Chapter 20
Ophistu's hand jerked upward, fingers snapping with divine finality. The deafening noise vanished instantly, swallowed by returning silence—
—until an alien presence coiled around his spine.
Cold.
Wrong.
Slowly, as tension petrified his muscles, he turned.
There, in what should have been empty shadow, stood the impossible.
Something that should not exist. Could not be approached. Let alone appear unbidden. Its form shimmered at reality's frayed edges, laughing at laws he'd deemed absolute.
Himself.
The celestial host were never to be underestimated. This truth echoed through creation's marrow.
Angelic power defied mortal logic.
They were not merely strong.
They were embodiments of essence, paradoxes bestowed by the Cursed One Himself, divine contradictions no earthly measure could quantify.
Their being transcended existence and void, a fusion of "is" and "is-not" that scoffed at reality's rhythms.
They stood not between creation and oblivion, but above them, treading upon all that was neither.
None could replicate them. Not even approximations brushed their absolute tier of existence.
Time refused to record them. Not in past's tapestry, not in future's promise, not in present's fleeting grasp. For time itself could not contain them. In the maelstrom where time's three streams—hunting, repeating, intersecting—collided, they were voids.
Unfillable, unsearchable, untraceable.
Silent.
Absolute.
And among them, angels bore a distinction even their holy brethren lacked, an irreplaceable privilege. Angels and God formed twin singularities, unshaken by alternate concepts, unexchangeable in any field of possibility.
Not just unique.
The only.
Fixed points no system could mirror. All attempts at duplication crumbled before them, for their purity permitted no doubles.
Not in reflections.
Not in dreams.
Not in illusions.
One.
Thus did creation kneel unbidden.
Once, in an era untouched by fate's pen, the world bled a wound time could not suture.
And from reality's cracked ceiling, it dripped forth.
A grotesque parody of Ophistu's glory.
Not born.
Not forged.
But conceived, like sin given form by twisted will.
Obsidian flesh smoldered, ember-dark, its heat replaced by layered hatred. The veil masking its face bore a single sigit.
Defiance carved into creation's bones. Not the sacred hood of the true Ophistu, but a warped shroud, as if dipped in cursed lava, melted to stone, forever scarred by magma that refused to cool.
It was a copy, but not the obedient kind.
A shattered mirror that absorbed light rather than reflected it, vomiting back warped illusions instead.
The violation wasn't in erasure or defiance, but in distortion. A crack in eternity's ledger, allowing what should never exist to slither into the sacred record.
No hymns could grace this abomination.
Not Ophistu, though it wore his name like a borrowed skin.
None would call it perfect, for perfection had recoiled at its first breathless gasp. Yet it stood, forever gazing at a world that refused to meet its eyes. Beneath the charred hood, something older than fear pulsed in its resolve.
THE FACE THAT WASN'T
Little remained of its visage but ash and scar-tissue, aged beyond time. The skin had forgotten its original form, burnt crisp like earth that no longer knew seasons.
Only two features stood intact.
The Eyelids.
Pale as unearthed bones.
Framing white irises that suffocated observers, dead windows staring with hollow yet defiant refusal.
The Defiled Sigil.
Below the jawline, where lips should have been, a religious emblem festered.
Not a cross. Not any mortal symbol.
Not even the sacred fan of Ophistu's guarded realms.
This was a mockery of the original.
On the true Ophistu, the mark was living unity.
Three blades radiating from an eternal core, spinning in divine serenity.
Here, the blades had been infested.
Eyes, sprouting like rot-seeds, crawled from the central axis. They anchored themselves along the symbol's edges, accusing the world rather than blessing it.
No sacred rotation.
No divine reflection.
Just distortion.
A failed mimicry that choked the air with its very existence.
THE SHROUD OF IMPERFECTION
Its body was clad in a fabric that defied seasons, temperatures, even existential logic.
Color violet-black—like night fog stained by unhealed spiritual wounds.
Texture neither thick nor thin. It floated without wind, touching scorched skin but never adhering.
Purpose not ritual robes. Not armor.
A concealment.
Hiding what shouldn't be described.
THE SIN OF BEING
Every second of its presence was blasphemy.
It proved holiness could be betrayed, that even the highest laws could bend enough to let this slip through.
To be continued...