Polar Day And Polar Night

The Emberstride stretched forward through the silence, piercing a viscous nebula reeking of decaying stardust. The Emberstrider ascended step by step. Each footfall, sheathed in dark grey armor, landed on newly formed treads woven from desiccated stellar cores and solidified cosmic dust, releasing a muffled sound like grinding bone. Atop the staff, the miniature Emberspark Singularity slowly rotated. Deep within its core, the faint traceries of static sparks, like a stubborn fissure embedded in ice at absolute zero, silently heralded the cataclysm within.

The filthy claws of the Void Predator had long since vanished without a trace, the collision's aftermath forcibly overlaid. Yet, the tremor within the core, like a stone cast into deep water, sent ripples expanding outward, impossible to ever fully calm.

Within the icy stellar fires of the Emberstrider's left eye, the shard of Tang Xiao's will—the desperate resolve to become the prison, the obsessively ordered drive to freeze all things—far from being suppressed, instead feasted upon the foundational laws of "Stasis" and "Preservation" within the Emberspark core through the gaps torn by the convulsing laws! The frigid will surged like a waking glacier, flooding the core's left hemisphere, relentlessly battering against the luminous fissure that divided it, seeking to freeze it over completely!

Simultaneously, within the depths of the warm sigil burning in the Radiant right eye, the shard of Lu Chen's will—the madness to incinerate shackles, the devouring hunger to overturn all existence—ignited like wildfire, greedily consuming the laws of "Scorching Annihilation" and "Consumption" within the Emberspark core! The searing will erupted like a volcano within the core's right hemisphere, boiling and roaring, frantically searing the luminous fissure, striving to melt it away, to burn it to oblivion!

Left: Absolute Cold Stasis, Prison of Order.

Right: Scorching Annihilation, Abyss of Chaos.

Two diametrically opposed torrents of will, originating from the very roots of existence, collided within the heart of the Emberspark Singularity, using the luminous fissure as their battlefield in an unprecedented, brutal confrontation! Each clash of wills resonated like cosmic glaciers crashing into seas of magma, unleashing violent tremors at the level of fundamental laws and agony akin to being torn asunder!

For the first time, the Emberstrider's armored form trembled, almost imperceptibly, upon the stair. Its grip on the staff (if the dense Ember-matter could be called knuckles) emitted a faint, tortured creak, like metal being forcibly twisted. The rotation of the miniature Singularity atop the staff became visibly erratic and distorted. The blended radiance of Light and Ember at its core fluctuated violently—one moment the left hemisphere utterly consumed by icy, ghostly blue, the next the right hemisphere swallowed by blazing, uncontrolled incandescent white!

"Grh… Ah…!"

A suppressed, agonized groan, layered with dual tones of suffering, escaped the outline of its light-shrouded visage. It solidified into tangible sound waves that shook the star-core steps beneath its feet, dislodging fine particles of ashen dust.

The Path of Overlay, arduous to tread.

Yet, at this very apex of internal conflict and torturous agony—

An abrupt mutation erupted from within the chaotic nebula cloud the Stride had just pierced, not yet fully overlaid!

A beam of **white light**, condensed to an extreme, pure to the point of chilling the soul, tore through the viscous stardust without warning!

This light held no sanctity, no warmth, no purifying intent. It was cold, dead, carrying an ultimate aura of stripping away all attributes, returning to absolute "Nothingness"! Where it passed, the churning stardust was instantly "erased," not even ash remaining, leaving only a smooth-edged, pitch-black trail leading to pure void!

The target was not the Emberstrider, but… a recently overlaid node upon the Emberstride! A step formed from the crystallized final prayer-ripples of a civilization frozen in stasis!

*Shiiink—!*

No earth-shattering collision. The moment the white light touched the step, the solidified psychic wave-matter, overlaid and preserved by Ember Law, along with the ashen luster covering it, vanished as silently as a pencil sketch erased by rubber! In its place remained only a smooth-edged, circular void opening into the chaotic void below!

A piece of the Stride's structure had been forcibly "excavated"!

The attack was precise, lethal! It exploited the Emberstrider's core turmoil, the brief lapse in its perception and overlay field, and leveraged the fatal weakness of the internal conflict between ice and fire!

*Abyssal Corruptor… Hunter…* A cold, fragmented thought, laced with agony and a spark of violated fury, detonated within the Emberstrider's core! It instantly recognized the essence of that white light—akin to the "Abyssal Corrosion" of the Source-Flow Core, yet purer, closer to the ultimate void at the level of law! It was an ultimate predator roaming the ruins of the multiverse, feeding on the carcasses of overlaid worlds! Like barnacles clinging to a whale, they specialized in hunting down entities like the Emberstrider, who reshaped the laws!

Almost the instant the Stride was pierced—

*Huum! Huum! Huum!*

Three more beams of the same cold, dead white light tore through the stardust nebula from different directions, ignoring spatial barriers, and blasted towards the Emberstrider! Their targets: the miniature Singularity atop the staff, fluctuating wildly due to internal conflict; and the violently flickering luminous fissure at its core!

The timing, diabolical! The attacks, fatal!

Under normal circumstances, such assaults couldn't even approach the Ember field. But now, the Emberstrider was wracked by the tearing agony and law-stuttering caused by the core's ice-fire conflict! The Ember field surrounding it manifested a brief, yet very real… gap!

The three white lights, like venomous serpents, slipped precisely through the field's breach, striking instantly!

One aimed for the miniature Singularity!

One aimed for the luminous fissure on the chest core!

The last, insidiously, aimed for the subtly trembling joint of its staff-wielding right arm!

Life or death, decided in an instant!

"SEAL!!!"

"BURN!!!"

Two utterly distinct, yet equally furious roars of will detonated simultaneously deep within the Emberstrider's core!

Tang Xiao's frigid will erupted under the pressure of mortal peril! Icy, ghostly blue light instantly sheathed the left half of its body and staff! A barrier of absolute stasis, condensed to its extreme, its edges limned in burning ash, materialized instantly before it, seeking to freeze the incoming Abyssal white lights!

Lu Chen's annihilating will was equally ignited! Rampant incandescent white light engulfed the right half of its body and staff! Raging Terminus-Flames transformed into a roaring pale dragon, lunging savagely towards the incoming lights, striving to incinerate and devour them!

However, Ice and Fire, Stasis and Annihilation, were inherently conflicting extremes!

*BOOOOOOM—!!!*

The azure stasis barrier and the incandescent flame dragon collided head-on less than three feet in front of the Emberstrider!

The expected mutual annihilation did not occur. Instead, the violent confrontation of two extreme, opposing forces within such a confined space triggered a cataclysmic explosion of chaotic law-energy!

Blinding blue-white radiance instantly swallowed the Emberstrider's form! The terrifying storm of law-energy, like billions of invisible razors, tore madly at its armored shell! The dark grey armor fractured instantly with a spiderweb of cracks; flowing light-traces snapped strand by strand! The three incoming Abyssal white lights were also caught, twisted, and deflected by this sudden, internally sourced storm of destruction!

The light aimed at the Singularity was deflected by the explosion's turbulence, grazing past the staff's tip and silently erasing a patch of solidified nebula behind!

The light aimed at the chest fissure was largely shredded apart by the violent ice-fire chaos; a residual sliver slammed into the Emberstrider's chest, leaving a small, pitch-black hole with smooth edges that slowly "corroded" outward!

The light aimed at the joint was jolted upward by the explosion's shockwave, slamming brutally into the incandescent white light covering its right shoulder armor!

*Shiiink—!*

The incandescent light covering the right shoulder instantly snuffed out! Dense Ember-matter dissolved like fragile glass under the white light's erasing property! The Ember-matter composing the arm lost control, disintegrating almost instantly! The tightly gripped staff, under the dual assault of the explosion and the arm's collapse, tore free, spinning downward into the chaotic void!

*"ROOOOAR—!!!"*

A bellow compounded of dual agonies and unbridled fury finally erupted uncontrollably from the Emberstrider's distorted facial outline! Its light-shrouded "countenance" convulsed violently, splitting for the first time! The left half overlaid with icy, crystalline blue patterns; the right half streaming with molten, incandescent white light! From the pitch-black hole on its chest and the mangled wound on its right shoulder, icy-blue stasis power and incandescent white annihilating flames surged out like frenzied serpents, colliding, annihilating each other, resisting the Abyssal corrosion's spread, yet simultaneously accelerating the body's disintegration!

Deep within the core, the dividing luminous fissure, struck by the combined internal and external destruction, fractured like glass beneath a hammer blow, instantly spiderwebbing with countless cracks! On either side of the cracks, the cold stellar fires representing Ember and the warm sigil representing Radiance flared with blinding intensity, repelling, tearing at each other, like twin siblings on the brink of parting ways!

The Emberstride beneath its feet shuddered violently, vast sections of steps cracking and plummeting in the law-storm! The nebula cloud ahead was utterly shredded, revealing beyond it a deeper expanse of chaotic void churning with unknown law-turbulence.

Scepter falling into the abyss.

Body disintegrating under ice-fire conflict and Abyssal corrosion.

The core's luminous fissure on the verge of shattering.

The Emberstrider, this icy embodiment of order overlaying myriad worlds, pushed by the schism at its very root and the lethal strike of an external hunter, stood at the precipice of utter dissolution.

The forked path had appeared. The twin wills, amidst the cataclysmic tide of destruction, roared to tear this forcibly fused existence asunder!