Chapter 154
The chamber was vast and without partitions, its ceiling disappearing into endless darkness.
Yet within that same place, golden light radiated from the gaps between the floor tiles arranged in chaotic patterns—like a chessboard being played simultaneously by gods and devils.
On the left side of the chamber, small pools of water had frozen into pale blue crystals, releasing a chill that made the hairs on the back of one's neck stand upright.
Meanwhile, from the ceiling above them, snowflakes drifted down slowly, only to melt before touching the floor, as though time itself was uncertain of how it should behave.
On the right side, however, it was the complete opposite.
Thin streams of lava slithered through cracks in the stone, radiating waves of heat that distorted vision itself.
Above them, the air shimmered like flames that would never die out.
"This makes no sense," muttered the commander of the troops, his voice sounding strange as it echoed throughout the chamber.
Half of the echo felt heavy and burning hot, while the other half felt light and freezing cold.
At the very center of the chamber, exactly on the imaginary line dividing those two opposing worlds, stood an empty throne made from a material impossible to identify.
At times, it resembled cold white marble.
At other times, it appeared like black embers still glowing with fire.
The most suffocating oddity was not the extreme contrast in temperature, but the fact that both could coexist without destroying one another.
Within the dark ceiling above, flashes of light occasionally appeared like suns being born and dying within an instant.
Yet in those very same corners, shadows moved with lives of their own.
Not shadows cast by objects within the chamber, but shadows of something else.
From somewhere distant.
From dimensions the satanists did not even possess names for.
The air on the second floor could not be breathed in normally.
Every inhale felt like swallowing two opposing things at once—lungs burning and freezing simultaneously.
One of the subordinates suddenly dropped to his knees, his hand clutching his chest, his mouth open yet no sound coming out.
"He can't breathe," his companion said.
Strangely, the voice sounded calm.
Too calm.
As though this chamber was also stealing their emotions one by one.
The commander raised his hand, signaling for them to stop briefly.
His eyes swept across the chamber, trying to understand, trying to find a gap within something never designed to be understood by beings like them.
"We are not standing between two places," he finally said, his voice trembling while forcing itself to remain steady.
"We are standing in one place that… forces two different essences to become one."
The silence on the second floor was not a comforting silence—it was a pause forced by confusion, by lungs having to relearn how to breathe air split into two.
Zhulumat still stood at the very front, his eyes tracing the chamber that felt like an unhealed wound, when Shaqar stepped closer from beside him.
The captain of Team Xirkushkartum's face was covered in thin, still-fresh cuts, yet his eyes—his eyes belonged to someone who had spent far too long counting seconds in silence.
"We can't stop here," Shaqar said.
His voice was not loud, yet it pierced through the heavy air like a blade being pushed slowly forward.
He turned toward Zhulumat, then toward the corridor stretching at the far end of the chamber, leading into a darkness different from the one they had left behind.
"The resurrection ritual. You know it. The Twelve Taboos. The Ten Obligations. If they complete it before we reach the summit—"
Zhulumat raised one hand, cutting him off before he could finish.
He did not need to hear the rest.
His eyes narrowed as he stared at the empty throne in the center of the chamber as though it could provide answers.
"What's your estimate?" he asked.
Shaqar answered without hesitation.
"Enough to make us too late if we keep standing here discussing what's already obvious."
Agatha, standing on the other side, let out a short scoff while still holding the dead device hanging around her neck.
"Then stop standing still. I hate this place. The air here feels like it's being judged by two different judges."
Zhulumat did not laugh, yet something in his jaw hardened into a decision.
"We move. Now."
Their first steps toward the corridor at the edge of the chamber were the heaviest—not because of exhaustion, but because every meter they crossed felt like stepping over a boundary that should never have been crossed.
Yet before they had even traveled a hundred meters from their starting point, the formation was forced to stop by something that emerged from nothingness—like mist condensing into form, like a prayer answered incorrectly.
An Angel stood before them, and in that first second, nobody spoke.
Not because of fear.
Not because of shock.
But because that figure—the figure that should have symbolized something untouched by flesh and sin—now looked like something shattered and forced to continue standing.
Its wings were still there, but the feathers were no longer white.
They hung damply like cloth soaked in water frozen for far too long.
Its face—if it could still be called a face—was a mask cracked along every seam, revealing a dim light within that pulsed like the heart of something dying.
And around its neck coiled a chain, not made of metal, but of something far crueler.
The remnants of faith twisted into shackles, each link a confession forced into denial.
The Angel did not move.
It merely stood there, and within its clouding eyes was something that could not be read as a threat—something more akin to a question that had not dared to be asked for a very long time.
Behind Zhulumat, the soldiers who had been prepared to attack slowly relaxed their postures.
Not because they were careless, but because what they saw did not awaken the instinct to fight—it awakened something deeper, older, and far more painful.
Some of them recognized that figure.
Not as an enemy, but as something they once admired from afar, something they once believed to be a guardian of balance before the war began.
One soldier in the third row gripped the handle of his weapon so tightly that his knuckles turned white, yet he did not raise it.
Another lowered his head, not out of fear, but because he could not bear to witness something sacred transformed into something chained like an animal.
Zhulumat himself did not move, yet his eyes—eyes that had only ever known black and white within strategy—lingered on those chains longer than they should have.
"This… isn't just a guardian," muttered one of the captains beside him, sounding like someone trying to convince himself.
"This is… a spectacle. A warning."
And within that forced silence, Apathy—who had been standing behind Shaqar the entire time, his body trembling even though nothing was attacking—finally opened his mouth.
His voice was not loud, yet it was clear enough to pierce the fragile silence.
"That… is Xajuriosta," he said, and even the name itself sounded like a curse spoken through pain.
He took a breath, his eyes never blinking away from the figure before them.
"Those whose faith is no longer acknowledged. Those whose devotion has been stripped away. Those whose greatness… was forcibly torn from them because they refused."
He stopped, as though the next words were too heavy to lift from his suffocating chest.
"Because they refused to follow the will of the Cursed One."
To be continued…