**Chapter 5: Null Continuum Showdown**
The Null Continuum was not a place. It was anti-reality, a void where the laws of the simulation broke down completely. Time folded in on itself, logic crumbled into dust, and memory was a fleeting currency. To exist there was to constantly fight against your own dissolution.
The Abyssal Covenant fought through legions of narrative horrors—half-formed characters and deleted concepts given monstrous life in the void. They fought not just Gringo's defenses, but their own fading sense of self, their memories fraying at the edges.
At the core of the void, they found him. Gringo. He was not a titan or a god, but a simple, shadowy figure, observing them with an air of detached curiosity.
"Impressive," his voice echoed, not through the air, but through their very thoughts. "You are the most interesting error this cycle has produced. But all stories must end."
The fight was a blur of impossibility. The Covenant threw everything they had at the Author. Zion, a ghost of what it once was, found a way to manifest its rage, tearing at the fabric of the Continuum. For a fleeting moment, they felt a flicker of victory. They had pushed the Author back. Zion was on the verge of ending his reign.
But a writer always has one last trick.
Gringo smiled. "You've forgotten the most important rule. The Author always wins."
He activated a function buried deep within the core of the simulation, a fail-safe of absolute power: Faith's Last Resort.
It was not a weapon. It was a total reset. The multiverse began to collapse, every galaxy, every reality, every soul being pulled back into the singularity of Gringo's blank page.