The Duel

On mountain peaks, creation’s first aurora meets the void’s endless crown.

The Pishacha armies had begun to falter. The Resonance Citadel still hummed with unbroken heartbeats; the Veil of Remembering wove bonds tighter than iron; the Wells of Living Water shimmered with defiant starlight. It was the first time since her arrival that Śūnyāntarā–Nidrāprabhā had seen her influence recoil. In the drifting fortress of shadow where she sat enthroned, the Mistress of the Void rose. The black folds of her form unfurled into wings of shifting night, and she stepped through the thin places between realms, descending toward Svarnadvīpa. Vishwavyoma waited for her on the cliffs of Samyak-Śikhara, a high mountain whose peak touched the auroral currents. Wind and shadow circled the summit as the two figures faced each other—one blazing with restrained cosmic radiance, the other a silhouette of living darkness.

Her opening attack was not a beam or a blade, but a weaving of unreality. From her outstretched hands spilled threads of shadow so fine they seemed like strands of absence itself. Each thread touched the world and rewrote it—turning stone into sand, song into silence, and memory into fog. This Oblivion Tapestry was a hybrid convergence of void-matter distortion and soul recursion. Physical impact: The threads broke matter at the molecular level, unraveling form into inert dust. Spiritual impact: Any soul touched began to forget its own origin, losing the anchor that bound it to action. Psychological impact: The victim felt not fear but a creeping certainty that nothing they did had ever mattered. The Tapestry spread in all directions, threatening to dissolve the battlefield itself. Vishwavyoma planted the Soma-Vajra into the ground, and the mountain beneath him groaned. From the point of contact, a great vertical beam of white-gold and deep-violet light shot upward, piercing the sky and rooting downward into the planet’s heart. This was the Primal Axis Seal, a hybrid of cosmic geodesy and astral soul-binding. Physical effect: It forced all matter within a vast radius to realign with its original lattice, restoring crumbled stone, reforging broken air currents, and reknitting physical form from dust. Spiritual effect: Any soul within the Seal’s column was shown its first memory, an unshakable reminder of its own beginning, instantly halting the erosion of identity. Psychological effect: The sight of the Axis gave combatants the sense that they stood at the center of the universe—unmovable, undeniable—and the creeping hopelessness of the Tapestry shattered. Śūnyāntarā narrowed her eyes. He had met her first move not with a block, but with a reassertion of existence itself.

Her second strike was a far more predatory act. The sky behind her split into ten concentric discs of deepening black, each rotating in opposite directions. From their center emerged a Maw of Shadow—not teeth, but overlapping arcs of pure null-gravity, each one hungering for mass, thought, and light. The Eclipsing Maw was both a cosmic predator and psychological snare. Physical effect: Each arc generated a collapse field that devoured incoming matter, pulling at armor, weapons, and even the kinetic energy of movement. Spiritual effect: Souls caught within the arcs felt themselves being drawn toward a cold “other place” where time was absent, a void of eternal stasis. Psychological effect: The closer one was to the Maw, the more they became convinced that surrendering to it would be easier than resisting. It was aimed not only to consume Vishwavyoma but also to swallow the idea of resistance from the battlefield. Vishwavyoma leapt into the air, wings of light and shadow unfurling, and with a spiral gesture traced a vast mandala in mid-space. The Mandala of the Turning Heavens began to rotate, each of its countless nested circles etched with constellations from all possible skies. Physical effect: The rotation generated a counter-gravity gyre, not repelling the Maw, but redirecting its collapse field into harmless orbits that spun endlessly around the mandala’s perimeter. Spiritual effect: The mandala synchronized with the heartbeat of the world, pulling endangered souls back into alignment with their temporal flow, preventing the pull into stasis. Psychological effect: Those who saw it felt as though the entire cosmos was moving in their defense; the lure of surrender was replaced by the exhilaration of watching the stars turn. The Maw strained and twisted but could not advance.
Śūnyāntarā’s lips curved—not in anger, but in recognition. This was no ordinary opponent.

For her third strike, she abandoned spatial dominance and went directly for the throne of the mind. Raising the Nidrāksha, she released a choral wave of voices that were not her own—the sound of every ruler she had ever conquered, speaking in despair and devotion to her. The Threnody of the Hollow Crown was a hybrid of mass-dream-binding and acoustic soul inversion. Physical effect: The sound resonated through bone and nerve, disrupting balance and muscle control, causing even steady warriors to sway. Spiritual effect: It inverted the polarity of loyalty within a soul, making one’s deepest commitments point toward Śūnyāntarā instead of their true cause. Psychological effect: Hearing beloved voices pledge themselves to the enemy created a sudden, searing grief, making combatants drop weapons in mourning. Even the mountain wind seemed to still, listening. Closing his eyes, Vishwavyoma let the Threnody wash over him—then he exhaled, and from his body burst an aurora unlike any natural light. It was the color of the universe before its first sunrise, shifting from unfathomable violet to gold to pure, luminous white. The Aurora of the First Dawn was a synthesis of pre-creation light resonance and harmonic destiny restoration. Physical effect: The light reordered the inner ear and nerve patterns of all affected, returning full control of movement and balance. Spiritual effect: It revealed to each soul the moment they first chose loyalty, reigniting that vow with unbreakable clarity. Psychological effect: The soundless beauty of the aurora made the enemy’s grief dissolve into joy—a joy so profound it could not be redirected toward the Shadow-Sleeper. The Threnody faltered. The spectral voices dimmed. For the first time in centuries, Śūnyāntarā let the Nidrāksha’s orbit slow.

They stood across from each other in the stillness after the third exchange. Neither had taken a step backward. The battlefield between them was untouched by ruin—but the air shimmered with the afterimage of three cosmic collisions. Śūnyāntarā tilted her head. “You are not merely a bridge, Vishwavyoma. You are a wall between me and the world.” Vishwavyoma’s voice was calm, steady as a horizon. “And you, Mistress of the Void, are a tide I will not let through.” Far below, both armies paused, sensing that the war had shifted from many hands to two.