Chapter 50
Black fireflies scattered, drifting in a flutter that summoned no hope, only a piercing estrangement.
In the dimming light, Nebetu'u began to lose his footing, his mighty body slowly devoured, as though something older and colder than prayer itself was pushing him out of the world.
Shaqar dragged his steps with the last remnants of strength, the staff in his hand trembling more and more, as though unwilling to support the frail body forced upright by fury.
In his palm, a stalk of ginger freshly pulled from the ground was raised, crudely twisted into a filthy talisman, exuding a foul stench mingled with the dense aura of satanists.
It was not ginger that brought healing, but ginger that rejected all purity, blackening the air through which it passed.
The aura pulsed at once, multiplying, spreading like dark ripples across the surface of water, until it touched the remnants of Sanse's power, the one who once banished Lusyarael, the cursed servant of the One long ago.
For a moment, Shaqar thought, believed the talisman could restore domination, rebind the shattered remnants of power.
But his own chest was drenched by the bitterness of reality.
The harder he forced it, the more his body ached, writhing under the tremors of denial.
And there, Nebetu'u did not flinch, nor did he care.
His presence was like a shadow, untouched by the screams of the storm.
His body gradually shrank, revealing the form of a boy not yet thirteen years old, and yet within such simplicity, the darkness grew heavier.
Two heads perched upon him, male and female, fused into one small body.
Their smiles surfaced faintly, without sound, without laughter.
It was not a carving of mockery, nor a gesture of pity.
It was a kind of alien reverence, reverence born from the awareness that Shaqar and his team's struggle was worth remembering, even if it could not shake the throne of his existence.
Shaqar squinted his eyes, searching for a flicker of confrontation in the gaze of the two faces, but found nothing.
No glance, no gaze that was willing to fall upon him.
Each pair of eyes turned instead toward something quieter, as though watching a space beyond the edge of creation itself, a place even the tongue of prayer could not reach.
Shaqar's presence in Nebetu'u's sight was no more than the passing of a breeze.
It invited no rebuke, demanded no attention.
All that remained was a faint smile, one more painful than any curse that could be uttered.
A step of farewell was never draped in tears, but in silence dripping slowly, freezing in the hollow of Shaqar's chest.
He watched Nebetu'u's body, now beginning to slip away from space, slowly drowned by dim light, resembling fireflies extinguished—one by one—at the edge of dusk.
The faint smile of those two heads lingered in memory, not as a wound carved by blades, but as a subtle irony.
A reverence without bond, a farewell without words.
Shaqar knew that such a parting never offered the promise of reunion, for Nebetu'u was neither merely foe nor ally, but the embodiment of balance that could never belong to anyone.
As soon as the light seized the last traces of Nebetu'u's presence, the space around Ophistu grew stifling again.
The remaining members of the Xirkushkartum team held back their bitterness, though resentment boiled inside their chests.
That the great entity departed beyond prevention was a sign, a signal of how narrow the chances were, and how slippery the path of fate always was—brushing close, only to slip away again.
Their rage was not unleashed in screams, but in the echo of prayers, spoken louder and louder, pressing upon the dark aura still dwelling there.
Their tongues burned the air, summoning holiness to descend, to cleanse the filth, to sanctify Ophistu from the snare of the Cursed One—who at this moment sought to conceal the identity of his servant.
Shaqar stood at the center of the vortex, his staff planted into the ground, as if to claw the world into remaining on their side.
He knew how fractured his body was, how frail his spirit no longer deserved to stand upon the battlefield.
But he also understood, bitterly so, that the balancer never walked alongside them with intent to finish anything.
The balancer only appeared when imbalance grew, then departed when the boundary was restored.
And there Shaqar saw the meaning behind Nebetu'u's final smile, a sign that the entity would not taint the rite of exorcism with his presence.
For he was not a tool for either pole, but a loyal guardian of distance.
At that point, Shaqar felt the farewell truly end, not with tears, not with shattering battle, but with the awareness that their paths were simply different.
Nebetu'u was balance, and he, along with his team, were only banishers of darkness working with prayer.
To be continued…