Chapter 330: Chapter 326 – Threads That Cross Space
Inside the Nerys Temple, which had almost lost its original form, the battle unfolded in suffocating silence.
There were no explosions. No screams. Only subtle vibrations that slowly cracked the ancient coral, as if the structure itself was holding its breath for too long.
Stacia stood in the middle of a corridor that now curved unnaturally, like a lting painting. Threads of ti shimred around her, crisscrossing into a dense web that protected Alicia and Sofia behind her. Her usually calm eyes now glowed softly, reflecting thousands of possibilities she saw at once.
Before her, Xynareth hovered lightly.
Its body was no longer fully solid. The geotric lines forming its shape kept changing, shifting into new patterns every second, turning into octagons, then into countless fractals. It was a living space, and that space was angry.
"You are too rigid," said Xynareth, its voice coming from all directions at once. "Ti always binds. Space is always free."
Stacia did not reply imdiately.
She simply raised one hand.
A thin thread of ti detached from her web, slithering like a serpent of light, then piercing toward an empty spot to Xynareth’s left.
At that exact mont, the space there folded.
Xynareth erged from the fold, already prepared to attack with a hand transford into a sharp geotric blade. But Stacia’s ti thread was already there first wrapping around its wrist, forcing the movent to halt midway.
The attack was trapped between two seconds and forced to collide.
Xynareth smiled faintly.
"Good. But still predictable."
It pulled its body backward not retreating, but vanishing into a lower dinsion, then reappearing from above, below, from sides that did not exist. Thousands of folded space attacks ca simultaneously, each trying to sever Stacia’s ti threads from their roots.
Stacia closed her eyes briefly.
Then opened them again.
The entire corridor trembled.
She pulled all the ti threads at once, condensing hundreds of monts into a single second. Xynareth’s attacks coming from all directions suddenly collided with each other, folding spaces crashing because ti no longer gave them proper sequence.
The collision produced no sound, but it caused the temple walls to lt into fine coral dust. The remaining blue-green light flickered wildly, then permanently extinguished in so sections.
Xynareth was pushed back several ters a aningful distance in their fight.
The geotric lines on its body flickered unstably, so patterns vanishing entirely before reforming.
"Interesting," it said again, its tone unchanged. "You forced space to follow ti’s rhythm. That... shouldn’t be possible."
Stacia stepped forward once.
Around her feet, the coral floor began cracking in perfect spiral patterns not from physical pressure, but because ti there accelerated thousands of years in an instant. Coral turned to dust, dust to mory, mory vanished.
"You are too free," Stacia replied softly. "That makes you careless."
She released new threads this ti not one, but seven at once.
Each thread headed to different points in the space around Xynareth. Not to attack its body, but to plant ti anchors in the space folds it used for movent.
Xynareth realized it too late.
It tried to fold space again to evade, but the folds were now tied to specific monts Stacia controlled. Every ti it tried to erge in a new place, it returned to its original position, like a recording played on loop.
For the first ti, Xynareth was cornered in its own space.
It writhed, its geotric lines spinning faster, trying to force new dinsions into existence. But every new dinsion was imdiately captured by Stacia’s ti threads before it could stabilize.
Stacia raised her right hand higher.
The threads began to pull.
Not pulling Xynareth’s body but pulling the freedom of the space it represented. Fold after fold was forced straight, dinsion after dinsion forced into a single straight line.
Xynareth grimaced.
Then it laughed softly.
"Very well. If you want to play seriously..."
Its body began to solidify.
The geotric lines stopped changing. They rged into one fixed form, a perfect polyhedron floating in the air, emitting such dense spatial pressure that the surrounding air vanished completely.
The space inside the temple began to shrink.
Not collapsing but being compressed into the polyhedron. Corridors shortened, ceilings lowered, walls closed in. Everything was drawn toward Xynareth, including Stacia’s ti threads.
Stacia felt the pull.
Her threads began to stretch, so nearly snapping.
She did not panic.
She simply took a deep breath though she no longer needed it then released one final thread.
This thread did not head toward Xynareth.
It headed to the past of this corridor itself to when the temple was still intact, when the space here still obeyed ordinary laws.
The thread anchored there.
Then pulled.
The entire spatial contraction suddenly halted.
The corridor forcibly widened again, against Xynareth’s will. The destroyed coral reappeared briefly as shadows, then crumbled again not from destruction, but from clashing ti.
Xynareth’s polyhedron vibrated intensely.
Small cracks appeared on its surface.
Stacia gazed at it calmly.
"You are not space itself," she said. "You are rely borrowing it."
Xynareth did not respond.
Xynareth’s polyhedron spun faster, the cracks on its surface widening like veins in glass about to shatter. The compressed space pressure inside began leaking out not as waves, but as subtle distortions that made the surrounding air vibrate, as if reality itself was evaporating.
Stacia remained standing calmly, her right hand still raised. The last ti she had planted in the temple’s past continued pulling, forcing the space Xynareth had shrunk to expand again. However, that pull was also beginning to weaken itself as the thread was stretching, its light fibers fading at the ends.
Xynareth sensed it.
"Ti always runs out," it said, its voice now echoing from within the polyhedron, distorted by layers of stacked space. "You can pull it back, but not forever."
It pushed deeper.
The polyhedron suddenly shrank drastically not becoming physically smaller, but conceptually denser. All the remaining space inside the temple was pulled into it at once. The last coral pillars collapsed silently, the floor cracked into bottomless abysses, and even the shadows of light from outside began curving toward the polyhedron’s center.
Stacia felt the pressure directly on her body.
Not on her skin but on her very existence. The surrounding space tried to forcibly displace her into the polyhedron, like paper folded repeatedly until it lost all dinsions.
She did not resist directly.
Instead, she released all the remaining ti anchors around Alicia and Sofia, concentrating her entire control on the single thread still embedded in the past.
Then she pulled it with full force.
Not pulling the space back but pulling ti itself forward.
The destroyed temple corridor suddenly reappeared as a transparent shadow around them. The collapsed coral pillars stood again briefly, the blue-green light reignited, and the ancient structure revived in one forcibly replayed mont.
Xynareth was surprised.
Its polyhedron paused montarily, its cracks freezing.
Stacia seized the opening.
She stepped forward not in the current space, but in the space she had just revived. Her step brought her directly to the polyhedron’s side, in a place that should no longer exist.
Her left hand touched the polyhedron’s surface.
There was no grand attack. Just a gentle touch.
But in that touch, she planted one new ti thread, a thread that went directly to Xynareth’s own "beginning." To the mont this entity first took the form of space, before it beca primordial, before it was fully free.
The polyhedron vibrated violently.
Cracks spread quickly, like ice breaking under pressure.
Xynareth writhed inside.
"You... dare touch my origin?"
Its voice now mixed with anger.
The polyhedron burst outward not shattering, but releasing all the compressed space at once in a massive exhale. Waves of distortion swept the temple, tearing apart what remained until nothing recognizable as a building was left. Alicia and Sofia were protected by Stacia’s last ti web remnants, but even they felt deep nausea.
Stacia was flung backward, her body slamming into a coral wall that no longer existed, passing through layers of reality until stopping in the remaining empty space.
Thin blood flowed from the corner of her lips not ordinary blood, but shimring ti fluid.
Xynareth reerged from the polyhedron fragnts, its body now simpler only slowly spinning geotric lines. So parts were completely gone, no longer reforming.
It stared at Stacia with eyes that no longer had pupils.
"You made ... expend more than I wanted."
Stacia rose slowly, wiping her lips.
"You too," she replied calmly. "You made
use more than I needed."
The two gazed at each other amid the temple ruins that had now truly vanished.
The space around them began cracking like glass.
Ti began stuttering, like a tangled tape.
Neither backed down.
Xynareth raised its remaining hand, its lines beginning to form a new pattern more complex, deeper.
Stacia gathered the remaining ti threads in her palm, condensing them into a thin needle of light.
The sea outside still roared from Sylvia’s battle.
Inside, space and ti prepared for the next clash.
And this fight was far from over.
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