Chapter 1984: Last Words For the first time since the battle began, Asteroath began to truly panic. He ignited his wings into a nova, not caring if he was burning off Origin Force, the mandala of darkness surrounding him, cracked leaking such bright light that it tore through this layer of Death’s domain and blasted away the Primordials that wanted to save him, in his panic, Asteroath was burning the foundation of his power to push away the crushing embrace of the mandala. Asteroath had sensed what Death wanted to do to him, and he almost went insane with rage and fear. The Primary reason for this was simple, he heard the words... The Architect of End. Apart from Enoch, the power that the Primordials fear was this organization, and what made this power so dangerous to even the Primordials was that, until Death had mentioned it to him at this moment, Asteroath had forgotten about the Architects and the Temple of End. It was as if the knowledge of this place had been wiped out from the collective consciousness of the Primordial,s and if it were not mentioned, they would never remember it. All this time, the Primordials had been fighting without pushing their limits. While it may appear as if Death was extremely powerful in comparison to the seven Primordials attacking it, the Primordials were not truly giving their all in this fight. Every Primordial had millions of Origin Forces inside of them, and they could choose to fight while pulling from a single Origin Force or from all of them at once, and if they were desperate like Primordial Light currently was, they could burn these Origin Forces to create devastating power. From the beginning of the battle till this moment, the Primordials had only been pulling power from a thousand sources of Origin Force in their bodies and were slowly ramping up this number as they grew familiar with their abilities and truly digested the power they had consumed. They had monitored how much power Death had to give, and they saw that they were at a comfortable level while pushing out this output, and they even adjusted for any tricks that Death might dish out during the battle, and they were ready to unleash all their strength at a moment’s notice. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶 Nyxara had spoken of their deaths as a possibility, but that was only a trap to lure their opponent into a false sense of power. No Primordial here wanted to die, and if Death was foolish enough to believe that it was possible to kill them, then it was bound to be terribly surprised. However, they were still too shallow in their scheming. Death had played a deeper game. Despite Asteroath burning a thousand Origin Forces of Light to escape, he would have burned more, but this was his limit; the orb of darkness had only cracked and was not destroyed. The Mandala of darkness that covered Primordial Light was not one... it was a thousand. All this time, the Primordials had believed that Death had resurrected only one of these creatures, and even if he resurrected more, they were most likely being held back to be used at a later moment, but they were wrong. Death had placed a thousand of these creatures into the body of one, only to unleash them when the time was right. At the beginning of the fight, this creature had introduced itself by splitting into many pieces, each representing a different Primordial, before it drew all of those pieces inside itself and challenged the Primordials as a single being. Asteroath was now realizing that even that transformation had been a trap. It was a forgone conclusion that Asteroath, despite burning his Origin Force, could not tear himself away from this trap. He charged the core, wings folded into a ram, and Primordial Light roared as he slammed into the wall of darkness. The impact sent shockwaves through the Realm of Death as it erupted out of the orb, shattering nearby Regions of Death and releasing swarms of undead nightmares that were flattened to the ground as the wave of power was nearly unending. The core absorbed the blow, stretching for a nanometer, before it compressed and then closed around him like a fist. Inside the mandala, Asteroath experienced the death of a thousand Existences, the crushing weight of unbirth, the scream of possibilities extinguished. It drained his light, sip by sip, turning his radiance into fuel for its own darkness. He began to scream, such gut-wrenching screams that made his siblings pale in shock. The last time they had heard cries like this, they had been mortals. The shock and the unease in their hearts exploded; this time, it seemed they were truly in real danger and not the fake danger they had been playing at. Outside, the siblings redoubled their efforts. Xylos spewed his corruption into the darkness, wrapping Primordial Light, turning parts of it into demonic allies that attacked the mandala from within. Eldrithor created pockets of chaos where the entity’s logic failed, causing arms to tie themselves in knots. Xyris slowed time around the core, giving Asteroath moments to escape. Elgorath bombarded it with memories of light – suns rising, stars birthing, dawns breaking. Vorthas grew a forest of living spears that pierced the shadows. All of them were burning their Origin Force without holding back, because the threat of death was real for them this time. Under their relentless barrage, the orb began to weaken, and the cracks grew, but the shrill cries of Asteroath were becoming weaker. Nyxara, watching all of this, suddenly dove in, soul-wings slicing through fractal layers. She reached the core and pulled Asteroath out, his form flickering like a dying candle. "Brother," she whispered, "hold on." But the damage was done. The mandala, weakened but not destroyed, pulsed one final time. A wave of absolute darkness washed over Asteroath, swallowing his light entirely. His wings crumpled, folding inward until only a single white feather remained, floating in the void. The mandala shattered under the combined assault, its fragments dissolving into the nexus. But the victory was pyrrhic. Asteroath was dying. His eyes were wide as he looked at his sister, Nyxara, "I don’t... I don’t understand," he said... these were his last words.