LThe fight with Lord Malakor in his own, gloomy throne room was unlike any fight they had ever had before. Malakor, now super-charged with the power of the Reality Loom, was not just a powerful enemy. He was the writer, director, and star of his own, personal action movie, and he was editing the script in real time.

Ilsa Varkov was the first to charge. She was a whirlwind of disciplined fury, her power armor moving with a speed that should have been impossible for a woman encased in that much metal. She lunged forward, her combat blade a blur, aimed directly at Malakor's shadowy heart. It was a perfect, unstoppable strike.

And then, it wasn't.

Just as her blade was about to hit, the world seemed to… skip. Like a movie that had just been rewound by a few frames. Suddenly, Ilsa was back at the start of her lunge, and Malakor was sitting calmly on his throne, a smug, mocking look on his shadowy face.

"A fine effort, little soldier," his voice purred in their minds. "But that scene was not to my liking. Let's try it again, shall we?"

He was using the Loom's power to control the story of the battle itself. He wasn't just fighting them. He was rewriting them.

Scarlett was next. She was a blur of motion, phasing in and out of reality, her dagger a whisper of dark energy. She appeared right behind his throne, her attack silent and deadly.

But Malakor just waved a lazy hand, and the very air around Scarlett suddenly became as thick and sticky as honey. Her lightning-fast strike slowed to a crawl. "Too predictable," he sighed, as he casually leaned to the side, letting her slow-motion attack pass harmlessly by.

He was fighting them with the power of a storyteller who was in complete control of his own story. Every time they landed a perfect blow, he would just rewind the moment and make the attack miss. When Ilsa raised her shield to block an attack, he would "edit" the shield's properties, making the strong, Precursor metal suddenly as brittle and as fragile as glass.

It was the most frustrating, most infuriating, and most unfair fight of their lives. It was like trying to play a video game against a cheater who had all the cheat codes.

Aboard the "Odyssey," which was hovering silently outside the Castle of Shadows, Emma watched the battle unfold on her tactical display. And she saw, with her brilliant, strategic mind, that this was a fight they could not win. Not like this.

They couldn't beat him in a direct, physical fight, because he could just rewrite the rules of physics whenever he wanted. He was a god in his own, private reality.

But she realized that if he was the storyteller, then the Reality Loom was his pen. And maybe, just maybe, she could be the editor.

"Ryan," she said, her voice a low, urgent whisper that she sent directly into his mind through their psychic link. "We can't win a direct fight. Stop trying to hit him. I have a new plan. I need you to be my eyes and my hands. I am going to fight him, right here, from this bridge."

Ryan, who had just had a perfectly good energy blast "edited" out of existence by Malakor, understood immediately. He stopped his own, direct attacks. Instead, he became a conduit, a channel. He opened his mind completely to Emma, becoming her direct link to the battle.

A new kind of duel began. It was a duel of two master chess players, fighting a silent, invisible war right in the middle of the loud, chaotic, physical one. And their friends were the pieces on the board.

Malakor, the master storyteller, would make a move. He would try to rewrite reality to make Ilsa's armor fail.

But Emma, from her bridge light-years away, would see his move. And through Ryan, she would make a counter-move. She would send a subtle, quiet command to the Loom, a tiny, little edit of her own, that would reinforce the narrative of Ilsa's "unbreakable loyalty," making her armor strong again.

It was a battle of stories. Malakor would try to write a story where the heroes failed. And Emma would fight back with her own story, a story of hope, of teamwork, of the stubborn, illogical, and unbreakable bonds of a family.

Emma's counter-attacks were working, but it was a desperate, draining stalemate. Malakor was still too powerful. He was on his home turf, directly connected to the source of his power.

But then, Emma found a flaw in his plan. A weakness in his story.

The Reality Loom required an immense amount of focus and concentration to use. And Malakor, for all his power, was not a multitasker. While he was busy having a grand, epic, narrative duel with Emma and Ryan, his control over the other, less important parts of his story was starting to slip.

His control over his army of Shades, the ghostly echoes that were still swarming around the castle, was weakening.

Emma saw her chance.

A single, sharp, and very clear order went out from the bridge of the "Odyssey." It was not sent to Ryan. It was sent to Ilsa, to Scarlett, and to the other Iron Wolves in the throne room.

The order was simple.

"Ignore Malakor. Destroy the Shades."

The team, who had been getting very tired of having all their best moves be deleted by the cosmic cheater, shifted their tactics instantly. They stopped attacking Malakor, who was now busy in his silent, psychic chess match with Emma.

Instead, they turned their full, furious attention on the seemingly endless army of moaning, shadowy ghosts that filled the throne room.

It was a brutal, efficient, and very cathartic release of all their pent-up frustration. Ilsa was a whirlwind of steel, her blade cutting through the insubstantial forms of the Shades. Scarlett was a blur of darkness and light, her phasing dagger unmaking the ghosts with every touch.

The battle for the throne room had just become a very large, and very loud, ghost-busting operation. And the team was very, very good at their job.