The silence after Kael'than vanished was more terrifying than the battle. The air on the Trash-Dragon hung heavy, thick with the pressure from the mysterious entity standing amidst the wreckage. Stella, the Near Great Beginning, took a deep breath, not of air, but drawing in the very essence of the space around her.
She sensed the chaos, the fragmented memories, the scattered Essence of countless beings that had ever existed here.
"I told you," Stella's voice rang out, no longer a mental whisper but a sound that tore through the quiet, shattering the remaining panes of glass. "This place... is a delicious meal."
She raised her hand, not aiming at anyone, but turning her palm towards the horizon of the Trash-Dragon. Black Chroma Essence emanated from that palm, not as a beam of energy, but as a spreading void.
Where her gaze swept, things did not explode; they dissolved. The metal modules, the derelict spaceships, even the light from the neon signs – all were erased, reverting to their most primitive state, becoming part of the chaotic energy that Stella drew into herself.
It wasn't destruction, but an orderly decay back to a Zero state, like a universe running backwards in time to the moment before the Big Bang.
"STOP!" - Ember, despite being exhausted and severely burned, struggled to stand, her voice hoarse. A weak flame flickered in her palm, but was immediately snuffed out by the very emptiness Stella created.
Stella didn't even look at her. Her gaze had settled on Celeste. In the chaos she wrought, Celeste was like the only warm, bright point, a place that still held her primal emotions.
"Celeste," Stella called, her voice now softer, like the whisper of the universe. "Look. Your own weakness. You are bound by these emotions, by these fragments." She pointed towards the injured Ember, Teron desperately trying to reboot his systems, and Echo – who was more faintly visible than ever, trembling before her primordial power.
"They are not fragments! They are my friends!" - Celeste cried out, tears streaming down her cheeks, the cracks on her chest glowing brightly with pain and emotion.
"Friends?" Stella repeated the word with indescribable mockery. "They are obstacles. They prevent you from becoming whole. We, the Fragments of the Suicidal Star, were born to be one. This separate existence is a mistake. Return to me. We will no longer hunger for mundane things. We will hunger for great 'Ideas,' for creative 'Principles.' We will become the beginning and the end of all things."
She stepped towards Celeste, each footstep turning the metal beneath her feet into shimmering black dust that then vanished. An invisible force, gentle yet irresistible, pulled Celeste towards her.
Teron, with his systems only partially rebooted, emitted a series of desperate beeps. He tried to glitch the reality around Stella, but every command line was swallowed by the Black Chroma Essence. ERROR: REALITY_FABRIC_TOO_DENSE. UNABLE_TO_GLITCH. The screen on his face displayed a sad emoticon (╥﹏╥).
Ember tried to crawl forward, but her exhausted body wouldn't allow it. She could only watch helplessly as Stella advanced towards Celeste.
Stella's hand, crystallized from black chroma and primordial chaos, was now mere inches from Celeste. Her fusion power had already begun to stretch Celeste's skin, making the glassy cracks on the little girl's chest shine with agony. Celeste was nearly unconscious, her mind reeling from the terrible pressure of her own mature self.
And then, suddenly, from within the small pouch holding Celeste's celestial "candy," where she always kept her most precious Essences, a burst of radiant golden light erupted. It didn't just shine; it vibrated with a frequency full of determination and fury. It shot out like a warm energy bullet, straight into the space between Stella's hand and Celeste.
It was Kai's Essence.
Stella's eyes – which held only emptiness and hunger – flickered. The purple dot in the black sockets focused on the Essence. A strange, complex emotion flashed through her mind, swift as lightning in the dark night.
In that instant, Stella didn't seem angered by the Essence's resistance. She saw... a different path. A path she had long abandoned. She saw a faint image of herself from a time when she was still Celeste, innocent and yearning for love.
She saw Celeste's clumsy but sincere efforts to "fix" the fragments, to "comfort" the machine spirits, to believe in friendship.
She saw how Celeste had carefully selected each gentle Essence – Perseverance from an asteroid core, the Light of Hope from a newborn star, Warmth from memories of smiles – to nurture, to "heal," and to strengthen this very Essence.
And then, that emotion vanished. Replacing it was a faint, contemptuous smile forming on Stella's lipless face. Words of light appeared as she spoke, this time dripping with mockery:
"With gentle support? And these fragile, fleeting emotions? You think that with such soft, weak things, it could become strong enough to cross the chasms between universes, to find you?"
She looked at Kai's Essence as if it were a grain of sand. "To become great, to reach entities like us, to exist in eternal hunger, he would need to devour suns, to forge his being from the corpses of primordial universes, to endure the pain of thousands of burning worlds! Not... warm little gifts from a child."