Chapter 39
Duum.
A sound echoed without an echo, dampened solely by the awareness of the space itself.
Ophistu was hurled backward, not like a body losing balance, but more like an idea slammed into reality.
There was no collision against a pillar, no debris falling from the castle ceiling. The ancient walls, bearing thousands of prayers and curses, remained intact, as if reluctant to record this event in the history of their stone.
The ability to stabilize before it was too late hinted at long experience with being thrown, yet it did nothing to lessen the degree of shock being felt.
The shock arose not from the strength of the attack, but from the direction it came, not from tactical error, but from existential negligence.
Just as the pulse of reality began to calm, a pain appeared throughout the entity, not from muscle or flesh, but from somewhere else entirely.
The second of the demon's three heads had moved.
It did not leap or spring; it simply appeared before Ophistu, rejecting the process of cause and effect.
Its teeth were sharp, arranged like rows of bone altars, assembled without mercy, black as embers that refused to die.
No blood dripped, yet a wound had been opened on the level of meaning itself.
Several points on Ophistu's body were bound — not by chains, nor by any energy explainable through spiritual logic. What held him was a decision. Not a decision belonging to anyone, for the presence emerged from suffering, from a grief so pure it refused to be explained.
Ophistu's inability to move did not come from weakness, but from acknowledgment, the realization of the superiority of pain.
He became a statue, not in form, but in meaning.
The castle ceiling did not stir.
The air stopped flowing, or perhaps felt unworthy of touching the sinking atmosphere. Whatever filled the space between Ophistu and the head was now a distance already broken, never to be restored, and never meant to be.
The restraint was not mechanical, but spiritual, a kind of wound that spilled no blood, yet carved a void within existence, distancing Ophistu from anything that had ever made him named.
"Erase it."
Ophistu wished to rise.
He saw an opening, not a hole, not a lapse in vigilance, but a tiny flaw in the thread of fate itself, one that froze in place.
His body remained locked, yet his awareness refused to submit. From within the most restrained body, his wings began to change. They did not unfurl like those of a majestic winged being, but folded back upon their own essence.
Those wings were never merely organs for flight, but symbols, a personification of refusal toward bondage.
In a silence so suffocating, the mode of perfect power was triggered, a transformation promising not victory, but liberation from the logic that was binding him with cruel, unnatural force.
Adaptation began.
Ophistu's wings trembled, pouring forth an aura that distorted order, rejecting classification, gripping the body entirely.
He began to transcend form, surpass limits, crossing beyond any attachment to what could be called "rules."
Regrettably, the momentum did not last.
For behind the pulse of reality, nearly torn by the surge of his new existence, the third of the demon's three heads was ready.
It did not scream or roar; it only intended to murmur. Yet before any sound formed, a thick liquid emerged from between lips and tongue, a substance clearly unfamiliar with purity.
It did not flow like water, but settled, falling drop by drop like spiritual oil, dense, black, carrying the stench of defilement so foul that even space itself refused to hold it.
Within the liquid was the history of betrayal against all that was sacred, and from it emerged divine nails, long since tainted before language could explain them.
The nails shot forward, not as weapons, but as indictments.
They did not simply pierce Ophistu's wings.
They erased them.
They nullified shape, wiped away the structure of light, erasing the very concept of "wings" from Ophistu's body as though rewriting him under another law.
Nothing remained.
No exceptions.
No mercy.
And from there, Ophistu fell.
He did not crash, nor did he leave a hole.
He simply descended, his body hovering a mere few centimeters above the ancient stone floor, a surface untouched for who knew how long by a being of his stature.
He did not touch the floor, yet he did not fly.
He hung in emptiness, at a point where existence could no longer be sustained by form, a fall not dictated by gravity, but by the erasure of meaning.
Grief did not flow from Ophistu's eyes, for he had none, nor did he possess tears to shed.
The sorrow was far deeper, unbearably silent, like the ruins of an echo vanishing before it could be heard.
His wings were gone, not merely absent for a time, nor damaged in a way that left hope for recovery.
They had been annulled, stolen outright from reality, ripped from the existential structure that sustained them.
Ophistu knew this was no ordinary destruction.
He was an entity well-acquainted with the deepest layers of both chaos and order, knowing how things could grow, take shape, and rise from nothingness.This was different.
What was taken was not only the physical form of the wings, but the fundamental information, the root of their existence itself. An erasure that not only severed his link to them, but buried and removed the understanding that they had ever existed.
Olyspharta, the sacred highest state of being that formed the innermost layer of his power, also felt the tearing of its foundation. In the intricate structure of Olyspharta, those wings were a crucial node, a point of existence connecting body to meaning, meaning to power, power to purpose.
When that node vanished, it was not damaged.
It was not hidden.
It was simply gone with absolute finality, as though its name had been erased from the book of the cosmos.
Ophistu understood something more bitter than loss, that it could never be restored.Not because of lacking power, nor from any will to surrender, but because there was no longer any path of information to reconstruct it.
Even the attempt was severed, for nothing could be remembered of what the wings had once looked like. At most there remained only an untouched, impenetrable, nameless void.
And in that void, Ophistu stood, not in the sense of upright posture, but in the sense of being forced, merely asked to endure a loss that left nothing to mourn.
Huffffh!!
"No time was given to choose."
In a darkness unwilling to reveal its end, the world seemed to hold its breath. Silence, not because it was over, but because something was rising, slowly parting a void that should never be touched.
From the figure who had lost his wings, now suspended in emptiness, harsh reality was forced to adapt.
Ophistu no longer carried the radiance of holiness nor the lightning of wrath, but a flat expression, refusing to explain anything to existence.
There was no sigh of injury, no wail of agony, yet the stillness of his face froze everything, declaring hatred without needing to speak it.
His right and left palms met before his chest.
A simple gesture, almost sacred, yet bearing witness to how the void began to crumble, bent by something older than time.
A faint tremor spread from the point of contact, not light, but a dark pulse refusing to be defined.
From a body that had already lost half its meaning emerged another image of himself.
Not a duplication, nor an illusion, but a new manifestation that rejected all comparison.
To be continued…