Chapter 117
The Prefect's soldiers who heard that shout were instantly provoked.
Several of them stepped forward with clenched fists, their faces flushed with overflowing anger.
"How dare you shout at us, slave?" one of the large soldier who had been beating Leontios roared.
"Who do you think you are? We chased you all the way to Rhegion, you nearly made us lose our breath, and now you ask what your crime is?"
Another soldier had already lifted his leg to kick again, while another was ready to spit on Leontios' face, and within seconds, the situation that had briefly calmed down turned heated and violent once more.
But amid that uproar of rage, a hand slowly rose—Nirma's right index finger extended upward with a movement so calm, so graceful—yet suddenly all the soldiers stopped moving, stopped shouting, as if that hand possessed a magical force capable of freezing anger in a single instant.
Silence once again enveloped the Thracian night, leaving only the sound of the wind and the pounding of hearts echoing between them.
Nirma lowered his hand slowly, then stepped forward toward Leontios, who still lay on the ground with both hands bound behind his back.
He crouched down, aligning his face with Leontios', and for several seconds, they stared at each other in silence.
Nirma's single eye moved slowly, observing every detail on Leontios' face—every wound, every drop of blood, every twitch of muscle he could not control.
His voice emerged softly, even gently, yet clear and piercing like the tip of a blade.
"You know, Leontios, I was almost deceived. I was almost about to throw Megas Domestikos Adrianos Komnenos into the Prefect's underground prison. I was close to ending this investigation with a death sentence for a high noble who was completely innocent. All the evidence pointed to him, every clue led to him, and I was ready to draw my ceremonial sword and submit the final report to the Emperor."
Arya, standing beside Nirma, added, his voice filling the silence after Nirma paused briefly.
"But then I reminded Nirma of one thing, Leontios. I told him, it's impossible for a killer of the caliber who slaughtered seventeen crusader soldiers to leave behind that many traces. Twenty pieces of evidence, Leontios. Twenty. Spread across six different locations, implicating six different people, all with the same pattern. That is not the trail of a professional killer—that is the trail of an overzealous amateur who went too far in his attempt to frame others."
Nirma smiled faintly, the same smile he had at the Kapeleion—the kind that always sent chills down Arya's spine.
"And that was when I realized, Leontios, that the real killer was not Adrianos, nor Nikephoros, nor Konstantinos. Nor was it Georgios or Ioannis. The real killer is the one we least suspected—the one who deliberately created false trails at every crime scene, the one so desperate to divert attention that he forgot a true killer leaves as little trace as possible."
In the quiet Thracian night that had just settled after the soldiers' outburst, Leontios suddenly let out a scream that tore through the air.
His battered face twisted into layers of rage, the muscles in his neck tightening as his voice exploded like a volcano that had long held its pressure.
"You insolent fools! You two, investigators sent by the Emperor, dare accuse me without valid proof? I am a former slave who has only just gained freedom—I have no power, no influence, nothing to defend myself with. But remember this: if your accusation proves false, if you are merely seeking a scapegoat among us former slaves, then Emperor Alexios I will not hesitate to burn out both your eyes! I will make sure you feel what I have always felt—living in fear, living in humiliation, living in—"
Leontios never finished his sentence.
Because before him, Nirma smiled.
Not an ordinary smile, not a cynical one, not even a victorious one.
It was something strange—alien—something the human mind could not easily classify.
That smile bloomed on Nirma's lips like a flower growing in a graveyard—beautiful yet terrifying, calm yet threatening—as though behind it lay an ocean of secrets no ordinary human could ever explore.
At the same time, Arya, with a nearly imperceptible movement, pressed a button on a projection device hidden beneath his robe.
Invisible waves immediately spread, penetrating the optic nerves of the Prefect's soldiers around them, rewriting the reality their eyes perceived.
To those soldiers, what happened next was nothing more than an ordinary routine in the year 1101 AD.
Leontios being emotional.
Leontios shouting.
Perhaps Leontios attempting to escape.
They saw none of what was truly happening before them—before Nirma and Arya.
Nirma grasped the cross necklace hanging around his neck, his slender fingers clutching the sacred object tightly as he lifted it to chest level, like a priest preparing to perform an exorcism ritual.
His one eye closed, his lips beginning to move, reciting words that were strange, foreign—unlike any prayers known in Constantinople in the year 1101.
"Cursed are you, Abnormal," he whispered, his voice soft yet piercing.
"Cursed Abnormal, savage Abnormal, devourer from the Mire of Central Anatolia. Come out of this false human shell. Reveal your true form before us who come from the future, before the witnesses prepared to behold the truth."
The prayer continued to flow, repeated over and over, growing faster, more intense—like a mantra never heard by human ears of this medieval age.
Suddenly, Leontios screamed.
Not an ordinary scream—not one of anger or pain known to mankind.
It tore from his throat as his head snapped upward toward the sky, and from his wide-open mouth, something impossible began to emerge.
A beam of light—no, a hundred beams—no, millions of color spectrums burst forth from within Leontios' body, forming a massive rainbow-colored laser that pierced the Thracian night sky.
Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet—every color that had ever existed and never existed blended into a pillar of light that kept rising, higher and higher, piercing clouds, piercing the atmosphere, heading toward an unknown destination.
In the Thracian night that had turned into a battlefield between dimensions, Nirma and Arya watched with their own eyes as the rainbow flare from Leontios' throat continued to soar into the sky.
That light was no ordinary light—Nirma could feel it in every cell of his body, in every corner of his mind—that it carried a frequency that no human civilization, from any era, could ever interpret.
That frequency pulsed, vibrated, spread across the universe, carrying a message only its own kind could understand—the Abnormals scattered across time and space.
Within his sharp mind, Nirma began piecing together the meaning behind that impossible frequency—fragments of a message he could partially grasp, even though it was not a human language.
My identity has been exposed, but soon I will escape, and we will go together to Mount Uhud in the year 625 AD, at the very moment the Battle of Uhud is raging.
To be continued…