Chapter-The Line That Did Not Travel
The universe closed.
Silence.
Karma stood alone.
So did Eris.
There was almost nothing else.
A black plain.
A white sky.
Two people.
One conflict.
A drop of blood fell from Karma's remaining hand.
Nothing caught it.
Eris watched it strike the ground. Then she raised her good hand.
"Private Domain," Karma said, looking around.
"You know about them," Eris replied.
"I know about most things," Karma replied.
"Modest," Eris said.
Karma smiled. "I've never suffered from it."
The rules settled between them.
BELLIGERENTS RECOGNIZED: TWO.
OUTSIDE PARTICIPATION: PROHIBITED.
STRUCTURAL INTERVENTION: PROHIBITED.
IMMORTALITY PRIVILEGES: RESTRICTED.
Two combatants. Separate. The attack Karma had prepared to erase that distinction could not dissolve the terms of this contest.
Reality withdrew.
Karma's weight tipped toward his missing side.
Eris hit him before he could correct it.
Her palm snapped his chin upward. Her foot hooked behind his ankle, taking away the step he needed to catch himself.
Karma twisted instead of falling.
Crimson threads tightened around his broken left elbow. The joint folded, hauling his fist toward her temple from an angle the bone could no longer support.
His own Chaos was moving the arm.
Eris struck just above the elbow. The red brace buckled; his fist dropped past her ear.
As he tore his ankle free, she drove her knee into his remaining ribs.
Karma skidded backward. Blood crossed his teeth.
"No one to catch you in here," Eris said.
Her fractured forearm stayed pressed against her breastplate. The knee strike had shifted something in her own ribs, too.
She took a shallow breath and followed him anyway.
Red light tightened inside Karma's open wound. Noctis's severance still left his right arm, shoulder, and much of his torso absent.
But the Red Continuum remained inside what was left.
Seed of Strife had not ended.
Karma's retreat split into two possible movements—both real.
In one, he turned away to draw more Chaos. In the other, his heel whipped toward Eris's damaged ribs.
She hit the shoulder both movements depended on before either turn finished.
The kick lost its leverage. The gathering current scattered into red threads.
Karma hit the ground on his back.
Eris closed on his throat.
Something moved inside his halo.
A small red sphere turned toward her. She had seen it when the domain closed—carried equipment, admitted with its owner.
Now it faced her beneath the white sky.
There was no white reflected on it.
Battle Omniscience found its intended destination.
Her throat.
Eris broke her lunge, twisting off her leading foot before the intention became an attack.
A red line existed beside her.
The ground beyond it was gone.
She landed low, her broken arm clamped to her ribs, and braced for the blast.
Nothing followed.
No impact. No flying stone. Not even the sound of something breaking.
A narrow absence cut across the plain.
It had no bottom.
Its edges faded outward, slower and slower as the energy dispersed. The center had vanished all at once.
Ground. Space. Time along the selected line.
The attack had not crossed the distance between Karma and her neck.
It had arrived without a journey.
Karma rose while she watched the scar.
"You moved early," he said.
Eris kept her good eye on the sphere. "There wasn't a late."
Karma's smile sharpened.
"No."
His next intention settled lower.
Eris twisted her hips out of its path before he fired. A strip of red command cloth vanished behind her.
No ash drifted from it.
The hanging end was simply shorter.
War searched for a pressure to resist. An impact to spread through her armor.
There wasn't one.
The attack removed what it touched.
"That isn't Chaos," Eris said.
"No," Karma replied.
"What is it?"
Karma lifted his ruined left hand. The sphere turned with it.
"Null."
The name supplied Eris with no ready counter. Null was rarer than almost every other energy; only Dark Logical Energy was rarer still. Gods could live entire reigns without facing it.
Standard Chaotic Energy would not survive being offered to that concentration as a shield.
And this was a reservoir.
"Where did you get it?" Eris asked.
"Zerith," Karma said.
She searched the name.
Nothing.
Karma saw the lack of recognition.
"The God of Null. I gave him condensed Karmaic Energy." He raised his hand a little farther. "He gave me this."
The crimson shell thinned.
Inside it, the blackness had no depth she could judge. No surface. Nothing for her eye to settle on.
"The Black Continuum," Karma said.
His next target formed behind her eye.
Eris ducked before he fired.
A short horizontal absence opened through the white sky. The first scar remained below it, its edges still fading.
Neither wound was closing.
Karma lowered his hand.
Three attacks opened inside Battle Omniscience.
Rise, and he took her head.
Stay low, and he removed her chest.
Advance, and the ground beneath her next step disappeared.
Eris searched for the feint.
There wasn't one.
Chaos held three contradictory decisions inside the same moment. All sincere. All ready to become the shot he chose.
Her omniscience was telling her the truth.
Karma had given it three.
Eris lunged before the sphere fixed a line.
Her fist struck his shoulder, wrenching the halo off its aim. The deletion cut the ground beyond her heel.
She stayed close to stop him realigning.
Karma did not try.
His halo turned without his hand.
Eris saw the new selection and dropped. The line took the air above her spine.
His bare knee caught her beneath the ribs.
Her breath burst out. She let the blow fold her lower, away from the sphere, and rolled off her good shoulder.
When she got her feet underneath her, one boot skidded.
Karma watched her force air back into her chest.
"You're reading the archer," he said.
Eris wiped her mouth.
"I'm learning the bow."
The red surface opened when he chose a line. Closed after he fired.
Chaos controlled that opening. Null waited behind it.
There was no moving projectile for her to catch. But there was still a weapon Karma had to operate.
Her eye followed the crimson seam.
Karma saw where she was looking.
His next intention touched her cheek.
Eris was already turning when the distance vanished.
Karma appeared beside her. His fist passed her face, its knuckles black beneath a thin red sheath.
Her good arm almost rose to block.
Battle Omniscience showed her what that would cost.
In that response, the forearm disappeared. His fist continued into her head.
Eris pulled her arm back.
Stronger bone would not help. Neither would armor. Null would remove the guard instead of breaking it—and then remove whatever stood behind it.
She caught his upper arm beyond the black coating.
Her palm drove it across his chest as she stepped past his missing right side. There was no second hand to catch her there.
Karma turned after her.
Eris used the turn. Her heel struck behind his knee; her grip pulled his shoulder across the collapsing leg.
He pitched downward.
Blackness climbed his arm toward her fingers.
She released him before it reached them.
Karma swept his hand backward. Eris was already clear when a crescent of the plain disappeared beneath it.
He chose another position beside her.
This time, she moved into the space behind his intended fist before the distance could vanish.
Her knee was rising when he arrived.
It struck beneath his jaw.
His teeth snapped together. Eris landed and punched his shoulder before he could pull away.
"You still have to arrive," she said.
Karma spat blood.
Then he changed what arrived.
His hip held two positions at once. His left arm folded through a joint that had not existed beneath her last blow.
The fist came around toward her. Halfway through the swing, its elbow stopped being an elbow.
Eris stopped looking for one.
She watched the red tension tighten beneath his ribs.
There.
Something still had to carry the swing.
Her fist struck where that tension gathered. His arm sagged.
Before he could reinforce it, she drove the heel of her hand into his remaining shoulder. Chaos rushed to keep his torso upright, dragging the ruined arm inward with it.
The black knuckles passed her without contact.
Karma's smile disappeared.
The sphere selected her again.
Eris stepped aside before the shot resolved. A line cut behind her.
A second target formed in her awareness.
The place she was about to land.
She shortened her step. The next deletion opened beyond her boot.
Then a third intention fixed on where that hesitation would leave her.
The first shot had not bent. Its miss had become the cause of another attack.
And that miss had caused another.
Every time she escaped, she supplied him with the next target.
Eris drove toward Karma instead.
His knee rose to meet her.
She saw it coming. Saw the sphere selecting the position she would take to avoid it.
No Null on the knee.
Just force.
She turned her broken armor toward it and took the hit.
Pain ripped through her side. Blood filled her mouth.
Her good hand closed on his throat.
She shoved his head sideways before the next selection finished. The line took empty space beyond her shoulder.
Eris stepped across him, pulled him over her hip, and drove him down.
His back struck first.
Then his head.
The impact forced blood between his teeth.
Eris stayed over him, breathing through her mouth. One swollen eye would not open. Her injured arm shook against her armor.
Above Karma, the sphere's crimson shell drew tight.
Beyond him, the last line crossed an older scar at an odd angle. Eris glanced from the intersection to the sphere.
She changed her approach. If Karma meant to herd her between those cuts, she would not give him the step.
Karma watched the step.
The space directly beneath her supporting foot disappeared.
Her heel dropped.
She drove off her other leg before the widening rim could reach her ankle. The escape cost her the instant she had meant to use against his halo.
Karma was already turning beneath her next strike.
She landed and drove her heel into his knee. It buckled sideways.
His remaining shoulder slammed into her breastplate.
The collision shoved them apart.
Eris staggered, caught her footing, and looked up.
The sphere was no longer selecting her head.
Or her chest.
Or the place she would step next.
For the first time, there was no chosen line to leave.
The weapon had stopped asking where she would go.
Karma raised his broken arm.
His thumb and forefinger curled toward one another.
The damaged joints refused.
Karma forced them farther.
Bone shifted beneath the skin.
His fingers formed an incomplete circle.
The Black Continuum left his halo.
The red sphere settled between them.
Eris's expression changed.
Karma spoke.
"Advanced Technique."
The Black Continuum began expanding.
"Final Horizon."
Battle Omniscience opened.
Millions of responses appeared.
Left.
Consumed.
Right.
Consumed.
Forward.
Consumed.
Backward.
Consumed.
Leave the ground.
Consumed.
Attack Karma.
Too late.
Destroy the sphere.
Contact erased.
The Black Continuum did not chase Eris.
Its interior expanded until every available position belonged to it.
There was nowhere to evade.
A horizon could not be escaped by moving somewhere that remained beneath it.
Eris crossed both arms before her face.
The red sphere reached her.
Her body disappeared.
Her soul followed.
Her history inside Bellum Ultimum vanished.
Then the meaning that distinguished Eris Mallicia from everything that was not Eris Mallicia disappeared too.
No fragment remained.
No spiritual residue.
No displaced consciousness.
No hidden possibility.
Not even the concept of Eris survived the attack.
Bellum Ultimum stood empty.
Karma lowered his ruined hand.
For several seconds—
nothing returned.