Chapter 169
Agatha pointed toward the ceiling of the third floor, which was no longer a ceiling but a sky. A blue sky with white clouds racing across one side, while on the other side it was painted in a dark violet hue, with two moons hanging opposite one another. In another corner, there was no sky at all, only a darkness that pulsed like the heartbeat of a giant sleeping creature that was never truly at peace.
Shaqar, who had remained silent until now, observed every corner of the room with a gaze that could not be described as fear or awe, but rather calculation. He was measuring the scale of the threat that might emerge from these five forcibly merged worlds, measuring how many of the remaining forty-eight percent of their forces would die if they had to pass through this gate, measuring whether the price paid by the thirty to forty percent who had fallen on the second floor was worth whatever awaited them beyond.
"The first world... is like an ocean frozen in the middle of a storm," he muttered, his eyes fixed on the left side of the gate where colossal waves stood frozen at their highest point, displaying curves of water that should never have been able to remain still.
"The second world... a desert where the sand flows upward," he continued, shifting his gaze to the right, where golden grains of sand moved against gravity like a waterfall flowing in reverse.
"The third world... a forest where trees grow with their roots above and their leaves below."
Apathy added in a trembling voice, for he could see branches stretching downward toward the ground that hung above them.
"The fourth world... a city of metal and glass that continuously builds itself while tearing down other parts of itself," said Onigakure, his eyes catching flashes of light from buildings that were never completed because they changed shape every second.
And the fifth world, the one that felt closest yet most alien, was a world with no fixed form at all, only a collection of shadows moving like people rushing toward something they would never reach.
Zhulumat stood in silence for several seconds, long enough to feel the pulse in his temple slowing from a frantic rhythm into something more measured, colder, like a machine that had just weathered a storm and was now inspecting its components one by one before continuing its journey.
He took a breath, a breath that felt foreign because the air on the third floor smelled neither of blood, dust, nor sweat, but of five worlds colliding with one another. Then he opened his mouth, his voice no longer hoarse from shouting but clear in a way that was somehow terrifying, clear like the water above a pool too deep to see the bottom.
"Count them," he said, his eyes moving from Shaqar to Onigakure to Makakushi, then to the faces still standing behind them. Faces that now numbered only around forty-eight percent of the original eighty-seven. Faces stained with blood here and there, yet whose eyes still burned, still lived, still carried enough anger to keep moving forward.
"I want exact numbers. What about the exorcism tools we brought? Are any damaged? Are there any problems? We won't be able to pass through this gate if half of our weapons are nothing more than dead weight."
Shaqar was the only one who answered, and there was a sense of relief in his response.
His voice emerged unlike usual. Not filled with anger, not sarcastic, but flat. Flat like someone who had just witnessed thirty to forty percent of another team's members choose death on the second floor and now lacked the energy to be angry at anyone but himself.
"My team," he said, pausing for a moment. His eyes drifted somewhere behind Zhulumat, toward the staircase that could no longer be seen from here, toward the sounds of battle that now existed only as faint vibrations beneath their feet. "No losses. The equipment is intact as well. Somehow, we made it through all of that without losing a single person."
He let out a breath, a breath that escaped his chest like something held back for far too long, like someone who did not believe in luck but was forced to accept it because there was no other explanation.
"But don't ask me how. Maybe Nebetu'u drew their attention. Maybe those who remained on the second floor were too busy fighting to let us die first."
Beside Shaqar, a man who had stood silently all this time with an unreadable expression nodded slowly. His face remained intact unlike most of them, yet his eyes were empty in a strange way, empty like a well whose water had receded, leaving only darkness at its bottom.
His name was one of those names that always slipped from Zhulumat's memory, not because he was unimportant, but because he was too quiet, too efficient, too incapable of making mistakes, and therefore never needed to be mentioned in reports.
"My team is safe as well, Commander," he said, his voice resembling the rustling of dry leaves carried by the wind, barely audible and yet strangely clear to Zhulumat's ears.
"We only lost two minor exorcism tools. Everything else is still operational."
Fwhooosh!!
Before Zhulumat could breathe a sigh of relief at Shaqar's report, before the word "good" could fully form on the tip of his tongue that still trembled from the echoes of his shouting on the second floor, the air around the gate suddenly grew hot.
Not hot like the sun over a desert, but a heat that came from within, a heat that felt as though something inside his own chest was burning, as though his heart had decided to become a living ember never meant to sustain life.
From the cracks between the five worlds that had been forced together, shadows began to take shape. Not with the softness of before, but with violence, certainty, and a fury that had been buried since before language existed to complain about it.
Ten Holy Beings emerged from that void, carrying scythes no longer forged from folds of space but from fire. Fire pale blue in color, like the flame dancing above a corpse left unburied for far too long. Behind them stepped, or rather flowed, a creature that made Onigakure forget how to blink.
"That... that's not a Holy Being," Agatha whispered, her voice barely escaping her throat, dried by the heat. The creature stood at the center of the formation with an impossible height. Its body was made of eternal fire, fire that never ceased, constantly moving, constantly consuming itself, constantly alive despite having nothing to feed it. On its back were two pairs of wings, not the wings of Angels made of light and perfection, but wings formed from embers and plumes of black smoke that shaped bones never taught in the anatomy of any world. They beat with a slow rhythm, far too slow, like someone counting the final breaths of a dying soul.
Each beat of the creature's wings released a wave of heat that burned not only the skin but also the memory of what it felt like not to burn.
To Be Continued...