I couldn't beat Alyssara.
The thought was a cold, absolute fact, a shard of ice in my mind that her power had solidified. I was trapped, pinned physically by her relentless, warping Reality Control, my Peak Radiant power feeling like a child's shout against her divine-level hurricane. The Gilded Cage of her fantasy, the one I had just shattered, had been replaced by a cruder, more honest prison of pure, overwhelming force. Her hand, radiating that chilling, possessive energy, was moving toward my face, her voice promising to break the 'flawed copy' and find the 'original' beneath.
Despair was a heavy, suffocating shroud. The gap was just too much. The wall to Divine-rank, that shimmering, impossible barrier I had been striving towards, hovered just above me, intangible, unbreachable. And I was not strong enough at Peak Radiant to break her Complete Control. I had failed.
