They hung in the burning vacuum, blood orbiting in slow, glowing rings.
The Witch of Grim moved first. Her ruined torso knit upward, ribs unfolding like black petals until she stood taller than the wreckage. Seals rewrote themselves in spirals of violet fire across fresh armor.
She flexed the soul-whip; the chain lengthened, souls screaming louder, and cracked it once. The shockwave shattered the remaining mirrored shards into burning rain.
Hecate answered by planting her feet down. The twin serpents coiled around her forearms, becoming living gauntlets of shadow and starlight. Torch blazing white-hot, she launched.
They met in the center of the ruin.
The soul-whip lashed. Hecate ducked beneath the arc, felt souls graze her cheek and peel away strips of flesh that bled starlight. She came up inside the strike, torch reversed, and drove the butt into the Witch's solar plexus.
Armor caved; violet light exploded outward. The Witch folded, coughing black blood that crystallized mid-air into obsidian needles.
The Witch seized the torch shaft, twisted, and kicked upward. The blow caught Hecate under the chin, snapping her head back, vertebrae cracking.
CRACK!
Hecate used the momentum, flipping backward, and brought her heel down in an axe-kick that split the Witch's shoulder to the sternum.
The Witch laughed through the wound and punched sideways. Her fist carried the weight of every grave ever filled. It caught Hecate in the ribs; bone shattered. Starlight blood jetted twenty feet from her.
SURPLS!
Hecate flew, spinning, and landed on a drifting shard. The Witch was already there. A knee to the gut lifted Hecate off her feet; an elbow to the spine drove her down through the shard entirely. Stone exploded around them. Hecate rolled clear as the Witch's foot stomped the spot where her head had been, cratering the fragment deeper.
The Witch's soul-whip wrapped Hecate's torso again, souls biting deep, drinking light. Hecate seized the chain with both gauntleted hands and yanked.
The Witch stumbled forward. Hecate drove her forehead into the Witch's face three times in rapid succession.
The Witch answered by headbutting back. Bone met bone; both staggered, blood mixing in the air between them.
Hecate spun her staff until it became a violet cyclone. She thrusted forward. The cyclone punched through the Witch's guard and carved a burning tunnel from hip to shoulder. Armor peeled away in molten sheets.
The Witch roared and opened her chest cavity again, this time revealing a spinning vortex of teeth and eyes. The vortex inhaled, pulling Hecate forward.
Hecate planted her feet, serpents striking into the vortex, fangs injecting liquid night that slowed the spin. She leapt into the pull, torch leading, and buried the flame inside the vortex.
Violet fire met black hunger. The explosion hurled both goddesses apart again, shredding the Witch's chest open to the spine and burning half of Hecate's torso to exposed bone.
They landed on opposite drifting fragments, chests heaving, bodies leaking impossible blood.
The Witch's wounds began to close, seals crawling like insects. She extended her soul-whip until it became a spear of chained dead. She hurled it.
Hecate sidestepped; the spear punched through three shards behind her, pinning them together in a screaming crucifix. Hecate answered by tearing one of her own serpent gauntlets free and throwing it. The serpent grew mid-flight, becoming a fifty-foot shadow-drake that slammed into the Witch and began eating her face.
The Witch seized the smake by the throat, crushed its skull, and used the corpse as a flail to batter Hecate across the void. Each impact shattered bone. Hecate caught the corpse mid-swing, ripped it in half, and drove both halves through the Witch's shoulders like stakes.
They closed again, too close for weapons now.
Every strike landed with the sound of breaking reality. Hecate's torch carved burning sigils across the Witch's arms that refused to heal. The Witch's nails raked starlight flesh from Hecate's ribs in long ribbons.
They grappled, spun, tore. The Witch bit Hecate's shoulder, fangs meeting through muscle and bone. Hecate answered by jamming her fingers into the Witch's eye sockets and pulling. Violet fire sprayed.
They separated once more, drifting, orbiting each other in the burning dark.
The Witch's face was half gone, one eye regenerating slowly. Hecate's torso was a ruin of exposed ribs and glowing marrow. Blood of graves and blood of stars mingled in slow spirals between them.
The Witch extended her remaining hand. The soul-whip reformed, longer, thicker. Hecate planted her staff and summoned the second serpent back to her arm. Torch and staff both blazed brighter than before.
They regarded each other across the gulf, chests heaving, bodies trembling with exhaustion and rage.
Then, as one, they moved.
The void erupted again in fresh fire and blood, two ancient powers refusing to yield, refusing to die, tearing each other apart in a war that would not, could not end this day.
Far below, the silver door waited, untouched, patient as the turning of ages.
Then a portal open with three witches landing in front of Hacate: Gladian, Gortrius, and Glinda, looking healthy and lovely as they mostly did.
"Well, well, well," Hacate said to her covenant members.
"I mean, we saw you were getting your butt kicked," Glinda said.
"Hmm," was all Hacate responded back.
"You brought allies," the Witch of Grim yelled out. "Thats not very fair."
"Maybe if you spent more time making friends than enemies, you'd have a covenant willing to fight on your behalf," Gortrius retorted.
The Witch of Grim was not impressed.