, its form flashing wildly between human, colossal beast, formless mass, and pure light and shadow, trying to disrupt Lo Quen's lock through sheer confusion.
At times it became a flowing shadow, merging with the surrounding darkness.
At times it turned into a screaming comet, attempting to pass itself off as something else.
At others, it split into tens of thousands of faint, weak avatars, fleeing in all directions.
This was its usual trick, enough to fool most pursuers.
But beneath Lo Quen's Dragon Vision, every illusion and duplicate was no more than a bubble in sunlight.
His gaze pierced straight through the surface, locking firmly onto the constantly shifting core.
That was where Nyarlathotep's true essence lay, the authority of a chaotic messenger and the source of its divinity.
"Pointless struggle…"
Lo Quen sneered.
He did not even bother with the clones. With the power of [Stellar Stream], he moved as if performing short-range jumps through space and time.
Each flicker closed an enormous distance, keeping him firmly on the heels of Nyarlathotep's true body.
Realizing escape was impossible, Nyarlathotep suddenly turned back. Its face froze into a horrific totem made of countless screaming human faces, unleashing a shriek that stabbed straight into the soul.
"Outsider! There is no inevitable enmity between us! Spare me, and I will tell you the secrets of Azathoth's palace! Secrets beyond the universe—"
It tried to trade secrets for its life.
The answer was a breath of starfire, compressed to the absolute extreme.
The blast pierced straight through the psychic corruption barrier Nyarlathotep tried to raise and burned into its ever-shifting body.
"Aaah—!"
A shrill, inhuman scream echoed through the void.
The protective layer covering Nyarlathotep's surface rapidly charred and peeled away under the starfire infused with the power of star-forging, exposing an even more chaotic underlying essence.
A pain that reached deep into the roots of its divinity tore through it. This agony was not physical damage, but the sensation of its very existence being scorched by a higher order of power.
"You've enraged me! Foolish dragon!"
Nyarlathotep abandoned all hope of escape or negotiation. Despair and madness ignited its final savagery.
It knew that if it did not fight with everything it had, it would fall here today.
Its twisted body suddenly swelled, transforming into an immense tide of darkness that spread across several star systems.
This darkness was not Shub-Niggurath's life-nurturing void, but a chaotic abyss filled with deception, betrayal, madness, and despair.
Within the dark tide appeared countless phantoms of civilizations.
They prospered.
They fought.
They were led into self-destruction under Nyarlathotep's whispers, eventually becoming warped spirits that wailed in eternal anguish.
This was its collection of despair, gathered over billions of years, now released in full. It formed a domain of mental corruption, a dead end meant to drag Lo Quen into an endless cycle of madness.
At the same time, it invoked its authority as a messenger, twisting the information of the surrounding universe.
Physical constants grew vague. Chains of causality were scrambled. Fragments of past and future were stitched together at random.
It sought to create a prison of collapsed logic. Even if it could not kill Lo Quen, it would banish him forever into this realm of disorder and broken time.
This was Nyarlathotep's all-or-nothing strike, pouring out the full depth of power and foundation it possessed as one of the Three Pillars.
Facing this chaotic tide, one capable of dragging even gods into ruin, Lo Quen, the Starforger Dragon, finally halted his pursuit.
He hovered at the center of this collapsing region of the cosmos, a solemn radiance igniting within his dragon eyes.
"Nyarlathotep, chaos is not an excuse for disorder. Lies will be pierced by starlight, and you, this despicable schemer, will be judged in full."
A deep dragon roar rolled out as the countless miniature stellar vortices circling his body suddenly accelerated, surging forward and converging before him.
[Stellar Convergence: Barrier of Ten Thousand Stars]
As if answering a supreme summons, innumerable stellar phantoms projected from distant starfields, assembling before Lo Quen into a resplendent barrier of flowing starlight, suffused with pale-golden radiance.
The chaotic black tide, laden with the despairing wails of countless civilizations, slammed violently into the barrier, yet failed to shake it in the slightest.
Every stellar phantom embedded within the barrier represented a truth of order.
The steady glow they emitted purified and dispersed the chaotic, corrupting energies of mental pollution.
Nyarlathotep's techniques of twisting information and scrambling causality met their natural bane the instant they touched that pale-golden starlight.
The power of starforging, the force that defines stars and constructs the framework of the universe, embodied a higher tier of orderly stability.
Before this absolute power of order, the informational chaos created by Nyarlathotep was forcibly corrected.
Disordered causality was sorted anew, and warped fragments of spacetime were dragged back into alignment.
"No! That's impossible! My chaos… my lies… how could this—"
Watching its strongest assault collapse so effortlessly, the totem formed of countless screaming faces contorted in total breakdown.
The root of its power lay in guiding and amplifying the universe's inherent chaos and the ignorance of living beings.
But when faced with an absolute force that could directly define order and deny chaos itself,
it was as though it had encountered its natural predator, every trick rendered hollow and useless.
Lo Quen gave it no further chance.
He drew upon the power of every star around him, along with the resonance of far more distant suns answering his call across the universe.
[The Skies Descend] descended once more.
But this time, it was the final judgment.
The falling stellar cascade no longer surged freely. Under Lo Quen's precise control, it condensed into a pale-golden longspear that spanned the breadth of the starry river.