Chapter 38
Higher than heaven and hell, deeper than intent and destiny, and vaster than the awareness of fictional beings who realize their own fictionality in the eyes of beings greater still.
Not a creator, yet the very foundation, the reason why anything can be created at all. Not a sustainer, but the one who decides whether something is worthy, deserving of the chance to remain within the structure of the cosmic script.
Even Etsh was not spared from tragedy.
When the Cursed One fell, when the sacred essence was stained by vengeance that had seeped too deep, the tremor spread, reaching all the way to Ishkarakarta.
In that desecration, Ishkarakarta, which should have been the unity of all order, the perfect emblem of "all for one", fractured, birthing forms that began to destroy itself.
And in the chaos, all understanding of meaning, structure, and narrative logic maintained by Etsh was shattered. Not shattered in the sense of being lost, but in the sense of no longer being trustworthy, no longer relevant enough to be carried forward into record.
Etsh became a paradox, hollowed from within.
It remained the reason narratives unfolded, yet the narratives themselves began to deny its existence. It still governed the course of the cosmos, yet the cosmos began to forge a new logic, one that refused governance. It remained the center of all meaning, yet the meaning it guarded had turned into distortion.
With Ishkarakarta's fall, not only were the definitions of all things broken, they were remade into shapes most destructive to themselves. And Etsh, who stood at the highest peak of meaning, was now drawn in as a victim of meaning itself.
Of all that remained, only one thing stayed constant.
It could not be translated.
Not even in the smallest part.
For within that untranslatability lay an untouchable exception, the sacred presence of Olyspharta — a definition entirely beyond Etsh's jurisdiction, untouched by power, for it did not stand within the same order, but as the foundation, the pillar that bowed to neither reason, meaning, nor order that Etsh governed.
Not merely because it rejected comprehension, but because comprehension itself was never enough to reach Etsh.
It was the answer never asked, and the question that did not wish to be answered.
"Suphoriah..."
It stood amidst the ruins of presence, trembling softly from within. Around it, every form of meaning dissolved into mist, untouchable, impossible to interpret.
Ophistu, a being born from the Supreme Will, forever safeguarded and preserved tranquility, much like the tradition of angels gazing upon the mortality of the world.
It sealed every gap of unrest, silencing the doubts that tried to creep into the mind. The face remained calm, bearing no mark of fear or anger, only a steadfastness shaped by thousands of flawless cycles. Yet in the silence, a remnant of tension lingered, a thin line between resolve and oblivion, rooted in the experience of witnessing an existence that should never have been.
It was then that Ophistu raised a hand, not too high, but enough to signal that something had risen from within.
A faint vibration coursed through the air.
Light without source began to gather, forming a subtle circle before rising and seeping into every narrowing gap of space nearby.
Not with an explosion, nor with a rumble. All of it happened in a silence far too perfect.
In the mind, a word emerged, not to be heard, but to be felt.
Suphoriah.
Not a spell, nor a weapon, but the embodiment of sacred utterance, the last remnant of essential purity once held by the Cursed One before it was seized, wholly consumed by vengeance and disgrace without redemption.
Then it came.
Not as an entity, but as a shroud, an accompanying aura of divinity that wrapped around reality.
Slowly, yet surely.
Suphoriah had no form, yet it knew how to touch. It did not choose a side, but united what opposed each other. In its flow, heat and frost moved as one, light and darkness coexisted, not as opposites but as a contradictory harmony born from the purest depths of spirit.
Every element clung to the other, binding inextricably, layering connections that could never be undone, for their existence explained one another in their fullest form.
Nebetu'u felt it first, not upon the body, but upon an aspect untouched by anything before.
The vibration of Suphoriah was not an attack, but a reminder that even something rejecting all classification was not wholly immune to purification.
It did not strike in the physical sense, yet the entire structure of reality accompanying it from afar began to crack, breaking from within. The opposite of order was not chaos, but a harmony that surpassed opposition.
And that was what now stood before it.
Suphoriah was not a savior, nor was it justice.
It was a legacy, the remnant of a purity that would never return.
Ophistu did not seek to conquer, for it knew what it faced was beyond the power to be conquered. It merely reminded, explained that in destruction, there still remained something untouched in full by corruption.
And in that reminder, the universe held its breath. Not to witness an end, but to nod, to acknowledge that even the end could be redefined, with only one name uttered from the depths of the most sacred silence.
The floor beneath existence trembled, almost kneeling as Nebetu'u's left foot struck. Not merely a step, but an affirmation of being, forged from something that refused to be measured by the norms of existence itself.
The figure stood tall, nine heads joined in a single body, impossible to be understood through mere moral or spiritual categories.
Three resembled angels, radiating light yet cold, as though wearing sacred masks to hide emptiness. Three were like gods, bearing symbols of power yet stripped of purpose. And the remaining three were demon heads, the sources of disorder, where each face formed an imitation of suffering not as an effect, but as an essence performed.
From among the demon heads, the first stood out, glaringly prominent in the thickening silence.
It did not move hastily, instead restraining its motion with reverence, as if to embody all the suffering the cosmos had borne since the dawn of interpretation.
That head always grinned, not in joy but in pain, a pain long absorbed into habit.
Its fangs grew not only to wound, but to weave, almost like the ruins of nails, sharp and weathered, mirroring the body of the afflicted once nailed by the hands of divinity itself.
Not for punishment, but for display.
When the upper and lower jaws parted, no breath nor howl was heard. Yet when the voice came, a single word broke forth from a depth without foundation, and the world bowed in terror that bordered on the sacred.
"Koyak!"
That was what it spoke.
Not merely as a word, but as a verdict. And reality exalted, receiving it like an old body losing its resilience, tearing from the edges, peeling away from layers of meaning once thought eternal.
The word did not strike with speed or strength, but with certainty, declaring that all that exists is merely skin, the outer shell shielding something that can be split, shed, discarded, even betrayed by the very essence that birthed it.
The word touched like a curse, impossible to erase through any ritual. It did not command, it decreed. And the sky did not fall from a roar, but from the weight of connection losing its gravity.
At that point, the sacred and the profane were both torn apart, not by power, but by the acknowledgment that nothing could endure in the face of a word born to divide all things.
To be continued...