The Nothingness had no temperature, no sound, no measure of time — yet when Voltraeus arrived, it burned.
Not with heat. Not with fire.
With presence.
He did not step into the Void so much as he forced it to acknowledge him.
Black lightning crawled across the fabric of nonexistence like veins beneath invisible skin. Each crackling arc hummed with the promise of obliteration, a living storm barely contained within a divine silhouette. His form was not flesh, not energy, not matter — but a concentrated idea given shape: Rage that illuminates. Power that devours. Light that does not ask permission to exist.
Where he hovered, the Void recoiled.
Darkness did not retreat — but it tightened, as if bracing.
Voltraeus' eyes burned like dying stars compressed into pinpricks of brilliance. His breath — if such a thing could be said to exist — sent faint ripples through the infinite emptiness, each exhale scattering faint sparks of volatile light that fizzled into nothing.
For a long moment, he simply stood.
And the Void listened.
Then — it answered.
Across the endless black, the Nothingness thickened.
Not by movement.
By intent.
A depth formed where no depth could exist. A silhouette without edges coalesced from the darkest regions of the Void, not rising, not descending — simply becoming.
Nocturne.
He did not arrive. He was already there.
Where Voltraeus was jagged illumination, Nocturne was seamless absence. His form flickered at the edges of perception — sometimes humanoid, sometimes a vast mass of living shadow, sometimes nothing at all. His "body" rippled like ink suspended in air, swallowing any stray spark of Voltraeus' lightning that dared drift too close.
The space between them stretched infinitely… yet felt suffocatingly close.
Two absolutes.
Two opposites.
Two inevitabilities staring across an endless, silent battlefield that did not yet exist.
For a while, neither moved.
The Void quaked in that stillness — not physically, but conceptually, as if reality itself were aware that something irreconcilable had come face to face.
Voltraeus' lightning flared brighter, then dimmed — a subtle rhythm, like a heartbeat made of storms. His gaze narrowed.
Nocturne tilted his head slightly, shadows flowing around him like a slow tide.
Then — a voice emerged from the darkness.
Not sound. Not words.
A feeling given language.
"You burn too brightly here."
The meaning pressed into Voltraeus' mind like cold fingers against a flame.
Voltraeus did not respond immediately. The lightning around him crackled harder, his aura rippling outward in faint shockwaves that bent the Void.
Finally, his presence spoke back — harsh, sharp, and unrelenting.
"And you suffocate existence by your very nature."
The space between them grew heavier.
The Void seemed to split — half illuminated by Voltraeus' radiance, half swallowed by Nocturne's endless night. Where their domains met, the boundary wavered like a distorted horizon.
Nocturne drifted forward — or rather, the darkness around him expanded, inching closer to Voltraeus.
The shadows did not attack.
They tested.
They brushed against the fringes of Voltraeus' light, curling like curious tendrils around the edges of his aura. Each touch caused faint distortions — light dimming, then flaring again, unstable, irritated.
Voltraeus did not strike.
But his lightning grew sharper.
More volatile.
More dangerous.
His eyes flickered — not with fear, but with something far rarer in a Primordial like him.
Doubt.
Not doubt in his power.
Doubt in what this meeting meant.
He could feel it — the way Nocturne's presence seemed to absorb not just light, but intent, emotion, and will. Every spark of his rage seemed to feed the surrounding darkness, giving it shape, depth, and hunger.
Voltraeus' aura pulsed again.
Brighter.
Hotter.
As if daring Nocturne to try.
Nocturne's form rippled, shadows coiling around his limbs like living chains. His voice resonated once more, calm, unhurried — a stark contrast to Voltraeus' volatile intensity.
"You are not here by accident."
The Void trembled.
Voltraeus' lightning flared violently, scattering arcs in every direction — not as an attack, but as a reaction. A reflex.
His presence pressed forward, towering, oppressive, incandescent.
"Neither are you."
A long, impossible silence stretched between them.
Somewhere — though "somewhere" did not truly exist — the Void cracked.
A hairline fracture of conceptual tension rippled outward, as if the mere existence of both Primordials in the same space was straining reality beyond its limit.
Nocturne drifted closer still.
Close enough that Voltraeus could feel him — not physically, but existentially. The shadow was cold, ancient, and infinitely patient, like the night that waits for every star to burn out.
Voltraeus' lightning crawled along his arms, coiling like serpents ready to strike.
Yet still — neither moved.
Neither attacked.
Instead, their very natures clashed.
Light pushed against darkness.
Darkness consumed light.
Light expanded.
Darkness deepened.
And in that collision, something dangerous began to form.
A realization.
Voltraeus felt it first — a crawling sensation across his essence, like being slowly smothered from all sides. The more he radiated, the more the Void seemed to drink.
Nocturne felt it too — the raw, chaotic energy of Voltraeus threatening to tear holes through the fabric of his domain, unraveling shadows faster than he could mend them.
For the first time since their existence, both Primordials understood something unsettling:
They were not meant to coexist.
The Void quivered.
Voltraeus' lightning surged, his voice echoing with barely restrained fury.
"Your shadow has no place in a universe that must be seen to exist."
Nocturne's form darkened, the surrounding Void bending inward toward him like a black tide.
"And your light has no meaning without the darkness that defines it."
The tension snapped.
Not into violence — not yet.
But into inevitability.
The space between them fractured again, deeper this time, a web of invisible cracks spreading across the Nothingness like shattered glass made of pure concept.
Neither Primordial moved.
Yet both had already crossed a line.
The first seeds of conflict had been planted — not with fists, not with strikes, but with irreconcilable truth.
The Void waited.
Silent.
Hungry.
Watching.
And in that silence, the war between Light and Shadow began — not in motion, but in certainty.
The Void no longer waited.
It listened.
The tension that had settled between Voltraeus and Nocturne thickened into something almost tangible — a pressure that did not push outward, but pressed inward, as though reality itself were holding its breath.
Voltraeus' lightning no longer flickered lazily. It writhed.
Black arcs coiled along his limbs like serpents made of pure catastrophe, snapping and hissing against the edge of Nocturne's encroaching darkness. Each spark left faint, dying embers that were instantly swallowed by shadow.
Nocturne's form had grown less defined.
Not because he was losing shape — but because the Void itself had begun to favor him. Darkness bled toward him instinctively, pooling at his feet like an endless ocean of night. His silhouette stretched, distorted, and deepened, as if every shadow in existence were converging upon a single, sentient center.
The boundary between their domains trembled.
A trembling that slowly became a vibration.
Then — a pulse.
Voltraeus was the first to break the silence.
Not with a strike.
With a roar.
Not sound — but raw, unfiltered will crashing outward like a supernova of emotion.
His presence surged, lightning erupting in violent spirals that tore jagged wounds through the Void. The cracks from before widened, branching outward like fractures in glass.
"ENOUGH."
The word did not echo — it dominated.
The Nothingness recoiled.
Nocturne did not flinch.
His shadows tightened around him, coiling like chains of living night. Where Voltraeus radiated chaos, Nocturne exuded a suffocating stillness — a darkness so absolute that even the idea of light seemed hesitant to approach.
His voice emerged again, slower this time, heavier, layered with a thousand overlapping whispers that all spoke as one.
"You mistake patience for weakness."
Voltraeus laughed — a soundless, crackling burst of energy that split the Void in half for a fleeting moment.
His lightning flared brighter, hotter, more unstable — an aura of impending destruction.
"Weakness?" Voltraeus spat, his presence sharpening like a blade. "You hide behind absence. You exist only because you leech from what others create."
The shadows around Nocturne churned.
Not violently — but dangerously.
They began to creep forward, inch by inch, seeping into the space Voltraeus had claimed. The darkness did not attack. It encroached.
And with every inch it gained, Voltraeus felt it — a slow, insidious pressure against his essence, like cold water rising around a burning flame.
Nocturne's form leaned forward, his "face" — if such a thing could be defined — tilting slightly.
"Light believes itself sovereign," he said. "Yet it is born only because shadow allows contrast. Without me, you would be meaningless."
That struck.
Not physically — but conceptually.
Voltraeus' lightning exploded outward in a violent burst, scattering across the Void in a web of searing arcs that momentarily illuminated even the deepest reaches of Nocturne's domain.
The cracks in reality widened further.
"You dare define me?" Voltraeus roared, his presence surging to impossible heights. "I am annihilation given form. I am the storm that purges existence. You are nothing but the remnants I leave behind."
Nocturne drifted closer.
Closer than before.
So close that the boundary between light and shadow began to blur.
His darkness wrapped around the edges of Voltraeus' lightning — not extinguishing it, but distorting it. The arcs bent, curved, and warped unnaturally, as though the very concept of "straight" had been corrupted.
His voice dropped — colder now, sharper, cutting through Voltraeus' rage like a blade of night.
"Then why do you tremble when I approach?"
That was the tipping point.
Voltraeus did not answer.
He moved.
In a fraction of an instant beyond measurement, he surged forward — not attacking, not striking — but advancing, his body blazing with raw, untamed power.
The Void around him shattered.
Lightning tore through the Nothingness in a violent cascade, carving blazing paths that scorched the fabric of reality itself. His aura pressed outward like a nova, forcing the surrounding darkness to recoil.
Nocturne did not retreat.
Instead, the Void itself surged toward him.
Shadows coalesced in an instant, forming a massive, oppressive barrier of pure night between them. It was not a wall — it was an absence so deep that even Voltraeus' light hesitated before it.
The two Primordials stood nose-to-nose — or as close as such beings could be.
Light and Darkness interlocked.
Their domains overlapped.
And in that overlap, the Void screamed.
Not audibly — but existentially.
Voltraeus' lightning clawed at Nocturne's shadow, crackling violently as it tried to burn through. Each arc tore at the darkness, only to be swallowed and reformed moments later.
Nocturne's shadows seeped into Voltraeus' radiance, threading through his lightning like living veins of night, coiling around his limbs and essence.
They were no longer posturing.
They were colliding by mere presence.
Voltraeus' rage intensified.
His aura spiked — a blinding eruption of incandescent force that ripped through the Void in every direction. Reality fractured like brittle glass, entire swathes of Nothingness splintering and collapsing into raw conceptual instability.
Nocturne's darkness surged in response, swallowing the fractures, mending the Void with endless night that pressed in from all sides.
Then — the first true break.
Voltraeus' lightning condensed into his right hand, coalescing into a seething sphere of annihilation so dense that it warped the space around it.
His voice cut through the Void like a blade of thunder.
"Get. Out. Of. My. Way."
Nocturne's form stilled.
The shadows around him tightened, compressing into a singular, impenetrable mass.
His voice was no longer calm.
It was absolute.
"You step into my domain, and you command me?"
The sphere in Voltraeus' hand roared.
The darkness before Nocturne's chest thickened into a vortex of pure absence.
The Void itself held its breath.
For an eternal fraction of a second, neither moved — both Primordials poised on the brink of war, their powers coiled like twin cataclysms waiting to be unleashed.
And then —
Voltraeus struck.
A single, concentrated bolt of black lightning erupted from his palm, a spear of pure devastation aimed directly at Nocturne's core.
Not a testing blow.
Not a warning.
A declaration.
The first physical attack tore through the Void like a blade through silk, splitting darkness, shattering silence, and igniting the battlefield that would soon become their full-scale clash.
The war had begun.
The Void did not break.
It detonated.
Voltraeus's lightning spear tore forward — not as a bolt, but as a living storm compressed into a single line. It pierced the Nothingness, carving a white-hot wound through pure darkness, reality unraveling in its wake like fabric ripped by an unseen blade.
Nocturne did not dodge.
The shadows before him erupted.
A tidal wall of pure night surged upward, not to block, but to meet the attack head-on. The spear of lightning slammed into the darkness with an impact that had no sound — only a shudder that rippled through every layer of existence that did not yet exist.
Light and shadow annihilated each other in a blistering flash.
Where they met, reality peeled apart into raw, formless chaos — a churning storm of contradiction where illumination devoured darkness and darkness smothered illumination in the same instant.
Then both Primordials moved.
Voltraeus exploded forward like a supernova given limbs, his entire body becoming a walking thunderhead of black-and-white lightning. Each step shattered the Void beneath him, cracks spiderwebbing outward, only to be swallowed by encroaching darkness a moment later.
He swung first — a sweeping, cataclysmic arc of lightning that split the abyss in two. The strike was not aimed at Nocturne's body — it was aimed at the concept of shadow itself.
The Void lit up in a blinding glare.
Nocturne flowed.
He did not move like a being — he moved like absence remembering it had shape. His form dissolved into a river of living darkness, slipping through the oncoming storm as though the lightning were nothing more than passing rain.
The bolts tore through where he had been, incinerating emptiness, but Nocturne reformed behind Voltraeus in an instant, shadows coalescing into a jagged, obsidian claw.
He struck.
His hand did not pierce flesh — it pierced light.
His claws sank into Voltraeus's blazing aura, not damaging his body, but devouring the illumination itself, siphoning away brilliance in swirling spirals of black.
Voltraeus roared — a surge of pure radiance detonating outward.
The blast ripped Nocturne away, shredding his shadow-form into a thousand tendrils that scattered across the Void like smoke torn apart by a hurricane.
But Nocturne did not dissipate.
The shadows simply… returned.
They poured back from every direction at once — from above, below, behind, from the cracks in reality Voltraeus himself had created. They converged into a single, towering figure of living night, larger than before, heavier, deeper.
His presence pressed down like an endless eclipse.
Nocturne advanced.
The Void darkened with every step, light bending inward as though gravity itself had been inverted. Voltraeus's lightning began to warp, arcs curving unnaturally toward Nocturne, drawn into the abyss like moths toward a black sun.
Voltraeus met him head-on.
Lightning burst from his body in a cascading storm, each bolt tearing through Nocturne's form, carving blazing tunnels through shadow that closed just as quickly as they were made.
They clashed in the center of the Void.
Fist met darkness.
Shadow met light.
Voltraeus's blows were apocalyptic — each punch unleashing waves of annihilating energy that shattered the fabric of Nothingness itself. His strikes did not merely hit Nocturne; they erased pieces of him in incandescent bursts.
But Nocturne's retaliation was just as absolute.
Every time Voltraeus's lightning tore him apart, Nocturne reformed and struck back — his limbs becoming bladed extensions of night that cut through Voltraeus's radiance like knives through flame.
One moment, Voltraeus was a blazing titan of storm and destruction.
The next, he was partially submerged in an ocean of living darkness, shadows coiling around his limbs, dragging him downward.
He detonated.
A blinding explosion of light tore free from his body, vaporizing the shadows in a brilliant nova that scorched the Void white. Cracks spread outward in impossible patterns, reality splintering into fractal shards that dissolved into nothing.
Nocturne was blasted apart again — shattered into countless fragments of shadow that scattered across the battlefield.
But again — he returned.
The Void itself shifted in his favor.
Darkness seeped in from every corner, knitting his form back together, larger, denser, more oppressive than before. His silhouette loomed over Voltraeus like an endless night given humanoid shape.
He raised both hands.
The Void obeyed.
Massive pillars of living shadow erupted from below, each one coiling like a colossal serpent before crashing down toward Voltraeus in a simultaneous, inescapable strike.
Voltraeus did not retreat.
He roared and unleashed a cataclysmic wave of lightning in all directions — not bolts, but sheets of raw, incandescent power that ripped through the darkness like an inferno tearing through paper.
The pillars exploded into clouds of dissipating shadow.
Nocturne staggered.
Voltraeus staggered.
Neither fell.
They surged toward each other again.
This time, their clash was not a simple exchange — it was a storm of mutual annihilation.
Voltraeus's fists became thunder itself, every blow releasing shockwaves that cracked the Void into jagged, unstable fragments. His lightning spiraled around him like a living maelstrom, shredding darkness wherever it touched.
Nocturne countered by drowning the battlefield in shadow, his form splitting and multiplying, surrounding Voltraeus with countless identical silhouettes that attacked from every direction at once — each strike a conceptual cut against light itself.
The Void became a battlefield of contradictions.
Where Voltraeus stood, reality burned bright and unstable.
Where Nocturne moved, existence dimmed and collapsed into silence.
They clashed again and again — blow for blow, strike for strike, annihilation for annihilation.
Neither could overpower the other.
Every time Voltraeus surged, Nocturne swallowed.
Every time Nocturne consumed, Voltraeus ignited.
Time — if such a thing could be said to exist — ceased to have meaning. The battle was a continuous, unbroken collision, an endless exchange of cataclysmic force that bent the very concept of "cause and effect."
At the center of it all, Light and Shadow locked once more.
Voltraeus's blazing fist collided with Nocturne's void-black palm.
For an eternal instant, everything froze.
Lightning and darkness intertwined — neither breaking, neither yielding, neither retreating.
The Void trembled.
Reality quaked.
And in that perfect moment of equilibrium —
Neither Primordial moved.
Neither prevailed.
The full-scale clash had begun… and the balance between them was absolute.
The equilibrium did not break.
It tilted.
At first, the change was subtle — a breath held too long, a flicker in the brilliance that crowned Voltraeus like a second sun. His lightning still raged, still roared, still carved the Void into splintered geometries of white and black.
But the darkness around him had… depth now.
Not just absence.
Not just silence.
Not just shadow.
It had weight.
Nocturne's palm still pressed against Voltraeus's blazing fist — light and shadow locked together, neither yielding. Yet, beneath that clash, the Void itself had begun to move. Darkness rippled like a living sea, slow at first, then gathering momentum, circling them like a predator closing in.
Voltraeus felt it.
He did not falter — he could not — but his lightning bent, subtly, toward the ground that was not ground. Arcs that should have shot outward into infinity curved downward instead, sinking into the blackness beneath his feet.
Nocturne's "smile" was not visible. It was felt.
The shadows surged.
They erupted from below like a rising tide, swallowing Voltraeus's legs in an instant. Not binding him — not yet — but drowning him in a sea of living night that climbed higher with every heartbeat he did not have.
Voltraeus detonated outward.
A spherical blast of pure lightning expanded from his body, a nova that should have vaporized all darkness in its radius. The Void lit up in a blinding, omnipresent glare — cracks spiderwebbing across reality itself.
And yet—
The shadows did not burn.
They recoiled… then returned.
Nocturne did not flinch. Instead, his form expanded, stretching beyond the limits of shape until he was less a being and more a horizon — a towering, endless silhouette of night that loomed over Voltraeus like an eclipse swallowing a star.
His voice rolled across the Void, not spoken, but pressed into existence itself:
"You fight the darkness… while standing in its womb."
The shadows around Voltraeus surged again — faster this time, more violent. They wrapped around his waist, his arms, his blazing wings of lightning, smothering the brilliance with suffocating layers of living night.
Voltraeus roared.
His body convulsed as lightning tore outward in jagged bursts, ripping the shadows apart — but for every tendril destroyed, ten more poured in from the endless black.
Then Nocturne moved.
He did not strike like a warrior. He descended like nightfall.
His form condensed, collapsing inward from a towering abyss into a single, dense figure of pure darkness that towered over Voltraeus. His arm lifted — not a limb, but a column of concentrated shadow that compressed the Void around it.
He brought it down.
The strike did not hit Voltraeus's body.
It hit his light.
The moment Nocturne's hand collided with Voltraeus's aura, the radiance buckled inward like glass under pressure. Light warped, bent, and collapsed toward the point of impact, as though gravity itself had inverted.
Voltraeus staggered — not physically, but conceptually.
For the first time, his brilliance dimmed.
Not much.
But enough.
Nocturne pressed the advantage.
The shadows surged again, now sharper, more precise — forming jagged, blade-like tendrils that pierced through Voltraeus's aura and into his form. Not flesh, not bone, but something deeper — his essence of illumination.
Voltraeus screamed — a thunderous, world-splitting cry that ripped through the Void.
Lightning exploded outward in a desperate counterattack, a storm so violent it fractured the darkness into shattered fragments that scattered across the battlefield.
But Nocturne did not retreat.
He stepped forward.
Each step turned the Void darker. Each step made Voltraeus's lightning weaker. Each step made the shadows thicker, heavier, more inescapable.
Nocturne's form multiplied.
A hundred identical silhouettes rose from the black sea beneath them, surrounding Voltraeus in a perfect ring. Each one moved in perfect unison — raising their hands simultaneously.
The Void obeyed.
A dome of absolute darkness sealed around Voltraeus.
Not a cage. Not a prison.
A total absence of light.
Inside, Voltraeus's lightning began to die.
Not all at once — but steadily. Arcs that once split infinity now fizzled into weak sparks that vanished the moment they touched the walls of living night.
Voltraeus thrashed.
He unleashed bolt after bolt, wave after wave, each attack tearing into the dome — but the darkness absorbed it, drank it, and grew stronger.
Nocturne's voice echoed from everywhere and nowhere:
"You cannot outshine a void that predates light."
The dome tightened.
Voltraeus's body — radiant, incandescent, divine — began to buckle under the pressure. Shadows pressed inward like a collapsing universe, crushing his brilliance toward his core.
Cracks formed across his glowing form.
Not physical cracks — fractures in illumination itself.
White-hot light bled from him in rivers that were immediately swallowed by the darkness. His once-blinding aura flickered, dimmed, then flared again in defiance.
He forced himself forward.
With a guttural roar that shook the Void, Voltraeus slammed both hands into the walls of shadow and detonated everything he had left in a final, desperate surge.
The dome shattered.
Light erupted outward like a newborn universe, tearing the darkness apart in a cataclysmic flash that split the battlefield into splintered realities.
For a moment — just a moment — Voltraeus stood free again.
Brilliant. Unchained. Wrath incarnate.
Then Nocturne returned.
Not from one direction.
From everywhere.
The shattered shadows coalesced instantly, reforming into a single, towering presence behind Voltraeus. His hand plunged forward — not striking, but seeping into Voltraeus's back like ink soaking into cloth.
Voltraeus convulsed.
His light flickered violently as Nocturne's darkness burrowed into him, crawling through his radiance, corrupting, smothering, and consuming from within.
He swung blindly behind him, lightning ripping outward in chaotic arcs — but Nocturne was already gone, dissolved back into the Void.
Then the darkness struck again.
From below.
A colossal pillar of shadow erupted beneath Voltraeus, slamming into him with enough force to crack the Void itself. He was launched upward — not into space, but into deeper nothingness.
Nocturne rose to meet him.
Shadow wings unfurled behind him, vast and endless, blotting out what little light remained. He moved with absolute inevitability, his presence warping the battlefield to his will.
Voltraeus retaliated with a spear of concentrated lightning, hurling it straight at Nocturne's core.
The spear vanished.
Swallowed whole.
Nocturne did not even flinch.
He reached out.
The darkness obeyed.
Tendrils of living shadow surged upward, coiling around Voltraeus mid-air, binding his limbs, his wings, his very brilliance. They tightened — not physically, but conceptually — compressing his light into a smaller, weaker state.
Voltraeus roared and strained.
Lightning tore through the bindings, but every escape birthed more darkness. Every surge fed Nocturne. Every attempt to break free only deepened the night's hold.
Nocturne stepped closer.
His hand extended — not as a strike, but as a verdict.
When it touched Voltraeus's chest, the effect was immediate.
The storm around Voltraeus collapsed inward.
His radiance dimmed. His lightning sputtered. His once-unbreakable presence wavered.
Darkness poured into him like a tidal flood, flooding the very core of his being. Shadows rippled across his form, spiderwebbing through his blazing veins, choking the light at its source.
Voltraeus screamed again — but this time, there was no thunder behind it.
Only strain.
Only resistance.
Only the desperate defiance of a dying star.
Nocturne leaned in — close enough that his presence pressed against Voltraeus like the weight of an endless night.
"Light does not die," his voice echoed.
"It is simply… extinguished."
With a final, crushing motion, Nocturne drove his shadow-deep hand fully into Voltraeus's core.
The Void shook.
A blinding flare of light erupted — then collapsed instantly into darkness.
When the glare faded, Voltraeus hung suspended, bound in chains of living night. His once-blazing body was dimmed to a flickering ember, his lightning reduced to weak, erratic sparks that danced helplessly across his skin.
Nocturne stood before him — absolute, unbroken, and ascendant.
The battlefield had changed.
Where Voltraeus had once turned the Void into a blazing inferno, now darkness reigned supreme. The very air — if such a thing existed — felt heavy with shadow.
Nocturne had taken control.
Light had not fallen.
But it was cornered.
Voltraeus lifted his head, defiant even in defeat, sparks still crackling in his eyes — but the storm that once made him unstoppable was gone.
The night had won this turn.
And in the endless black between them, the next phase of their clash loomed — not as equals anymore, but as a storm trying to survive in a sky that no longer belonged to it.
The darkness pressed.
Not like weight. Not like force.
Like destiny.
Voltraeus hung in the Void, suspended within Nocturne's web of living shadow. His body was no longer a storm — only the remnant of one. His brilliance had shrunk to a fractured halo around his form, sputtering, stuttering, fighting to exist in a world that no longer allowed it.
Black veins of shadow coiled through his luminous frame, threading through his core, choking the source of his lightning. Every time he tried to ignite, the darkness smothered him before the spark could breathe.
Nocturne stood before him — still, vast, inevitable. His presence was no longer merely within the Void.
He was the Void.
The battlefield had become an extension of his will. Every direction led to him. Every breath of nothing carried his influence. Even the concept of escape felt alien now.
Voltraeus lowered his head.
For a moment — only a moment — the thunder within him went silent.
Nocturne watched.
He did not taunt. He did not gloat. He did not need to.
Victory was a fact of the cosmos now.
Then —
A heartbeat.
Not sound. Not movement.
A pulse.
From deep within Voltraeus's core, something tremored — a low, rising hum that resonated through the Void itself. The shadows binding him rippled, as though disturbed by a frequency they could not comprehend.
Nocturne's form shifted.
Slightly.
The pulse came again.
Stronger.
The faint embers of Voltraeus's light began to glow — not brighter, but deeper, as if the illumination were sinking inward rather than radiating outward.
Cracks appeared across his body.
Not fractures of damage — fractures of law.
The black veins of shadow coursing through him began to glow white-hot from within, as though Voltraeus were burning the darkness from the inside out. Tendrils of lightning flickered weakly along his frame, crawling along the fissures that split his divine form.
His head lifted.
His eyes were no longer blazing.
They were empty of everything except lightning.
Nocturne felt it then — not fear, but something far rarer for a Primordial:
Discontinuity.
Voltraeus spoke.
Not aloud — not with a voice — but with a declaration that tore itself into existence.
"If light must die… then I will die as light."
The shadows constricting him tightened instantly, surging inward like a collapsing star, attempting to crush the awakening force before it could fully manifest.
Too late.
Voltraeus's body shattered.
Not physically — conceptually.
His form ruptured into countless fragments of pure radiance, each piece burning with unbearable intensity. The darkness recoiled violently as the light tore through it, vaporizing entire swathes of Nocturne's shadow with blistering, annihilating brilliance.
Then — impossibly — the fragments began to condense.
They did not reform Voltraeus.
They became something else.
A singular, hyper-dense point of light emerged at the center of the battlefield — a star compressed beyond physics, beyond logic, beyond creation itself. It was smaller than a thought, yet heavier than infinity.
Nocturne stepped back.
For the first time since the fight began, the Void around him faltered. Shadows twisted and writhed, bending away from the point of light as though terrified of contact.
From within the singularity, Voltraeus's presence spoke again — not as a being, but as a principle.
"You said light could be extinguished."
The point of light ignited.
Not outward — inward.
The Void inverted.
Where before light radiated, now it imploded, devouring itself in a self-consuming paradox that ripped at the fabric of nothingness. The battlefield warped violently, darkness being dragged toward the center like matter into a black hole — except this gravity was made of illumination.
Nocturne's domain buckled.
Shadows tore from the Void, spiraling helplessly toward the blazing singularity. His form flickered, destabilized, forced to anchor himself against the pull of Voltraeus's suicidal transformation.
Then —
The star expanded.
In a single, cataclysmic instant, Voltraeus erupted outward as a wall of annihilating light, not radiating, but erasing. The Void itself was peeled back in layers, darkness burned away not as matter, but as concept.
Nocturne raised both hands.
The shadows surged in response — a tidal wave of absolute night crashing toward the exploding light. The two forces collided with a deafening, impossible impact that shattered the battlefield into splintered realities.
Where light touched darkness, both ceased to exist.
Where darkness met light, both were unmade.
For a timeless moment, creation itself hung suspended between two absolutes — illumination that would rather destroy itself than submit, and shadow that refused to be erased.
Within the storm, Voltraeus's essence did something unthinkable.
He tore his own core apart.
The singularity split into countless shards of living lightning — each one a miniature star — and hurled them outward in a suicidal barrage that pierced through Nocturne's defenses from every conceivable angle.
The shards did not strike Nocturne's body.
They struck his domain.
The Void fractured.
Entire swathes of shadow disintegrated, torn apart by the impossible luminosity. Darkness that had existed before time itself unraveled like thread in fire.
Nocturne staggered.
Not physically — but his presence wavered, his perfect control over the battlefield slipping for the first time. His shadow form flickered violently, edges tearing, reforming, tearing again.
In the center of the devastation, Voltraeus's form attempted to coalesce one final time.
He emerged — broken, fractured, but still incandescent — his body barely held together by raw will. Lightning crackled through him in erratic, unstable bursts, each one tearing his own frame apart from the inside.
He did not raise his fists.
He raised his existence.
The remaining fragments of his being converged into a final, apocalyptic bolt — not aimed at Nocturne, but at the very boundary between light and shadow itself.
A single, world-ending strike.
Nocturne moved.
Not with speed — with inevitability.
He condensed all remaining darkness into a single, crushing mass of shadow that collided with Voltraeus's final lightning in a blinding, silent cataclysm.
Reality shattered.
Concepts screamed.
Light and darkness did not clash — they mutually devoured.
The battlefield vanished.
For an eternal instant, there was nothing.
No Void.
No Primordials.
No light.
No shadow.
Then —
Silence.
When existence reasserted itself, the scene was devastation incarnate.
The Void lay split in two — one half scorched to a blinding, empty white, the other drowned in absolute black.
At the center, floating amid the fracture, lay two broken titans.
Voltraeus's body was shattered — cracks of pure absence spiderwebbing across his luminous frame. His lightning was gone, reduced to faint, dying sparks that barely clung to his form.
Nocturne lay opposite him, his shadow torn and fragmented, leaking threads of darkness that dissolved into the Void. His once-unassailable presence was fractured, diminished, no longer absolute.
Neither moved.
Neither could.
The clash had not merely broken them — it had redefined them.
And in the silence that followed, something new was born from their mutual annihilation:
A thin, trembling boundary between light and dark — a balance that had never existed before.
Voltraeus's last flicker of brilliance met Nocturne's last breath of shadow across the divide.
Not enemies.
Not allies.
Opposites made eternal.
And for the first time in existence, the universe understood what it meant for Light and Darkness to coexist.