Chapter 25
Ophistu's attack, categorized as transcendentally overwhelming, was being forced into retreat.
Not absorbed, not obliterated, but hurled back, as if a will annulled by the universe itself.
A silent explosion resonated, and before the blast could manifest, Ophistu awakened, realizing too late that the force meant to destroy its target had become fate's boomerang.
Naturally, Ophistu did not remain idle. With a swift exhale, it acted, swinging its arm in a spontaneous reaction. The attack was transmuted into residual dust, scattering before it could graze even the outermost layer.
Yet as the ashes settled like snow from thwarted fury, Ophistu stood still, imprinting the air with a presence so newly palpable.
It was alone.
No longer was there Mala Qudshi's deranged murmuring, nor the little girl who had wielded the mirror of reality.
Both had vanished, not by movement, but as if they had never truly existed.
Like an intervention from some unseen stratum, one clearly not yet sanctioned by time.
"Attempting to frighten me?
"I understand. Inverting positions is your method—a profound ploy to weave threads of that absurd expression called 'humanity.'
Ever seated cross-legged like a cursed Buddha.
And why only now does your will stir to gaze upon me, to see beyond the face of the past? With eyes as vast as dead star voids?"
"Speak Its Name, and we shall revert to the beginning.
No emotion, no taint of vengeance.
Only law."
Huffffh!
"Always waiting until the final moment to comprehend."
"A pendulum—yet not a pendulum. Invasive strikes, sudden wave-forms, all etched into me.
Now, retreat.
A single flap suffices."
Wussssh!
"Now you're behind me. What game is this?"
Husssssssh!
"That is no mere feather, but a gift forever untainted.
Do not touch it, much less defile it!
By Your Name, I surrender all burdens and responsibilities bestowed upon me."
Haaaaaah!
"Gone now, though its beauty cannot return."
The next instant arrived not as continuity, but rupture.
Before Ophistu could draw a second breath, the space to its left was violated, not by an attack, nor a new miracle, but by a presence returning. Or rather, slithering through dimensional fissures, far too late to realize something had been transgressed.
Mala Qudshi now stood to the left.
Not with a crash, nor a spectacular manifestation, but like a disease, creeping slowly into the body without warning.
Its arrival was unnaturally flawless.
Its head hung upside down, hair dripping putrid slime, reeking of incurable wounds, while its legs remained crossed above, as if gravity refused to acknowledge it.
The body kept rotating yet never turned. The twisted posture didn't convey chaos, but rather crystallized the absurdity of its existence, as if the universe were forced to witness a meditation tainted by degradation.
The stench assailed Ophistu again, this time not as an assault, but a reminder.
Suffering does not always arrive as impact.
Sometimes, it comes as a scent, the breath of something unwilling to die yet forbidden to live.
The vapors of pus, rotting flesh, and spiritual decay choked the air, rendering the space suffocated by a stench beyond any known disgust.
Mala Qudshi made no sound.
It did not threaten, scream, or even hint at intent.
It only stared directly into Ophistu's eyes, too close to ignore, too aberrant to interpret.
Those bulging eyes weren't merely terrifying; they conveyed something deeper than words. A gaze like a void, drilled straight into the abyss of memory, as if excised from the scripture of creation itself.
No words, only a gaze. Yet precisely because of this, Ophistu, for a fleeting moment, received it. That stare felt denser than all divine edicts, all celestial verses ever penned by heavenly beings.
Ophistu's movement was not driven by wrath, but by decree, an act born of purest logic.
Its hand did not clench in hatred, nor did it lash out in violence.
It intended to strike, not to inflict pain, but to establish a boundary. A sacred gesture, affirming that order still had a voice.
Fingers splayed, it began to move slowly, cutting through the air with authoritative silence. No theatrics, for within its grasp lay an irrefutable will, one that required no force to achieve absolute effect.
Yet before the hand reached its mark, reality before it fractured again. Like a window pried open by an unseen hand, one that had not sought permission from the architecture of space, the small figure reappeared.
Nebetu'u.
A girl no older than thirteen, her face childlike yet burdened with too many ages, stood directly before Ophistu.
This time, without warning.
The woman's identity, still grafted to the girl's lone remaining head, dangled limply, a reminder that this duality remained unresolved.
Then, from one of her hands, an object materialized.
Not the spinning pendulum of illusory speed, nor a weapon. A strange instrument, nameless yet singular in purpose
To touch Ophistu's face.
Its motion was too slow to be an attack, yet too precise for ordinary time to evade.
Ophistu, indifferent to shock, eternally immune to mortal impulses, stepped back regardless.
A single beat of its wings, and it repositioned itself meters away, not in retreat, but to declare that something in that instrument was off enough to warrant distance.
Yet this movement created an opening.
Behind its back, space was violated once more. Not with lightning or explosions, but with presence, like a nightmare seeping slowly into the waking world.
Mala Qudshi had arrived a second time.
Now in a form far worse than before.
Not merely inverted, not merely silent, its face now crawled, straining upward from an abyss of horror deeper than comprehension.
Open wounds perched warmly on its skin like tiny mouths, ceaselessly vomiting pus.
The stench it carried was no longer mere decay, but rejection, an outright denial of the very concept of sacred presence.
Just before Ophistu could fully turn, a hand, no, not a hand, but fingers belonging to something that had forfeited all right to be called holy, reached out.
Mala Qudshi grasped a single feather from Ophistu's wing.
An impossibility. That which should never be touched, much less defiled.
And when that grip closed, the entire castle screamed.
Not in any human tongue, but in the howls of demons, as if jolted from an ageless slumber. The echoes of suffering were not aimed at anyone, only marking that a profound violation had occurred.
Nebetu'u and Mala Qudshi vanished instantly, leaving behind an emptiness heavier than their presence.
A pity Ophistu did not imprint the air with its essence in their absence.
It stood now within a curse.
Its wings, no less than manifestations of absolute existence, began to change.
The tips of their feathers, once radiant with untouchable light, now festered.
Scabs erupted. Pus oozed in steady rhythm, a mockery of celestial order.
Rot clung to elements that should never have known corruption.
A concept had been defiled.
This should not have been possible.
For Ophistu was absolute.
Not born of duality, nor shaped by physical or non-physical laws, it existed far beyond such boundaries.
Nothing in all creation should have been capable.
Not time.
Not dimensions.
Not the antonyms that surpass both, endlessly eclipsing themselves, none should have had the right to taint its purity.
Even the highest dimensions, those that recognize each other as their own consciousness, were denied the privilege of staining Ophistu's form with impurity.
Yet though reality dictated impossibility, the truth before its eyes spoke otherwise.
To be continued…