Chapter 164
"Don't listen—DON'T LISTEN TO THAT VOICE!" he screamed, but the eighty-seven pairs of ears already bleeding a clear fluid could not choose not to hear, because the voice did not come through their ears. It came through consciousness itself, through the gaps between thoughts they had always believed belonged to them alone.
The pendulum swung back to the left, slower than before, as though someone were savoring every millimeter of the journey before reaching a destination that had been known from the very beginning. The Nebetu'u man's head spoke the second word in exactly the same tone as the first, yet it felt entirely different, like two faces that looked alike, but one smiled while the other wept.
"Nothingness."
And the moment that syllable touched the air, Onigakure felt something he had never imagined he would experience in any battle—he felt himself becoming unfamiliar to himself, like clothing that had become too loose on a body he no longer recognized. Beside him, Makakushi dropped to his knees, not because of pain, but because he had suddenly forgotten that his knees were supposed to support his own weight, as though the knowledge of how to stand had been stripped from his muscle memory by something that had a greater claim to that memory than he did.
The earth shields created by the necklaces began to crack.
Not physically, but conceptually. They cracked at the level of conviction itself, because how could a shield endure if it had begun to doubt whether it had ever truly been solid?
Apathy, still trying to focus his gaze on Zhulumat's neck, felt the fingers gripping his own necklace begin to tremble—not from exhaustion, but because the necklace suddenly felt lighter than before, as though something were withdrawing a promise that had once been made.
"Hold the line—Your Excellencies of the Sanse, hold on to whatever you still can!" Shaqar shouted, his voice no longer carrying anger, only panic masquerading as authority. Yet from the corner of his eye, he saw Nebetu'u begin swinging the pendulum again, and this time the motion was shorter, faster, like the heartbeat of someone dying who did not wish to die alone.
Right, left, right, left—the pendulum moved in an increasingly unpredictable rhythm. Sometimes fast, sometimes slow. Sometimes it paused in the middle as if contemplating something. Sometimes it reversed direction before reaching the end of its arc. And the Nebetu'u man's head began alternating between those two words like a mantra that never required a third word to be complete.
"Existence—Nothingness—Existence—Nothingness."
And every time the words changed, something within the room changed as well.
At times, the Angels' laser light grew brighter. At others, it dimmed. Sometimes the frequency emitted by the Holy Creatures' eyes felt like a gentle caress; other times, like a lash. And the eighty-seven satanist soldiers still struggling to maintain their earth shields began to feel as though the reality around them was being sliced into tiny fragments that no longer wished to become whole again.
Agatha looked at her own hand—the hand still clutching the black stone necklace—and suddenly it appeared to belong to someone else. When she blinked, it became her hand again. When she blinked once more, it transformed into a claw with no fingers. And by the third blink, she was no longer certain whether she truly had hands at all, or whether she had only believed she did because someone had once told her that humans possessed hands at the ends of their arms.
"Zhulumat—I can't feel my legs!" someone shouted from behind.
Then another voice followed.
"I can't feel my face!"
And then another:
"What—what is my name? Who gave me that name?"
And amid the chaos of identities being torn from their roots one by one, Nebetu'u stopped the pendulum precisely at the center—not moving to the right, not moving to the left, merely swaying in a microscopic circle that was never truly still, yet never truly went anywhere.
For the first time since he had begun speaking, the Nebetu'u man's head lifted its gaze. His vertically divided eyes—black and white, day and night, two colors that had never been friends yet were forced to share the same space within a single eyeball—stared directly at Zhulumat.
Then, in a voice no louder than a whisper yet no softer than thunder, he spoke the third word he had never uttered before—a word that caused the pulsating flesh pendulum to stop swinging entirely and hang motionless like fruit that had ripened, yet that no one wished to pick.
"Dedication."
And when that word fell into the room, there was no explosion, no light, no sound—only perfect silence.
A silence that contained nothing.
A silence that made all eighty-seven who heard it suddenly realize that they were not fighting an enemy.
They were fighting the reality that they had once been born, that they had once been given names, that they had once believed their lives belonged to them to preserve or waste.
While the word "Dedication" still lingered in the air like a mist uncertain of where it should dissipate, Nebetu'u did something no one who still possessed enough awareness to speculate could have anticipated.
His other hand—the hand that had remained hanging motionless at the side of his asymmetrical body, the hand that had never moved since he first condensed from the light that split the ceiling apart—rose at last.
The motion could not be called fast, yet it could not be called slow either. It existed somewhere between the two, as though he himself could not decide whether he wished to hurry or relax.
And from that open palm, copies began to emerge—not one by one, but all at once, like illusions that had suddenly decided they were more real than the originals.
"What—WHAT IS HE DOING?" Agatha screamed, her voice nearly swallowed by the strange hissing sound accompanying the appearance of those copies.
In her trembling hand, she felt the black stone necklace that had already fallen to the ground vibrate at a frequency different from before.
Not the vibration of defense.
The vibration of warning.
A vibration that declared something was about to happen—something no exorcism ritual had ever taught them to face.
And not a single one of them was prepared.
The copies of the pulsating flesh pendulum—for there was no more accurate way to describe objects identical in every respect to the pendulum in Nebetu'u's right hand, equally pulsating, equally frozen like droplets of water suspended mid-fall, equally covered in surfaces rippling with patternless waves—now floated before Nebetu'u in a disorderly formation.
Not like an army preparing to attack.
But like a school of fish searching for a current that would carry them somewhere they had never chosen for themselves.
And the female head of Nebetu'u, who had remained silent all this time with a smile whose meaning changed every second, finally opened her mouth for the first time.
To Be Continued...