Ava, Star, Lilith, and Vesperos landed together, surrounded on all sides by Team Takeover.
Vesperos could barely contain himself.
"If I do not reach my brother in time because of you, I swear I will kill you!"
Ava thought to himself,
These guys are strong…
Nullius only laughed.
"Kill us? When I finish with you, no one will even remember you existed. Not even your mother."
Khepri stepped forward, staff humming.
"Let us meet in the middle. Give us your hypercube. When we return, you tell the generals that all the worlds you conquered were actually ours. Tell them we saved you from disaster and you can rescue your little friends."
He pointed at Ava.
"But not you. You stay."
Ava looked around at his team, calculating.
"I think we should take the deal. One of us stays and fights, the others search for our friends. It is better than all four of us being trapped here."
Star shook her head immediately.
"I am not leaving you. We came here together, we leave together. Splitting up now makes no sense."
Lilith's wings twitched with fury.
"I am not leaving you with these bratz. We can crush them together."
Vesperos clenched his fist. Black-and-gray shadow energy poured off his arm in heavy waves.
"We are not bowing."
Ava faced Team Takeover and raised his voice.
"Move. Now. Get out of our way or we destroy you. Last chance."
Khepri sneered.
"We tried to be reasonable. A peasant never recognizes a good offer."
Nullius spread his arms, white eraser energy wrapping around his body like a mantle.
"Finally. I believe I have found a challenge."
The air tightened.
Both sides lunged fists, kicks, aura, and fury colliding in the center of the battlefield.
The fight began.
Vesperos lunged first, driving a barrage of punches toward Gula.
She slipped between them effortlessly, drifting back as the massive coffin on her back swayed with her movement. Reaching behind her, she seized the coffin and wrenched it forward, forcing it between them like a shield.
"You're dead," Vesperos snarled, hammering his fists into the coffin. "You're dead!"
The lid burst open.
The coffin burst open, and spikes poured out in an unending torrent. As long as the lid remained open, they never stopped countless blades flooding space like a living metallic storm. Vesperos threw his arm up to shield himself. The first wave ripped into him, blood streaking across his forearm as the relentless impact drove him backward.
"Emanate."
His form did not turn to smoke.
Instead, his existence slipped into Vespertine Emanation a state where substance, location, and form no longer applied in any consistent way. He did not phase out. Reality simply failed to anchor him.
The remaining spikes passed straight through.
Vesperos extended his hand and released a condensed blast of Black-and-gray shadow energy. The explosion tore through the spike storm and slammed into the coffin. He poured in enough force to annihilate multiple universes, compressing the detonation through Gentle Fist until it detonated as a controlled sphere.
"That should've taken care of her."
The dust cleared.
The coffin still floated there.
Before he could react, Gula was suddenly in front of him. She threw a punch.
It passed straight through his chest.
Vesperos laughed.
"You can't touch me."
His arm solidified mid-swing.
The punch connected.
He dematerialized again, laughing as he struck her over and over, phasing in and out with perfect timing. Each blow sent her flying farther planet to planet every hit hurling her ninety-three million miles through space.
He did not stop.
The punches kept coming.
They tore through one universe, then burst into another.
Then another.
Reality shattered and reformed around them as he continued driving her back, blow after blow, carrying the fight across creation itself.
Vesperos gathered everything he had into one final strike. Black-and-gray shadow energy spiraled violently around his fist as he screamed, shadows surging upward, his hand turning completely black.
"Darkness rise!"
He landed the final punch.
The impact folded reality in on itself.
When the chaos settled, Gula floated unconscious in the void, her coffin nowhere to be seen.
Vesperos hovered there for a moment, breathing hard.
"It's over," he muttered. "I need to get back to Star… and find my brother."
He turned and launched himself forward, tearing through universes at immeasurable speed. The distant flashes of other battles came into view
Then he felt it.
Energy rushing toward him.
He turned.
Gula was already there.
Pink and purple demonic energy burned around her as she charged, fist drawn back. Vesperos slipped into Vespertine Emanation again, laughing as her punches passed harmlessly through him.
He solidified his arm and struck.
She dodged.
Before he could turn intangible again, she grabbed his hand his tangible hand and flipped him.
Vesperos was hurled across space before he managed to stabilize himself.
She figured it out, he realized. I can become intangible… but I have to become solid to hit her.
He barely had time to react.
Gula was already in front of him, the massive coffin in her hands, swinging it like a blade.
Vesperos grinned.
"Emanate."
He dissolved into his non-material state
And the coffin hit him anyway.
The higher-dimensional nature of the coffin ignored his intangibility, smashing into him with overwhelming force. The impact sent him crashing down into a nearby planet.
He pushed himself up slowly, touching his head as blood ran between his fingers.
"…What?"
His eyes locked onto the coffin as Gula descended in silence, the massive object resting calmly at her side.
"How did you touch me?" he demanded. "What is that coffin made of?"
She said nothing.
She raised one hand and made a simple gesture.
Come.
Vesperos smirked.
"Fine. I don't need intangibility to beat you."
Black-and-gray shadow energy spread across the planet, seeping into every shadow. Darkness peeled itself off the ground, the cliffs, the ruins. From each shadow, something crawled out beasts, monsters, warped silhouettes given form.
"I bend shadows to my will," Vesperos declared. "This is my shadow army."
Some of the shadow soldiers raised enchanted bows.
"Fire."
Arrows streaked toward Gula.
She did not move.
A grimoire manifested before her as she formed deliberate signs with her hands—silent, precise sign language activating the spell. An invisible barrier snapped into place.
The arrows struck and shattered harmlessly against it.
Vesperos grit his teeth as he studied her.
She has a powerful weapon. That coffin… and she's good with spells.
He scowled. I hate fighting spellcasters. I'm terrible at magic.
Then his expression hardened.
Who cares. I'm still going to beat her. I need to get to my brother.
Black shadows swallowed his hand, crawling up his arm until it became a void of darkness. As he flexed his fingers, his staff emerged from the shadow itself, solidifying in his grip.
"I'm done playing with you."
At his command, the shadow army surged forward, leaping across the ruined planet in a tide of living darkness.
Gula responded by opening her coffin.
Inside, a massive sphere of energy was already forming, compressed and vibrating with lethal pressure. She released it.
The blast erased the planet in an instant, swallowing the shadow soldiers completely. Rock, atmosphere, and darkness vanished together, leaving only open space.
Gula and Vesperos floated in the void, facing each other.
Vesperos lunged first, fists flying. Gula raised the coffin, blocking the blows and firing bursts of demonic energy back at him. One of the blasts raced straight toward his chest.
Vesperos watched it approach and grimaced.
"With the staff in my hand, I can't shift into smoke. I'll have to take this head-on."
He spun the staff, dragging shadows into a dense barrier that softened the impact. The blast detonated, but he remained standing.
He smiled.
"That didn't hurt."
The staff expanded instantly, growing longer longer than planets. He drove it forward like a drill, smashing into Gula's stomach and sending her flying. She crashed through multiple worlds before slamming into the surface of another planet.
Gula lay still.
Vesperos flew toward her, energy building in his palm.
"This time, I'll make sure you don't get back up."
Then her body began to change.
Her form twisted and folded, morphing seamlessly into the coffin itself.
"What?" Vesperos muttered.
He looked up.
Gula was floating above him.
She formed a series of hand signs, activating a spell. The coffin began to glow.
Not with light but with definition.
A boundary declared itself.
Inside the coffin, Vesperos saw something that resembled a black hole, yet instinct told him that comparison was wrong. This was not gravity. It did not bend space or pull on matter.
It was a deficit in continuation.
Anything that continued to exist regardless of form, substance, or location was drawn toward the absence where continuation ended.
Panic surged through him.
She couldn't… She couldn't have this much power. This level of magic…
He shifted into Vespertine Emanation, his body losing form as he tried to escape.
It didn't matter.
The sealing magic caught him anyway.
Even his non-material state was being dragged inward. His existence stretched, unraveling as he was pulled into the coffin. He screamed as the void swallowed him whole.
The lid slammed shut.
The coffin shook violently as he struggled from within.
Then it went still.
Gula descended calmly, grasped the coffin, and turned away.
Without a word, she flew back toward the battlefield
leaving Vesperos sealed behind her.
Meanwhile, she was already flying back toward her teammates.
Lilith and Khepri were locked in combat.
Punches and kicks collided midair as Khepri rode atop his massive scarab, their strikes clashing again and again. Each impact sent shockwaves rippling outward, shaking entire universes. Both fighters were hurled back before stabilizing themselves, hovering in silence as they stared each other down.
Khepri broke it first.
"You can leave. We do not care about you. All we want is the hypercube and the glory of the worlds you conquered. Those belong to us now. And your little friend needs to learn respect."
Lilith's wings flared.
"You think I will allow you to steal what we earned? My 'little friend' is the future ruler of all things. And I am the future Queen. I will give you one chance to bow now. When my reign comes, I might spare you."
Khepri burst into laughter.
"You and your friends will rule nothing. You are peasants. You will not even graduate. This is your last day. We already gave you the chance to leave. You should be grateful."
He raised his hand.
Sand erupted around Lilith.
Grains manifested in front of her, then behind her, then everywhere. She looked around sharply and shot upward but the sand followed. More appeared, wrapping around her body as she climbed. The mass grew rapidly, compressing and hardening until it formed a planet-sized sphere of sand, sealing her inside.
Khepri tightened his grip, increasing the weight. The pressure began to crush inward, aiming to collapse her completely.
Then the sand cracked.
A massive air slash tore through space itself, slicing reality as it passed. It grazed Khepri's cheek, carving a clean line and drawing blood.
He touched his face and stared at his fingers.
Then he grinned.
More slashes followed cutting through space, through reality itself. Khepri weaved between them, his scarab darting aside just in time.
Inside the sand prison, Lilith exploded outward.
Each swing of her wings released another spatial cut, ripping through layers of sand, space, and reality. The planet-sized sphere fractured, then collapsed entirely as she burst free.
She surged forward, wings slicing the void with every beat.
Khepri pulled back, flying hard to evade the slashes.
Lilith tasted the faint droplets of blood drifting in space and licked her lips. She continued carving through reality as she closed the distance, her voice carrying after him.
"Running already?"
She smiled.
"From your future Queen?"
Lilith drew in power, black and purple demonic energy gathering in her mouth until it throbbed violently. She released it in a devastating beam.
Khepri saw it coming and panicked. His scarab reacted instantly, swallowing him whole just before the blast struck. The explosion caught the creature mid-flight, sending both of them hurtling uncontrollably through space.
The scarab tore through planets and suns like debris before finally crashing down onto a random world. It slammed into a city, plowing through skyscrapers and streets alike, leaving ruin in its wake.
Khepri crawled out of the creature's body, coated in thick insectoid fluid. He staggered to his feet and looked up.
Lilith was already there.
She hovered above the ruined city, wings beating slowly, eyes locked on him.
Khepri summoned his grimoire, the tome floating beside him as he activated a spell. From his palm, tiny scarab beetles poured out, skittering across the ground.
Civilians nearby stared in confusion and terror.
"What's going on?"
"Is he okay?"
The insects reached one of them.
They bit.
The scream barely had time to form before she was gone consumed in seconds. The scarabs spread rapidly, latching onto people, devouring them whole as panic erupted across the city.
Lilith watched in disbelief.
"What is he doing…?"
Then she felt it.
Pain flared along her arm as blood welled up. Scarabs were already crawling over her skin, biting, burrowing. She tried to pull away, launching herself upward
A wall of sand slammed shut above her, sealing the sky completely.
She struck it with her fists. The barrier didn't budge.
Turning sharply, she saw the scarab beetle closing in again.
Lilith drew in a sharp breath, black and purple energy coiling violently around her. Then she screamed.
Demonic power surged forward in a crushing wave, tearing through the wall of sand and obliterating it completely. The force ripped open the sky and hurled her free of the planet's atmosphere, scattering the remains of the barrier like dust before a storm.
The scarabs followed.
She twisted mid-flight, demonic energy flooding her mouth once more, and fired. The blast erased the insects, smashed through the remaining sand barrier, and detonated against the planet itself.
She poured enough power into the attack to annihilate entire universes compressing the devastation through Gentle Fist. The planet imploded cleanly, collapsing into nothing.
Lilith hovered in the void, breathing heavily.
"It's finally over… I need to hurry and find the others"
Something massive slammed into her face.
Her vision snapped back just in time for the coffin to hit her again, sending her flying. She twisted in space, catching herself, and looked up.
Gula.
Lilith steadied herself and scoffed.
"So you beat Vesperos. I'm not surprised. I didn't sense much potential from him."
Then her expression hardened.
"…Wait."
She felt it.
"That energy… he's not dead. He's inside your coffin. You sealed him."
Gula said nothing. She lifted her hands and signed calmly, then pointed.
Lilith followed her gaze.
Far below, where the planet had been destroyed, Khepri was still alive—badly wounded, kneeling beside his scarab. He pressed his hand against it, and their bodies began to fuse.
Armor formed across his skin. His size exploded outward. His pupils vanished, turning pure white as his form expanded larger than a planet.
Lilith now floated between them.
Gula above.
Khepri below.
She exhaled slowly.
"…I can't handle this alone."
She didn't have time to react.
Gula suddenly appeared in front of her and drove a punch straight into her, sending Lilith flying through space. Before she could recover, Khepri's massive, planet-sized fist came down like a falling world.
The impact crushed into her. Lilith screamed as blood burst from her mouth and her body was hurled across the void.
Khepri raised his hands, forming colossal pyramids of sand and stone. With a thought, he launched them toward her like meteors.
One nearly struck.
Lilith's body shattered into a swarm of bats mid-flight, dispersing just in time as the massive pyramid tore past. The bats spiraled back together, reforming her body as she gasped for breath.
She looked up.
Both of them were already rushing toward her.
"I can't do this by myself…"
Lilith turned and fled.
Gula and Khepri chased her relentlessly, tearing through space as Lilith streaked away
and as that pursuit raged on, another battle unfolded.
Elsewhere, Star floated alone in space, cosmic energy blazing around her. Her hands were raised, her eyes darting back and forth.
"Where is he?" she whispered. "Where is he?"
A blur ripped past her.
Rakshasas zipped past her, laughing, moving at a speed so irrelevant that distance and reaction ceased to exist.
The battlefield was splitting apart.
Star's eyes strained.
"I can barely perceive him… he's too fast"
Pain exploded across her face.
She was sent flying, then struck again before she could recover. Rakshasas kept flashing past her in streaks of distortion, laughing as all four of his arms slammed into her at once.
Star forced herself to steady, throwing punch after punch. Each strike released miniature suns, screaming toward Rakshasas.
He dodged effortlessly.
In the next instant, he split into two bodies, both versions striking her face simultaneously. She was hurled backward as he recombined, his speed surging again. All four of his legs snapped forward, kicking her square in the face.
Star vanished through planets, crashing straight into a sun.
She drifted there for a moment… then slowly rose.
The solar fire poured into her, absorbed, multiplied, fused. Her body began to glow pink as the energy wrapped around her essence.
Rakshasas zipped past the sun and her, laughing, then suddenly skidded to a stop. He stepped onto the star itself and immediately recoiled, pulling his foot away.
"What the hell?" he snapped. "That doesn't feel like normal heat."
Star lifted her head.
"It's not. It's mixed with my energy. And my power is more than just solar"
she took a step forward, the light around her warping,
"it's cosmic. And it's magical."
She raised her arms and screamed.
"Pink Eclipse!"
Dozens of suns erupted into existence at once, screaming toward Rakshasas.
He laughed.
He always laughed.
He weaved between them effortlessly, the same dance repeated again and again. He struck her in the face. Again. And again. Each impact sent her reeling. She stumbled, caught herself, and kept firing. Suns formed. Suns detonated. Suns missed.
Over and over.
He kept dodging. Kept touching her. Each pass shaving her down piece by piece. Time blurred into repetition. The exchange replayed hundreds of times, the outcome always the same.
Blood streamed from her nose.
"Just give up," Rakshasas mocked. "Look at you. You're bleeding. Have you even hit me once?"
Star wiped the blood away. Her hand trembled, but her gaze did not. She lifted her head slowly and looked at him with calm certainty.
"How about you look around?"
Rakshasas froze.
He was surrounded.
Every dodge he had made left a sun behind. Hundreds. Thousands. Pink stars filled space in every direction.
Star summoned her grimoire. Its pages snapped open as she signed rapidly, symbols burning as they flipped on their own. Light collapsed inward, compressing around her hands as something began to take shape.
Her power surged violently.
Rakshasas' grin finally faltered.
"What are you doing?" he snapped. "Your energy… it's climbing!"
"You're too fast for me to hit," Star said steadily, her voice unshaken. "But you can't dodge all of this."
She lifted her hand and whispered a spell.
"Kresh'Tal."
The spellbook flashed once, then vanished.
In her grasp appeared the Star Breaker.
The blade was formed from pure energy, its brilliance burning in a radiant pink hue, swirling with living power that pulsed like flame. It was forged from an infinite number of stars, each one endlessly exploding and being reborn, the weapon locked in a constant cycle of supernovas and newborn suns.
Tiny starbursts flared along its edges. Sun magic thundered through its core, making the blade feel alive. Radiant. Celestial. Unstoppable.
Around them, the suns she had summoned began to glow brighter.
And brighter.
Rakshasas panicked.
The stars began to explode.
Light surged closer with every detonation. All four of his arms and legs moved at once as he ran, dodging between supernovas as they erupted one by one. His speed surpassed measurement. It surpassed meaning. Distance became irrelevant.
Still, the explosions chased him just as fast.
The light locked onto him. Bound to his heat signature. Following him through space and time as if he were marked.
Time warped. Space bent.
Rakshasas tore backward through time, ripping himself into a separate timeline. He kept running in the exact same position he had occupied before. A different timeline did not mean different events. The same detonations followed. The same inevitability closed in.
A blast erupted right behind him.
He ran again. And again. Tearing through multiple timelines, fleeing across fractured histories, each escape collapsing into the same outcome.
Until the explosions caught him.
They detonated across timelines at once and slammed him back into the original reality.
At the center of it all, Star stood, sword blazing, containing the devastation through Gentle Fist. The explosion carried enough force to erase multiple universes. Some of it could not be contained within the fractured timelines.
Entire universes were destroyed.
When the dust finally cleared, Star hovered alone in empty space, breathing heavily. The Star Breaker dimmed, its light fading.
"That… took everything I had," she whispered. "I had no choice."
The sword vanished from her hand.
Pain detonated across her face. Star gasped, vision blurring as she forced herself upright, scanning the void.
I have to find everyone else.
Where's Ava?
Please… be okay.
Suddenly, something slammed into her.
She was grabbed and hurled forward at irrelevant speed.
Worlds shattered around her as she was driven through planets, through universes, each impact erasing entire realities in her wake. There was no time to scream. No time to think. Only force.
Rakshasas drove her straight down into a world.
Her back cracked against the surface, the planet splitting beneath her as she cratered into it.
He landed atop her and pressed a foot down on her face. His body was scorched, burned, still smoking from the detonations.
"Look what you did to me," he snarled. "I'm going to stomp your head in."
He raised all four legs.
Blood splattered across his face.
Rakshasas froze.
One of his legs was gone.
Not torn. Not burned.
Cleanly severed by a single cut that sliced through reality itself.
A black-and-purple blast slammed into him, sending him flying.
Gula caught her mid-flight.
Star barely registered the motion. The world swam in and out of focus as gravity vanished, then returned in gentle hands instead of violence. She looked up through the haze as a figure reached down toward her.
"Thank you," she whispered.
Lilith hauled her upright, steady but urgent, eyes already scanning the fractured battlefield.
"Where's Ava?" Lilith demanded.
Star swallowed, forcing herself to stay conscious. "I don't know. There was an explosion. We got separated." She winced, pressing a hand to her side. "These enemies… they're strong."
Lilith's expression darkened. "They sealed Vesperos."
Star's breath caught.
"We may have to retreat," Lilith said quietly.
Star shook her head. "We're not leaving without him."
"We may not have a choice."
The ground beneath them twisted.
Space folded inward as something immense forced its way into reality. The sky dimmed. The horizon buckled. Khepri emerged, colossal beyond reason, his form swelling until he dwarfed worlds, his presence pressing down like the weight of a god.
Star straightened despite the pain.
"I know a spell," she said. "One that can release sealed beings. But I'll need time. And I'll need a distraction."
Lilith answered at the exact same moment.
"I have an idea."
Their eyes met. No hesitation. No fear.
"Fine," Star said. "Let's do it."
Lilith gathered demonic energy and screamed. Sonic, higher-dimensional waves ripped outward, shattering reality. Enemies clutched their heads, screaming, but Lilith angled the blast away from Star.
Star watched them stagger and signed rapidly.
"Sunlight Breaker."
A massive beam of radiant magic erupted from her eyes, blinding the enemy team.
Gula screamed, clutching her face as blood leaked from her eyes.
Star rushed forward, hands glowing. She pressed them against the coffin.
The seals broke.
The coffin burst open.
Vesperos flew out, panicked, gasping.
"What… what's happening?!"
"Hurry!" Star and Lilith shouted. "Move!"
They took off at immeasurable speed.
Behind them, Gula, Rakshasas, and Khepri recovered.
"GET THEM!" Khepri roared.
They gave chase.
And while all of this unfolded
Ava Jovajra was already deep in the middle of his own battle.