Chapter 156
Cracks streaked across the already chaotic tiles, refusing to follow any logical direction.
Some split vertically.
Others curled into spirals like whirlpools.
Still others suddenly appeared upon the dark ceiling and spread downward like roots growing in reverse.
Zhulumat lost his balance for the first time.
His knee struck the floor, and his hand supported the weight of his body against marble that suddenly felt like the surface of a storm-tossed sea.
"WHAT IS THIS—?!" shouted a soldier from behind, his voice cut short as his body collided with another warrior who had also been thrown off balance.
Agatha was hurled sideways.
Her shoulder slammed into a pillar of frozen crystal, which immediately cracked at the point of impact, sending icy fragments into the air that already seemed torn in half.
Shaqar felt his footing vanish beneath him.
His body was thrown left and then right within the same second, and he could only grab Apathy's arm—who had nearly been flung toward the river of lava on the right—with a reflex faster than thought itself.
"HOLD ON!" he shouted.
Both of his hands clamped onto Apathy's arm with such force that his own wounds reopened, fresh blood dripping between their intertwined fingers.
The tremor did not come in a single wave.
It arrived in irregular sequences, like something struggling to emerge from the womb of the world without yet finding the proper rhythm to be born.
The remaining troops—seventy-eight percent of those who had survived the first floor—were now scattered in a chaos that could no longer be called a formation.
Some crawled in search of pillars to hold onto.
Others dragged fallen comrades away from the ice or lava.
Some could do nothing but kneel, both palms pressed against the floor that continued to move as though the floor itself was trying to reject their presence.
Amid all of this, Zhulumat forced himself to stand.
One knee rose.
Both hands pressed against the cracked marble.
His jaw tightened against gravity, which suddenly seemed to change direction at random.
"NO ONE PANICS!"
His voice exploded through the roar of grinding stone, and for a brief moment it became the only fixed point within a room where everything else was moving.
He glanced toward Shaqar, who was still holding Apathy.
Then toward Agatha, who had already risen with a bleeding elbow.
Then toward the ranks that were beginning to regroup around the center of the formation.
"CLOSE RANKS! DIG IN! DON'T LET ANYONE GET SEPARATED!"
From somewhere beneath the castle, a second rumble began to rise.
Deeper.
Longer.
Like the drawn-out breath of something awakening from a sleep that had lasted far too long.
The shaking did not stop.
It merely changed form.
After five minutes that felt like five centuries, the tremors that had once raged wildly gradually lost their ferocity, like waves retreating back into the sea after crashing against the shore with unstoppable fury.
Yet that retreat brought no peace.
It brought something else.
From the cracks spreading across the floor and ceiling, from the fissures where ice and lava met in a forced impossibility, a form began to take shape.
It was not born.
It did not emerge.
Instead, it condensed, like moisture forced into solidity by a temperature that made no sense.
The soldiers who were still trying to restore their formation slowly froze in place.
Not because of fear.
But because what they saw did not belong to any category they had ever trained to confront.
The creature did not walk.
It glided across the fractured floor as though gravity simply did not apply to it.
And within its unfinished form, Zhulumat saw something that caused fingers that had never trembled before to tighten around the weapon at his waist.
The wings of an Angel, no longer damp but perfectly radiant.
The body of a Holy Being, no longer rigid but graceful in proportions that were far too ideal.
And between the two, a union that should never have existed—a fusion that surpassed all logic concerning what was sacred and what was cursed.
"That... isn't... that's impossible," muttered one of the captains beside Zhulumat, his voice choking as though he had just witnessed something his doctrine insisted could never exist.
The creature moved toward Xajuriosta—the chained angel—with a speed that was neither hurried nor willing to allow interruption.
No sound accompanied its movement.
Yet every inch it traveled left ripples in the air.
Tiny vibrations quivered like water touched by droplets of oil, distortions that made anyone looking at it feel as though they were seeing something through glass that was far too clear to trust.
Xajuriosta, who had stood motionless this entire time, whose eyes contained nothing but unanswered questions, suddenly moved.
Not to resist.
Not to flee.
But in a manner that resembled... surrender.
That cracked head slowly lowered.
Those damp, hanging wings folded inward.
And when the perfect creature reached toward him, there was no resistance.
What happened next was something the satanists who witnessed it could not describe with any words they possessed.
Xajuriosta was not destroyed.
He was not killed.
He was not erased.
He was absorbed.
Like water returning to the sea.
Like light being swallowed by its source.
The form of the defiled angel gradually dissolved into the body of that perfect being—not with screams, not with resistance, but with a silence far more horrifying than a thousand cries.
"He... he ate him," Agatha whispered.
For the first time, her voice lost its usual sharpness, replaced by something closer to a breath that had been held for far too long.
Shaqar felt Apathy's arm tense within his grasp.
He did not even need to look to know that the foul sweat was probably beginning to flow again.
And then the creature changed.
The evolution that followed was not an explosion.
Nor was it a blinding flash of light.
It was something quieter, yet far more profound.
Like a promise fulfilled by a universe that had never promised anything to anyone.
The creature's body began perfecting itself before their eyes.
Every imperfection that might have remained from the initial fusion was stripped away one by one, replaced by a form that possessed no flaw, no excess, not a single element out of place.
Its wings bloomed with flawless symmetry.
Every feather occupied the most precise, most beautiful, most correct position possible.
Its face—if it could even be called a face—was something impossible to remember clearly once one looked away.
Yet during the brief moments when the eye still dared to gaze upon it, it was a face utterly devoid of imperfection.
And therein lay the true terror.
Zhulumat felt something he had never experienced throughout his entire career as a high-ranking satanist.
A primitive urge.
Not from his mind.
Not from his strategies.
But from something deeper than bone, older than doctrine, more fundamental than anything he had ever believed.
The urge to run.
He heard Makakushi growl softly behind him.
The sound resembled someone struggling to keep themselves from screaming.
"This... this is what they warned us about..." muttered Onigakure.
And within that murmur, Zhulumat heard the echo of something he had once heard long ago during sessions reserved only for the highest-ranking leaders.
Perfection is a wound to us.
Purity is a burning fire.
Never stare too long at something that is too perfect, for it will burn your faith from within.
The growl was not born as a sound.
It appeared like a crack spreading through the air, a vibration that was not merely heard but felt, seeping into bone and forcing every nerve to acknowledge its existence.
To Be Continued…