Chapter 27
This time, Ophistu fell silent, not from defeat, but from reality slipping beyond the boundaries of time, far exceeding all calculations.
Not shock, but the crushing weight of limits.
It had not come to fight, only to stall, to keep the scales from tipping fully toward Nebetu'u.
A temporary hold, just long enough for reinforcements: angels and holy beings crossing the corridors of obedience, infiltrating the reclaimed worship site.
That place had once been sacred.
Then abandoned, as Satanists spread their influence.
Now retaken by Ophistu, after it slaughtered the child Ush and every pulse of blood tied to that so-called family.
Yet the plan crumbled. Every step intercepted, thwarted by phenomena unnamed, events never written into celestial scripts.
Ophistu faltered, not physically, but in control.
Everything unraveled, threads refusing to be rewoven.
Worse, doubt gnawed at it.
Was this Nebetu'u's long game—madness masking genius?
Or something else? An entity unrecorded, moving behind the curtains, unknown even to eternity's gaze?
This ignorance cut deeper than wing-wounds.
For a being like Ophistu, unbound by linear time, not knowing was torment. A suffering beyond healing.
The first crack in divine will, once held with absolute certainty.
Now that will wavered, eroded by the possibility of something escaping heaven's oversight.
And if so, Ophistu's silence wasn't weakness, but the last pause before collapse.
A fragile calm. Not peace, but hypervigilance.
Then—it tore through.
No warning. No sound.
A box, blue as stolen celestial light, materialized from void.
Not heavenly. Not hellish. Other.
It hovered before Ophistu, not high, not low, at the perfect height for insult.
Reflex outpaced thought.
In an instant, Ophistu invoked the sacred mantra, words that once unraveled the seventh and hundredth dimensions, erased rebellions so thoroughly even heaven's memory forgot them.
With a voice that should have shattered reality's foundations, it proclaimed the final creed.
"We Believe in Him!"
Nothing happened.
The divine annihilation that should have pierced through layers of Satanist existence, like flaming arrows through fog, was reduced to a whisper.
No echo. No rebound. No impact.
Just gone, like words buried mid-storm.
And the box?
The thing that should have been obliterated by a syllable, remained.
Unscathed. Unacknowledged.
This wasn't just spell-failure.
It was betrayal. A fracture in cosmic law.
For that single phrase carried power to shake not just Ophistu's universe.
But all possible versions of it.
From edge to edge of existence, across infinite, unbounded wilderness of being—nothing escaped.
Every timeline that blossomed, branched, blazed, or rotted. All of it.
Every universe, whether ruled by triumphant Satanists or those erased by time's verdict, all should have trembled, begging mercy the moment the sacred invocation left Ophistu's lips.
Yet this time, nothing.
The box remained.
Unmoved by divine wrath.
Untouched by infernal dread.
Older than the very concept of judgment.
A small, blue, geometric thing, yet its presence refused the purest holiness.
Ophistu, who had witnessed the marrow of reality's layers, now faced something beyond defeat.
Something incomprehensible.
Here lay true suffering, not in losing, but in not knowing what it fought.
Doubt festered, thick and cloying.
Ophistu's attack, a holy incantation forged by the Highest Guard of the Celestial Spire, had failed.
No ripple. No recoil. As if the words were never spoken.
And with no clue to the box's purpose, this cursed object, deceptively simple in its bright blue form, Ophistu restrained its fury. For now.
The box did not crack. Did not bend. Did not burn beneath divine radiance.
Even the air around it hollowed, severing space-time from creation's loom. like plucking threads from their own weave.
Ophistu's eyes gleamed, not with conquest, but calculation.
Slowly, it approached.
As if fearing the box might vanish if touched.
Yet it stayed.
Waiting.
Motionless.
Soundless.
A silence that ruptured peace.
And so Ophistu, the unyielding, who knelt only to His Will, chose to peer inside.
'What ... is happening? Why can't I—
Move. Float. Act.
My focus drags—not by my will!
I did not consent!'
Then, it seized Ophistu's consciousness.
Not by touch. Not by spell.
But by redirecting attention itself, funneling all awareness into the box before Ophistu realized it had lost control of its own mind.
It couldn't turn. Couldn't blink. Breath trapped in its chest.
Muscles locked, as if the world revoked their function.
Legs that could kick continents to dust. Wings that could eclipse three skies, frozen.
Not paralyzed.
Overruled.
The horror crystallized.
This stillness wasn't emptiness. Ophistu felt everything, fully aware, which meant whatever held it wasn't suppressing ....
But replacing its will with something stronger.
And worse—
Ophistu didn't know if it still stood in the castle...
Or if it had already been thrown inside the box.
To be continued...