Rose floated in the darkness with predatory patience, her emerald eyes fixed on the massive butterfly entity struggling beneath her altered code.

The interrogation had begun in earnest now, and Elara was discovering…with mounting horror, that every attempt to resist only demonstrated how utterly outmatched she'd become.

Elara gathered her narrative authority again, desperation lending her focus. Purple pages materialized around her form, these ones encoded with more complex instructions…layered shackles meant to bind Rose's very consciousness, to force her into stories where she had already surrendered, where resistance itself became impossible.

The pages lanced forward with the full weight of her authority behind them.

Rose's eyes didn't even narrow with effort.

She simply looked at the incoming attack, her perception drilling down through surface manifestation to see the fundamental code comprising its existence.

She altered it's code, and simply reversed who its target was!

The Nar'Thyss felt her own shackles attempting to constrain her, felt narrative authority she'd manifested trying to write her into stories of defeat and surrender.

"No- NO!" Elara's consciousness recoiled, wings beating frantically as she fought against her own redirected power.

Rose didn't stop there.

While Elara struggled with attacks that had been turned against her, Rose's authority pressed deeper into the code of the Nar'Thyss's fundamental existence.

She found the instructions governing how Elara's consciousness maintained cohesion across her massive form and began introducing errors!

Pain erupted through Elara's existence. It was the sensation of her own being unraveling, of the instructions defining what she was becoming corrupted and contradictory!

Parts of her consciousness lost connection with other parts. Memories became inaccessible as the code governing her recall mechanisms encountered errors. Even her perception of time began fragmenting as temporal processing subroutines received incompatible parameters.

She was coming apart.

Not destroyed, but dismantled, taken apart one piece at a time by an entity that could literally edit the genetic code of existence itself.

"WAIT- PLEASE!" The words tore from Elara's consciousness with desperation. "WE CAN TALK! WE CAN TALK!"

The begging should have been impossible. A Nar'Thyss didn't plead with beings from Lesser Scales, didn't negotiate with entities that should have been beneath notice!

But Rose had demonstrated with terrifying clarity that conventional hierarchies meant nothing.

Every defense rendered meaningless.

It was horror beyond anything Elara had experienced in eons of weaving tragedies.

Rose's assault stopped.

The sensation of her code being altered, of her existence unraveling under systematic editing, simply ceased. The relief was immediate- like suffocation ending, like agony being switched off at its source.

Rose floated above her coldly.

"I asked for that all along," Rose said, emerald eyes blazing with cold authority. "But some people are too stupid to understand right away."

"So." Rose's smile could have frozen plasma. "Tell me of the Nar'Thyss."

...!

Elara's consciousness struggled to reorganize itself, to repair the damage Rose had inflicted through code manipulation.

Parts of her being were still fragmenting, still encountering errors that made coherent thought difficult. But she forced herself to focus, forced herself to speak, because the alternative, having this terrifying entity resume her systematic dismantling, was unthinkable.

"The Nar'Thyss..." Elara's voice carried none of its previous arrogance, all pride stripped away by terror of what Rose could do.

"We are... we are one of many Existential Lineages that operate within a specific region of space."

She paused, gathering fragmented thoughts into coherent explanation.

"The region we control, the territory where our authority holds weight, is called the Folded Narrative Expanse. It encompasses many Star Seas and the Void stretching between them, a territory vast beyond conventional measurement, where countless trillions of existences live and die according to patterns we help... guide."

The word "guide" carried weight that suggested far more sinister implications, but Elara didn't elaborate.

She was too focused on providing information that might satisfy this entity who could unmake her easily!

"Within the Folded Narrative Expanse, the Nar'Thyss are..." She hesitated, pride warring with necessity before survival won. "We are powerful. We have existed for longer than most current Star Seas, have shaped the stories of multiple Star Seas according to our preferences."

Rose's expression didn't change. Elara swallowed whatever remained of her dignity and continued.

"But we are not the highest authority in the Folded Narrative Expanse. We are..." The words came with difficulty, as if speaking them aloud made her position even more diminished. "We are Vassals. All Nar'Thyss, along with other powerful Existential Lineages that operate in nearby territory all serve under higher authority."

"What authority?" Rose's question cut through the explanation with precision.

Elara's massive form shuddered, wings trembling with something that transcended mere fear.

"The Foldless Ones," she whispered, and the name carried reverence mixed with terror!

"They are the rulers of the Folded Narrative Expanse. They are the ones we answer to. They are..."

She paused, consciousness struggling to find words adequate to describe beings whose power made all her previous arrogance seem like the posturing of insects.

"They are entities whose capability can make all of us seem like ants in comparison."

Rose's emerald eyes narrowed with interest. "Explain."

Elara's voice took on the quality of someone reciting doctrine.

"All of us- myself, every Nar'Thyss regardless of tier, even you despite your terrifying capabilities…we are all Pre-Civilizational. We exist at the Level Zero Scale of Existence, the Null Scale where individual power can reach tremendous heights but ultimately remains... limited. Constrained by rules we cannot transcend no matter how strong we become individually."

She paused, letting the significance of that classification settle.

"The Foldless Ones are different. They have transcended individual existence. They belong to a…Civilization. Specifically, they belong to the Civilization of Life as its ruling caste, as entities who have entered that Scale where power is no longer defined by personal capability but by membership in something far greater."

HUUM!

Rose processed this information with clinical focus as Elara continued!

"A Civilization… it's different. A Civilization isn't just a group of powerful beings working together. It's an entirely different paradigm of existence where the whole becomes genuinely greater than the sum of its parts through means that Pre-Civilizational entities cannot replicate."

Her wings beat with agitation as she struggled to articulate concepts that existed beyond her direct experience.

"The Foldless Ones we serve are simply members of the Civilization of Life…not its rulers, not its architects, merely citizens who have gained entry into that elevated state. And by membership alone, by the simple fact of belonging to a Civilization rather than existing as Pre-Civilizational individuals..."

Elara's voice dropped to barely above a whisper.

"They have power the rest of us cannot even fathom. They can reshape entire Star Seas with casual effort. They can unmake Existential Lineages that have endured for eons with nothing more than deliberate intent and the authority their Civilization grants them!"

…!

A Civilization!

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