The second Chaotic General stepped forward.
General Irix Vale did not look at Vhal's corpse.
Unlike Vhal, he had no sword.
He carried no visible weapon at all.
Sorrow's five Generals shifted again.
Irix raised both hands.
Irix said, "I understand the restriction."
Sorrow said nothing.
Irix looked toward her shadow.
Irix said, "Your authority requires darkness."
Sorrow replied, "Correct."
Irix smiled.
Then the entire battlefield ignited.
Chaotic Energy exploded outward in a continuous crimson field.
Every direction filled with uniform light.
Every surface became equally illuminated.
Sorrow's shadow vanished.
Irix spread his arms.
Irix said, "Nothing to mourn."
Sorrow looked down.
No shadow existed beneath her feet.
Karma smiled from his throne.
Irix stepped forward.
Sorrow asked, "What is your Chaotic expression?"
Irix replied, "Continuation."
Sorrow's eyes sharpened.
Irix said, "Vhal made reality indecisive."
A red fracture appeared behind him.
Then another grew from the first.
Then another.
Irix continued, "I make it incapable of stopping."
He punched.
Sorrow moved aside.
The punch missed.
But the action continued.
The missed strike generated another strike.
That strike generated another.
Then another.
The sequence multiplied.
One movement became ten.
Ten became hundreds.
Every action created another consequence demanding continuation.
Sorrow moved through the expanding assault.
Irix laughed.
Irix said, "Once something begins around me, Chaos refuses to let it finish."
A missed punch became another punch.
A spark became a flame.
The flame became an explosion.
The explosion created shockwaves.
The shockwaves created fractures.
The fractures spread farther.
The battlefield became an accelerating cascade of events feeding into events.
Irix said, "You need endings."
He raised one hand.
Thousands of continuing attacks surrounded Sorrow.
Irix said, "I don't provide them."
One of Sorrow's Generals shouted, "Chair!"
Sorrow raised her hand.
Everything stopped being red.
Sorrow said, "Advanced Technique."
Karma's smile weakened by the smallest fraction.
Sorrow said, "Private Domain."
The light disappeared.
Sorrow finished, "Black Mourning."
Darkness consumed the Karmic Battlefield.
Not darkness caused by the absence of a star.
Not nighttime.
Not missing illumination.
There was no outside light source from which shadow could be distinguished.
Inside Black Mourning, everything was already inside shadow.
Irix stopped smiling.
His continuing attacks moved through the darkness.
The first punch stopped.
Then the continuation created by it stopped.
The explosion behind Sorrow expanded halfway.
It never expanded again.
A crack moved through the ground.
It reached three meters.
There was no fourth.
Irix stared around him.
Irix said, "No."
Sorrow walked toward him.
Inside Black Mourning, her Bereavement required no positioning.
No angle.
No shadow cast beneath a target.
Everything within the Domain was already eligible to be mourned.
Irix forced more Chaotic Energy outward.
One action generated a thousand continuations.
Every one stopped.
He generated a million.
The darkness swallowed their next states.
Irix stepped backward.
His first step worked.
His second did not.
Irix looked down.
Sorrow continued approaching.
Irix raised his hand.
It reached his chest.
Then stopped.
Irix's breathing became uneven.
He tried moving his fingers.
Nothing.
Sorrow said, "Continuation requires somewhere to go."
Irix's eyes widened.
Sorrow said, "Here, there is nowhere."
Irix's heart beat.
Once.
Twice.
Sorrow's shadow no longer needed to reach him.
He was standing inside it.
Sorrow said, "You've been mourned."
The third heartbeat never arrived.
Irix's body stiffened.
His knees buckled.
He collapsed into the darkness.
For half a second, his silhouette remained.
Then even that was gone.
Silence filled Black Mourning.
Karma stood.
His throne disappeared behind him.
For the first time since Sorrow arrived, his expression held something besides amusement.
Interest.
Karma said, "Now we're talking."
Sorrow faced him.
Sorrow replied, "You should have taken the warning."
Karma laughed softly.
Karma asked, "Which one?"
Sorrow disappeared into the darkness.
She attacked.
Karma moved.
His foot shifted.
The next position never arrived.
He stopped.
Karma looked down.
Sorrow appeared beside him.
Her hand struck toward his chest.
Reality reacted before he did.
Space attempted to reposition Karma elsewhere.
Black Mourning covered the transition.
That next position was mourned.
Karma remained in front of her.
His eyes narrowed.
Chaotic Energy erupted from his skin.
It formed.
Then failed to spread.
The next state of the energy no longer existed.
Sorrow stepped closer.
Karma said, "You've practiced."
Sorrow replied, "You haven't."
A dark shape moved beneath Karma's feet.
His next step disappeared.
Karma attempted another.
Gone.
A second.
Gone.
Reality tried placing him farther away.
The movement began.
Then stopped.
For perhaps the first time in longer than Sorrow could comprehend, reality tried to accommodate Karma—
and failed to finish doing so.
Karma's smile disappeared.
Sorrow saw it.
She understood immediately.
This was not immunity.
This was not invincibility.
Karma's terrifying movement had always depended on something.
Reality had to continue from the version where Karma was somewhere inconvenient to the version where Karma was where he wanted to be.
Black Mourning stood between those states.
Sorrow said, "There you are."
Karma looked at her.
Sorrow's darkness deepened.
She attacked again.
Karma raised his hand.
His fingers moved halfway.
Sorrow mourned the rest.
His hand stopped.
Karma forced Chaotic Energy through the Domain.
Reality filled with contradictory outcomes.
In one, Karma escaped.
In another, Sorrow missed.
In another, Black Mourning collapsed.
Sorrow felt all of them.
Every possibility existed within shadow.
Sorrow closed her hand.
The first disappeared.
Then the second.
Then the third.
Karma's expression changed.
Sorrow said, "Chaos gives reality possibilities."
She stepped toward him.
Sorrow said, "Grief teaches it which ones are gone."
Karma's eyes glowed.
The entire Karmic Battlefield tried to overwrite the Domain.
Crimson light appeared through the darkness.
Sorrow's nose began bleeding.
She ignored it.
The red light spread another inch.
Sorrow looked at it.
Sorrow said, "Mourn it."
The light stopped.
Karma stared.
Sorrow's breathing grew heavier.
Blood ran from one nostril down her lip.
Maintaining Black Mourning against him was costing her more with every second.
But it was working.
That was enough.
Sorrow moved closer.
Her darkness covered Karma completely.
His next motion vanished.
His next manifestation vanished.
His next repositioning vanished.
Reality searched for another favorable configuration.
Sorrow mourned it.
Another.
Gone.
Another.
Gone.
Thousands.
Millions.
Possibility after possibility collapsed into things that reality now regarded as lost.
For the first time, Karma's own Chaotic Energy began failing to find somewhere to go.
Sorrow looked directly into his eyes.
Sorrow said, "I told you."
Karma remained silent.
Sorrow continued, "I don't threaten people."
Her hand reached his chest.
Sorrow said, "Threats are futures."
Darkness spread over Karma's body.
His heartbeat became audible.
One beat.
Then another.
Sorrow's fingers closed.
Sorrow said, "I deal in conclusions."
Karma's heart attempted its next beat.
Sorrow mourned it.
Nothing happened.
Karma's eyes widened slightly.
His Chaotic Energy surged once.
It failed to continue.
His knees struck the ground.
Sorrow did not move away.
Reality tried again.
A version of Karma standing.
Mourned.
A version where his heart continued.
Mourned.
A version where Sorrow failed.
Mourned.
A version where the Domain broke.
Mourned.
The Karmic Battlefield began shaking.
The crimson fractures beneath it dimmed.
Karma looked up at her.
His face had become strangely calm.
Sorrow waited for another trick.
Another impossible correction.
Another laugh.
Nothing came.
Karma fell forward.
His body struck the ground.
Black Mourning remained active for several more seconds.
Sorrow did not trust silence.
She watched his shadow.
It did not move.
She watched his chest.
It did not rise.
She waited for reality to reposition him.
It did not.
She waited for Chaotic Energy.
Nothing.
Only then did Sorrow release the Domain.
Black Mourning collapsed.
Light returned.
The Karmic Battlefield was ruined.
Vhal Corren was dead.
Irix Vale was dead.
Karma lay motionless before her.
Sorrow stood over the body, blood running from her nose and down her chin.
One of her Generals approached cautiously.
The General asked, "Chair?"
Sorrow did not answer.
The General stared at Karma.
The General whispered, "Is he—"
Sorrow looked down.
The universe searched for another outcome.
Another position.
Another continuation.
Another favorable answer.
Sorrow had mourned them all.
Karma died.