CHAPTER 269: CHAPTER 27

"There!"

Nyx saw the opening, the narrow, flickering gap between reality and madness that Hecate’s spell had carved open.

For a moment, the battlefield seemed to freeze.

Her eyes locked at the revealed core of the entity, and her breath trembled in wrath so ancient it made the stars themselves shudder.

Without hesitation, she raised her corrupted arm, the one that pulsed and writhed with the sickening vitality of the Outer Ones’ essence.

From that arm, darkness surged.

That darkness was not just mere shadow, nor was it simple power, it was existence being rejected in a form of mass of tendrils coiling into infinity, each lined with blinking eyes and whispering mouths that spoke in forgotten tongues.

The air tore apart as an endless wave of those tendrils erupted forward, twisting and writhing as they shot toward the fragment’s exposed core.

The sheer force of her unleashed power split the very fabric of the battlefield, sundering light and space alike.

Then, she pulled.

From the rift she had created, something vast and grotesque began to emerge, dragging itself into being like a corpse reborn through nightmares.

A colossal form took shape, a headless giant, its neck a gaping wound that gushed forth a black, viscous liquid.

From that abyssal fluid, eyes and mouths formed, opening and closing in maddening rhythm as whispers of despair echoed through the cosmos.

This giant is the corpse of Ymir.

The First Giant.

The progenitor of the Norse world.

But this was no longer Ymir, it was his corpse, defiled, hollowed, and reanimated by the infection of the Outer Ones.

His body convulsed and twitched, massive limbs spasming as if struggling against invisible chains.

From the black blood that poured from his wounds, new abominations were born, a type of shadowy creatures that slithered and screamed, their bodies warped beyond reason, crawling with moving eyes that blinked independently, and mouths that murmured in endless, fractured hymns of chaos.

The gods recoiled in horror. Even the bravest among them faltered for a heartbeat as the sky was drowned in darkness and madness.

But Nyx’s voice, cold, commanding, divine, cut through the cacophony like a blade.

"Destroy the giant!" She roared, her voice resonating across every realm. "Burn the corpse before it consumes your world! I will deal with the fragment!"

And before any could respond, she was gone, vanishing into the void, trailing a wake of divine darkness that tore open the heavens themselves.

Her destination was the floating, jellyfish-like fragment of the Outer One that hovered above Ymir’s thrashing body after she had separated them.

It pulsed grotesquely, its translucent form shifting between dimensions, thousands of eyes rolling across its surface while countless mouths formed and dissolved in an endless cycle of birth and decay.

Its whispers filled the void, an endless symphony of alien madness that no mind could endure.

Nyx didn’t hesitate.

She flew straight toward it, her corrupted arm stretching outward, tentacles blooming like an abyssal flower, lashing and coiling as they struck.

Each collision between her power and the fragment’s flesh sent ripples through reality, stars dimmed, realms cracked, and the laws of existence screamed as the two cosmic entities clashed.

Below, the gods waged war against Ymir’s defiled body.

Thor hurled Mjölnir into the abominations born from the giant’s blood, shattering them into formless mist.

Athena’s spear pierced through tendrils of shadow, while Freya’s divine light burned away the endless swarm.

Every divine blow tore a piece from Ymir, but for every wound they inflicted, more of those black creatures emerged, shrieking and writhing, feeding on the despair that blanketed the battlefield.

But Nyx, she had ascended beyond the fray.

In a single motion, she pulled the fragment into another realm, the center of the cosmos, the heart of existence where stars were born and annihilated in eternal rhythm.

The transition was instantaneous, just a flash of light and dark where distance meant nothing.

And there, suspended between creation and oblivion, the two beings faced one another in silence.

Then the void screamed.

"You piece of cosmic mucus pretending to be god! I promise you, I will earse your entire species!"

Their battle erupted, tearing apart the fabric of the universe.

Galaxies imploded in the shockwaves of their power, constellations bent into spirals, and time itself fractured like glass.

"I am one of you, you say? Don’t lump me with a drifting tumor and spineless hump of mouth and teeth like you!"

"I am Nyx! Do not forget that!"

It was then, at the height of her wrath, stripped of restraint, stripped of facade, that Nyx’s true form was revealed.

Her mortal guise shattered like smoke.

What remained was not a goddess, but something beyond comprehension, an endless, writhing mass of eyes and mouths, each moving in chaotic rhythm, whispering, laughing, weeping, and roaring in voices that belonged to no species, no tongue, no reality.

Her body rippled with the pulsations of infinity, tentacles stretching across the void, each eye reflecting the birth and death of entire universes.

She was the abyss personified, the primordial fear before the first dawn.

And as the Outer Fragment gazed upon her, its countless eyes widened in reverance.

Nyx stared at the writhing mass before her, the fragment of the Outer One, the same kind of entity she herself once was.

Yes, she was like this thing, this pitiful, twitching distortion of existence that dared to call itself divine, but she was more. Far more.

For she had succeeded where the others failed. She had done what this fragment in front of her had never done before: she had devoured a universe.

Not entirely of course, only half of it, as the other half went to Hades, but even that half was enough to elevate her to a level beyond comprehension, beyond the reach of what mortals and immortals alike could even dream of.

That act of devouring had made her essence swell to the very brink of transcendence.

It had allowed her to understand creation from the inside out, to taste the flavor of stars, to hear the heartbeat of time, to grasp the rhythm of birth and death as if they were notes in a song composed solely for her.

In her true form, this form, she was even stronger than Hades before his ascension.

This fragment before her, by comparison, was a child. A crawling infant still shackled by the boundaries of its host, still struggling to exist within the framework of reality, still dependent on the flesh of others to move.

Pathetic.

And so, when Nyx expanded her form, when her true self broke through the veil of perception and reality itself recoiled.

Her body, an ocean of shadow and lightless matter, surged outward, swelling to the very edge of the universe.

Every breath she took rippled through creation; every motion of her endless limbs bent the constellations and silenced the primordial winds.

Stars, whole clusters of them, were swallowed by the silhouette of her being, their light fading like candles smothered beneath the tide of eternity.

Compared to her vastness, the fragment before her seemed less than a speck, a tiny blot of imperfection struggling to maintain cohesion in the face of her overwhelming presence.

Its countless eyes blinked in disarray, its mouths screamed and prayed in languages that no longer existed, pleading perhaps for mercy, perhaps for recognition, but Nyx’s gaze was merciless, and her hunger was absolute.

She did not speak. There was no need for words between beings such as them. The truth was written in the fabric of their nature: one devours, the other is devoured.

That was all there ever was.

And then, with no hesitation, she opened her mouths—all of them at once.

A soundless roar erupted across the cosmos as the void itself bent inward.

The light from every corner of existence twisted, drawn into her gravitational pull, into the infinite abyss that was her essence.

The fragment screamed in a high-pitched, multidimensional wail that shattered what remained of nearby galaxies, and retaliated, its own tendrils lashing outward, trying to latch onto her, to feed upon her, to consume the consumer.

But it was futile.

Nyx’s power was not that of an ordinary fragment.

Hers was the might of a devourer who had tasted the flesh of a universe and survived.

The darkness within her was not mere void, it was creation inverted, the negation of being itself, the hunger that existed before existence.

Every tendril that the fragment sent was caught, absorbed, dissolved into her infinite flesh.

Every scream it made was muffled beneath the crushing weight of her will.

Inside her, the battle raged unseen, a war of concepts, of alien instincts, of hunger and identity.

The fragment thrashed, trying to consume her from within, its essence scraping against hers, clawing to reassert its individuality.

But Nyx was unyielding. She tightened, her countless mouths whispered in unison, a harmony of annihilation, and her boundless stomach, the abyss that even the gods feared, began to contract.

Slowly and painfully, the fragment was pulled apart, strand by strand, its essence unraveling into formless darkness, its will dissolving like ash in the tide.

It screamed, it begged, and suddenly, it vanished.

Only Nyx remained, the dark goddess, the eternal night, standing amidst the stillness of a newly quiet cosmos.

The last echo of the fragment’s voice faded into nothingness, and she felt it, the power, the warmth, the familiar rush of absorption, as the last remnants of that being were digested by her infinite self.

A single ripple moved through her vast form, like a shiver of satisfaction.

For the briefest of moments, the universe itself seemed to breathe with her.

Then, with a slow exhale, Nyx retracted her enormity, her true form folding in upon itself until once more she stood as the goddess of Primordial night, beautiful and perfect.

Her eyes burned softly against the endless dark, her expression unreadable, though deep within, she could feel it, the pulse of new strength mingling with the old, the echo of another devoured existence now forever hers.

And as the cosmos steadied around her, she thought, that this had not been a victory.

It had been .....inevitable.