Chapter 172
Amid the swirling ashes of Onigakure that still drifted through the air like black snow untouched by winter, amid Shaqar's nineteen soldiers who still stood with their exorcism tools raised despite their hands trembling like leaves that knew they would soon fall, the eleven beings advanced with a single purpose.
Not to kill everyone, no, for death had already harvested far too many lives today, but to finish the one life that had somehow remained intact in the middle of an ocean of shredded flesh.
Shaqar.
The pale blue scythe of the Third Holy Being swung toward his neck with such speed that even the wind had no time to whisper a warning, while the black flames of the fire creature had already formed a circle around both of his legs, ready to roast flesh from bone before the scythe could complete its task.
"SHAQAR!" Apathy shouted from behind.
But his voice was swallowed by another, a voice that came not from a human throat but from nine fissures that suddenly tore open in the air between Shaqar and the death that had come to claim him. It resonated across three octaves at once, the whisper of a mother who had murdered her own child, the scream of a child who had watched heaven turn into hell, and the murmur of something that had never possessed a mother, a child, a heaven, or a hell, only darkness that had learned how to speak.
"No."
Nebetu'u rose.
Not as someone awakening from sleep, but as a resurrection no one had ever asked for, like a curse that had finally decided it had spent far too long pretending to be polite.
His asymmetrical body began to change.
Not in form, but in substance, like water suddenly remembering that it could become stone if only it were angry enough.
From his pale gray back streaked with orange like the sky before the apocalypse, black thorns began to emerge, not growing outward but being forced from within, bursting from the spaces between his ribs that had finally run out of patience to remain buried. Every thorn that pushed its way free left behind a wound that instantly dried into black, like earth scorched by something far too hot to be called fire.
"Wha... WHAT'S HAPPENING TO HIM?" whispered one of Shaqar's nineteen soldiers, his eyes widening as Nebetu'u's right chest slowly split open on its own, revealing something no anatomy from any world had ever described, an organ resembling a womb that had never carried life. It was a barren womb, writhing like living flesh despite never having been allowed to give birth. From within it came the cries of an unborn infant, cries that seemed to say that even destruction needed a mother, and this mother would never refuse.
"This... this isn't the Balancer anymore," Zhulumat muttered, his voice grinding like broken bones rubbed against one another.
Beside him, Agatha felt her knees urge her to kneel, not out of reverence but out of recognition, the recognition that what stood before them could no longer be called either ally or enemy. It was simply a fact, the fact that there existed a being who had chosen to become the worst version of itself so that the best version of others might survive, and that truth was too heavy for knees still made of flesh to bear.
The eleven scythes that had been aimed at Shaqar halted in midair, not because of hesitation but because gravity itself had suddenly changed direction, no longer downward but inward, pulling everything toward Nebetu'u as though the entire chamber had taken a deep breath before admitting that there was now something far more deserving of fear than ten Holy Beings and a single fire creature whose strength continued to multiply with every passing second.
From Nebetu'u's neck, which had once borne only two heads, one female and one male, new heads began to emerge, not like sprouts breaking through soil but like gaping wounds deciding they would rather become mouths than remain scars.
The first three heads to be born were those of Demons.
The first wore an eternal grin, its fangs protruding from both upper and lower jaws like shattered nails torn from the body of one crucified by God. Those fangs were not white but yellow, like bones abandoned beneath an uncaring sun for far too long. From every gap between them seeped thin green smoke, like the breath of someone rotting from the inside while remaining alive just long enough to savor every stage of decay.
The second Demon head possessed long, jet-black fangs, as though carved from human bones burned within the flames of betrayal, not ordinary betrayal, but the betrayal delivered by someone once loved, someone who had whispered, "I'll never leave you," only to disappear into the night without a farewell, leaving behind nothing but the echo of a slammed door.
"Th... that's the face of someone I once knew," Apathy whispered, his dry throat barely allowing the words to escape.
Between those black fangs, among teeth designed not for chewing but for tearing, he could make out the faint silhouette of a friend who had died during a mission three years earlier, not because the features resembled him, but because the agony did, the agony of someone who had died not from wounds but from being betrayed by hope itself.
The third Demon head bore neither protruding fangs nor blackened teeth. Yet whenever it attempted to murmur, before any sound could even form, a thick liquid seeped through its charred lips. The substance settled like spiritual oil, dense and sticky. When the first drop landed upon the blood-soaked marble floor, the marble did not melt. Instead, it softened, becoming flesh that had only just died. From the liquid rose a stench that could not be called rotten, metallic, or sweet, but all three at once in proportions so unnatural that Agatha felt as though her nose itself had begun bleeding inward.
"DON'T LOOK AT THEM! FOCUS ON SURVIVING!" Shaqar shouted to his men.
Yet even his own eyes could not tear themselves away from Nebetu'u's neck, which continued giving birth to new heads, for now it was the turn of the three Tainted Angel heads to emerge.
The first retained a face of breathtaking beauty, too beautiful, beautiful like a painting so flawless that anyone who gazed upon it would feel compelled to weep, knowing they could never possess such beauty themselves. Yet its eyes cried blood, streams that carved two crimson trails forever flowing without drying, while its smile was split open all the way to its cheeks. The wound bled not at all, revealing teeth that were not teeth but shards of shattered glass from the mirrors of heaven.
"An angel... but why are they crying?" asked one of the soldiers behind Zhulumat, his voice trembling like that of a child witnessing their parents argue for the very first time.
In answer, the second Tainted Angel head began to sing a liturgy.
It was not a beautiful hymn but a twisted one, its melody rising and falling like a broken cassette played at the speed of a demon. At times it became so fast that every word fused into the shrieking sound of a saw carving through bone. At other moments it slowed so dramatically that a single syllable stretched across ten agonizing seconds.
With every prolonged syllable, Shaqar's soldiers felt something profoundly strange.
They suddenly longed to kneel, not because they were afraid, but because they were homesick, homesick for something they had never possessed, for a heaven they had never visited, for a God they had never believed in yet suddenly needed more than anything else.
To be continued...