Chapter 31
Whooosh!
'Returned? Restored without the slightest blemish or wound?
Surely still standing, anchored at the very heart of the castle, no deception or error.
And now, perhaps it is only a feeling, yet why do we feel emptier?
To still possess will, to exist as an awareness surpassing cause and effect. And yet it is clear, a small part of me did not return with the rest.'
Uuufh!
'It was stated before that I, the worthy servant, was stripped, imitated for a moment, until the execution was said to be complete.'
Wuuuuf!
'A sliver of the Almighty's awareness was stolen. Though small, it was more than enough to match the estimate.
I have not returned whole, no longer the same Ophistu as before.
Whoever it is, there was never the intent to kill us. Merely to touch the Omnipotence, and through me, not only acted upon but made into a subject of experiment.'
Only moments later, the original Ophistu regained consciousness.
He found himself still within the castle's interior. The grand chamber was unmistakable, its arches and towers soaring skyward into a mute firmament, a sky that refused to answer, remaining as it had always been.
No explosion was detected, nor any presence of warped forms. Moreover, there was no sign of a duplicate body bursting into absurdity, nor the five-pronged mark rising from a head. Yet within that very absence, Ophistu's unease swelled, growing and creeping slowly but surely, like a poisonous seed cast into the fertile soil of the soul.
It could not be understood, how he could have returned was beyond all knowing. No door of logic had the chance to explain his presence here.
It was too seamless, woven with a perfection that could almost be admired.
As though all the horrors he had endured, both as witness and as victim, had been nothing more than an inescapable hallucination.
Unfortunately, traces are not so easily erased. The chill still touching the deepest reaches of his consciousness, and the trembling whispers between the bones of his wings, had yet to fade, standing as silent witnesses that something had breached the highest defenses.
Even angels, pure beings accustomed to wrapping themselves in the calm of heaven—were unsettled, as though they too had partaken in witnessing what Ophistu endured, or perhaps felt the echoes of what had been secretly broken.
This was not meant to exist within normality.
Late, in the midst of this inner chaos, beyond the reach of any liturgy to illuminate it, a single truth stood at the root of his unrest.
It declared that the entity they faced, whatever its form, was not merely strong. Not merely aberrant. It had disturbed, torn at the order of the highest design with both boldness and precision, too deliberate to be called coincidence.
It had not only sought to bring down Ophistu, but had also performed a mad experiment, one that reached into the loftiest essence, one that should never have been touched.
The sacred and mighty Olyspharta of the Cursed One.
And here, His concept had not merely been imitated, nor simply studied, but tasted, taken in part, and fitted into something it should never belong to.
Ophistu trembled at the thought. Not out of fear for his own destruction, but because he had seen, had witnessed, that Olyspharta, the essential foundation long believed to be an unshakable pillar of Omnipotence, was not as steadfast as they believed.
Life's path, which until now had been built to serve and affirm divine will, suddenly tasted bland, more like a wasted procession.
Ophistu was no longer sure if he still walked the ordained line, or if he had unknowingly stepped into the highest rebellion. For one truth now stood undeniable: his opponent that night was not merely a force, but something calmly rewriting the boundaries of Divinity…
… from within.
'We have searched every corner, and every chamber. Yet why does it always feel as though there is not a single place that can be called a foothold?'
Was it truly still present, circulating within the castle's walls, or—at this very moment—had it been cast out, forced away by something that refused the sanctity of form?
They had arrived before, one by one. Beginning with the replica, with the corruption of the Mala Qudshi, and with us, shattered into oblivion when attempting to unite with Him.
Something lingered behind. It bore no wish to kill, much less to exile. It sought only to know, to assert that our pure essence was nothing more than a desecrated thing.Even the air proposed its own refusal to remain with us.
Ngiiiiiing!!
And upon seeing it, not a harmless toy of thorns casually tossed aside, but loosed as though we were nothing more than targets for practice.
Silence streamed softly, carried through the arches of the towers, framing the darkened sky, marking that time refused to flow. Someone stood in the middle of the great hall, body still held upright, yet their gaze shifted left and right, imprinting a caution too delicate to be called alert, too calm to be called relieved.
There was no explosion, no distortion, no trace left behind of the madness that had just been so tangible, save for a single thread of coldness still touching the deepest edge of awareness, seeping in quiet like slow poison planted in the soil of the soul.
Within a body that showed almost no sign of hesitation, ruins of turmoil lay hidden, immeasurable. Ophistu, or whatever he had now become, had just passed through a chain of events far more akin to the vandalism of destiny than to any mere cruel experiment.
It began when his replica had been split into a hundred, each fragment moving with an identical manner of action, yet marked with wounds not alike, united only in the depth of their torment. Then the Mala Qudshi appeared again, parting the veil of time, not as the sanctity once known, but as a shadow, a thing twisted beyond itself.
Its purity had turned to curse, its sacredness to a horrifying parody.
A revolting yet flawless transformation, total mockery of the heavenly order, proving that something, or someone, had been mad enough to delight in the profane intellect required to defile the holiest being without erasing the last traces of its glory.
But that was not what most tore at belief.
What seized his breath was not betrayal of form, but the fact that he had witnessed, seen his own body erupt, disintegrate, burst apart, after attempting to become his Lord, the Cursed One.
Not out of treachery, but out of an absurd urge to understand, to merge, to reach for what even angels dared only to bow before. And that body, his other self, could not bear it, could not withstand the weight of that trial.
It was destroyed not because the substance was weak, but because that path was never meant to be walked by anything created.
What remained now was only uncertainty. The roof still stood, perfectly aligned toward the silent sky. Yet order had been broken, and the structure once believed eternal was only a layer, easily peeled away.
No sign, no warning. Only a lingering presence translating into the knowledge that all once revered was now unsteady, and all once held as divine principle had been touched—crudely exploited—by something wilder, more chaotic than chaos itself.
No one understood how he had returned, or why that space had not destroyed itself. But one thing became certain in the bitter depth of reflection, it was not power he had faced. It was will. And that will, unlike any divine form he had ever served, came not from beyond, but was working here, now, slowly rearranging the highest limits from within.
Slowly.
Surely.
Beyond stopping.
In that tensioned vigilance, the body moved lightly, almost like a shadow, loath to disturb the silence. Every corner of the castle was examined with instinctive precision, as if behind every column's curve and every dark corridor a hidden malice lay in wait for the right moment to strike.
To be continued…