Nothingness

Part One: The Beliarch
He floated a few centimeters above the ground, motionless, arms crossed behind his back. His appearance was almost… ordinary. He stood just over two meters tall, clad in a white coat inscribed with runes invisible to the naked eye. His blond hair fell over his shoulders like liquid gold. His skin was pale, almost unreal, and his eyes… his eyes were empty. Two black abysses with golden pupils. Like two dead suns.—“More insects,” he sighed.
His voice was soft, calm, yet it echoed in their minds like a scream from a nightmare too ancient to have ever been lived. There was no anger, no hatred, only a cosmic truth: there would be no mercy.
—“Identity detected… That’s not possible,” murmured Shadow Claw, stepping back slightly.
—“Zerøn…” whispered Starlight. “The Beliarch of the Void.”
The space around him warped. The concrete beneath his feet cracked, even though he hadn’t touched it. The air grew heavier. The sky darker. Even the stars themselves seemed to flee from his gaze.
Zerøn slowly extended his hand toward them.
—“You’re not fighting me. You’re only delaying the inevitable,” he breathed.
And without warning, a wave of energy burst from his body, sweeping across the entire plaza. Cars were hurled away. The ground shattered into slabs. Starlight activated a cosmic shield to protect them, but the shockwave was so intense that they were both thrown backward.
—“He’s toying with us,” growled Shadow Claw, getting back on his feet, shadow claws emerging from his fingers.
—“Then we’ll remind him that a star shines brightest… right before it explodes,” shouted Starlight with a grin.
The battle began.
The initial blast had thrown them several meters. Starlight rolled on the ground, forming a shield of stars around her to absorb the impact. Shadow Claw sank into a mass of shadows to stabilize himself before reappearing, knees bent, fangs clenched.
Zerøn still floated, untouched and immutable.
—“Your resistance is… acceptable. For disposable beings,” he murmured.
He slowly raised his hand, and the air began to vibrate.
Suddenly, everything became heavy. An inverted gravitational force slammed down on the area, as if the planet itself were trying to crush their shoulders. Starlight fell to her knees, breath locked, her stars flickering. Shadow Claw dug his claws into the ground to keep from collapsing, the veins in his arms pulsing with a burning black aura.
—“Too… dense…! He’s manipulating… gravity!” he groaned.
—“No,” whispered Starlight. “He’s manipulating the very concept of pressure… He’s crushing our will…”
Zerøn finally descended to the ground. Not a sound. Just presence.
He pointed two fingers at Shadow Claw.
"Fwchk"
An invisible blast struck Shadow Claw in the chest. He was thrown against a wall, the impact ripping through him. He coughed up black blood, vision flickering.
Starlight gritted her teeth. She leapt into the air, astral thread in hand, tracing a blazing stellar arc.
“Galactic Arc — IMPACT!”
The whip struck Zerøn head-on. A burst of light exploded…
But he didn’t move. The light faded around him like a flame in a vacuum. Zerøn raised his hand… and caught the astral thread barehanded, slowly and coldly.
—“Pathetic,” he sighed.
He yanked violently, pulling Starlight toward him at full speed.
—“Lyra, NO!” shouted Shadow Claw, trying to stand.
Zerøn struck.
A palm blow—simple, but the impact sent Starlight crashing to the ground, carving a crater into the concrete. Her breath stopped cold. Her stellar armor flickered… then faltered.
Shadow Claw roared in rage. He activated an absolute shadow phase, vanishing instantly into darkness.
“Clawstorm — Shadow Rift!”
Dozens of claws erupted from all directions, slashing the space around Zerøn in a storm of attacks.
But the enemy closed his eyes. A black wave emanated from him. The claws froze midair… then fell to the ground, inert. Even the shadows refused to touch him.
—“I am what your darkness fears. I am… oblivion,” Zerøn said, with contempt.
—“It’s time. I shall begin the Rewriting,” he declared, looking at the sky.
And the rift in the Parisian sky widened.

Part Two: Revelation
At that moment… a symbol appeared in the sky, a rune—an echo of a sealed past. Starlight opened her eyes, barely conscious.
—“Not yet… We haven’t… lost everything…”
Her voice cracked, fingers trembling, her cosmic field fractured. And then, everything blurred—an outburst, a memory, a whisper from another time…
FLASHBACK — Six months earlier
The halls of the Astral Sphere, the cosmic watchtower, glowed with a cold light. Lyra and Noctis stood before an old stellar master, an Observer, whose gray eyes scanned a tablet of energy data.
—“An anomaly billions of years old is reactivating,” he said. “Something we haven’t seen since the Original Sealing.”
—“An entity?” asked Noctis.
—“No. Not an entity. A concept,” the Observer replied.
On the floating screen, a name appeared, engraved in vibrant red letters.
ZERØN.
Lyra frowned.
—“Is that a typo? Zero…N?”
—“No,” replied the Observer. “Zerøn. The Beliarch of the Void. The only being to have defied the Flow of Realities and attempted to… reset the universe.”
—“Why have we never heard of him?” growled Noctis.
—“Because those who spoke his name… never lived long enough to tell what they saw,” answered the Observer.
The air turned ice cold.
—“And if he returns?” Lyra asked in a whisper.
The Observer stared at them for a long moment, then looked toward the setting sun.
—“Then pray your light… is enough to delay the end.”
—
Back to the present.
Starlight reopened her eyes, the taste of blood on her tongue, vision blurred. She saw Zerøn raise his arms to the sky, the symbols of rewriting orbiting around him. And despite the pain, despite the crushing gravity… she stood up. Slowly.
—“We know what you are, Zerøn…”
She clenched her fists, the star at the center of her armor flickering back to life.
—“And we’re going to stop you. Even if it burns us alive.”
And with Shadow Claw at her side, our heroes launched one more desperate strike—hoping to make Zerøn, the Beliarch of the Void, falter.