Chapter 157
Emperor Krata slowly opened his mouth, and within that seemingly simple movement, the reality around him began to lose its stability, like the surface of water being pulled by something from an unseen depth.
Then he inhaled.
It was not merely a breath, but a pull that seemed intent on emptying the world itself.
The wind no longer moved according to its own direction—it was forced into submission, twisted, and dragged toward a single focal point that could not be resisted.
The soldiers' cloaks snapped wildly, shards of ice rose from the floor, and even the lava flowing along the right side bent into thin arcs as though it, too, was incapable of resisting the pull.
"What—this isn't just air pressure… it's like—"
A captain's voice was cut short as his body was dragged half a step forward before he even realized it.
"DON'T LOSE YOUR FOOTING!" Zhulumat barked. His feet slammed into the cracked floor with force, and his hands gripped his weapon—not to attack, but to keep himself anchored to a ground that was beginning to betray them.
Shaqar felt the pull like an invisible hand trying to rip the contents of his chest away, forcing him to bow, forcing him to endure not only physically but existentially.
He pressed Apathy's shoulder firmly, making sure the figure beside him would not be dragged any deeper into the center of destruction.
Their breaths came in fragments, not because of exhaustion, but because the air itself was being contested by something that held a greater claim over it.
"This… this isn't merely an ability," Agatha muttered, her voice hoarse yet still forcing its way out beneath the crushing pressure on her chest.
Apathy did not answer.
His eyes widened, not at Emperor Krata, but at the surrounding space—at the emptiness that was beginning to be filled by something not yet fully present, yet already enough to provoke a deep sense of nausea.
"Shaqar… look…" he finally whispered, his voice as thin as a thread on the verge of snapping.
And Shaqar looked.
When the pull reached its peak, the world seemed to pause for a moment—not in silence, but in a tension too severe to be called stillness.
Then, as though something had answered a summons long awaited, they began to appear.
Not from a doorway.
Not from a crack.
But from space itself, as though their existence had merely been postponed until now.
Dozens of Angels floated with perfect wings, unstained and unbound. Every movement they made was synchronized in a harmony too precise to be called natural.
Among them followed hundreds of Holy Beings, their bodies radiant yet not blinding—a light that offered no warmth, only the certainty that they existed beyond the reach of all living things.
They did not fall.
They did not walk.
They simply… existed, gathering around Emperor Krata like stars orbiting an inescapable center of gravity.
"This isn't a summoning…"
Onigakure's voice trembled, losing its usual composure for the first time.
"It's a gathering," Makakushi continued quietly, his jaw tightening. "As if they're… being called home."
Zhulumat did not need to count. Eyes that had witnessed one hundred and twenty-seven cleansing operations without a single failure now read the map of destruction being painted before them.
To the left, the Angels' formation spread its wings into an arc that would soon seal off access to the eastern corridor.
To the right, the Holy Beings moved around the lava flow, which was cooling at an absurd speed, creating a semicircle that left only a single opening—an opening far too obvious not to be a trap.
He drew a breath, and in that breath he forced himself not to listen to the voice within his bones that kept urging him to run.
When he spoke, his voice emerged not as a shout, but as an order compressed into a single note.
"ALL UNITS—PREPARE YOUR EXORCISM TOOLS! OFFICERS, CAPTAINS, SUBORDINATES—I WILL ACCEPT NO EXCUSES FROM ANY OF YOU!"
His right hand seized Khevharum—an axe-shaped exorcism tool engraved with the names of the Accursed—from the sheath on his back, while his left hand drew the dagger-like Zillaniyat from his waist.
Both black-metal instruments emitted a low hum that was immediately echoed by similar movements throughout the army.
Shaqar released his grip on Apathy for only a fraction of a second to pull Ruhutha from beneath his robe, a tool shaped like an inverted cross with an eye at its center, now glowing red like freshly stirred embers.
Onigakure and Makakushi moved in a synchronization they had never practiced, each drawing a pair of Karmutha—twin daggers whose split tips resembled roots searching for soil.
Behind them, dozens of soldiers from Team Xirkushkartum opened an inverted triangular formation, each exorcism tool raised before their chest.
It was the exact same position they had assumed during one hundred and eighty-three training sessions, yet this time something felt different in the air, something that made a movement long turned into instinct feel like crawling against the current of an overwhelming river.
And then the liturgy began.
It was not sung.
It was not shouted.
It was breathed from the lips of the Satanist High Officers standing at the front line.
The words, spoken in a language without vowels, emerged like smoke from cracks in the earth, curling upward into an invisible layer that was meant to serve as the final barrier between them and the holiness that sought to annihilate them.
"Great Sanse, Almighty One, bearer of the name that may not be spoken except within the siege of death, grant us Your abomination as a shield. Let their holiness become poison unto themselves."
Zhulumat's chant flowed in a tone that neither rose nor fell, steady as the surface of water untouched by wind for ages.
Around him, the other High Officers joined in a harmony attainable only by those who had recited the same prayer through a thousand different midnights.
The captains answered with a second chant, their voices lower but no less profound.
The subordinates completed it with whispers that were, paradoxically, the loudest of all within frequencies no ordinary ear could perceive.
Together they formed a pyramid of sound, building a triple-layered wall between themselves and the hundred-plus holy entities advancing at an unhurried pace, like a tide fully aware that the shore could never flee from it.
Apathy felt the tool in his hand trembling—not with its usual coldness, but with a strange warmth.
A warmth that should never have belonged to something born from curses and tears.
For a moment, he almost believed that perhaps—just perhaps—it would work.
That the wall they had built from voices and conviction would be enough to stop whatever was coming.
Even though, in the deepest recesses of his heart, he knew that no wall in this world could ever be high enough to stop something that had never acknowledged the existence of walls.
The mistake did not arrive with an explosion.
It arrived with a silence far more devastating—a silence that suddenly swallowed every liturgy they had spoken as though the words had never existed, as though their mouths had never moved, as though for the last thirty seconds they had merely stood there with their exorcism tools raised against their chests and their lips sealed in perfect foolishness.
And when that silence shattered, it shattered into a form they had never trained to face.
Fine cracks began spreading across the surface of the Khevharum in Zhulumat's hand, like veins being consumed by fire from within.
Before his eyes could even process what was happening, the tool—guaranteed by its creator to remain intact even against tsunamis and meteor-induced devastation—exploded.
Not like a bomb.
But like something that had been forced for far too long to become something it was never meant to be.
It disintegrated into black dust that evaporated before it could even touch the floor.
To Be Continued…