Chapter 140
Nirma felt how the sound entered her head not through her ears, but through the pores of her skin, through the air she breathed, through the fading light in the gray sky, and for the first time in her life, she felt what it might be like for those who had lost their faith, lost their footing, lost something they had long considered the final foundation of their existence.
The three liturgies were sung simultaneously by five heads moving in different rhythms, yet somehow forming a perfect unity, like an orchestra conducted by an unseen conductor, like a universe that had suddenly decided to speak in a language no one could understand yet everyone could feel.
Their voices collided, scraped, and clashed with one another, yet never descended into chaos, never lost direction, as if every word had been arranged with a precision unattainable by humans, as if every note had been calculated with formulas never found in any book of physics.
Instead, the three liturgies merged into a sound wave so complex that the air around Heraclea Cybistra began to crack like glass.
Nirma saw it with her own eyes, saw how the sky, once merely gray and dusty, now began to show thin lines spreading in all directions, lines that should not exist in air, lines that should only appear in solid objects breaking under immense pressure.
She heard Arya beside her draw a long breath, heard the exorcism book still in Arya's grasp begin to tremble on its own, heard something deep within herself, something she had long thought dead, something that might have been the remnants of faith she once possessed before becoming a killer, before becoming a fugitive, before becoming a woman who knew nothing but missions, betrayal, and battle, begin to scream, begin to resist, begin to refuse to be erased by the liturgy spoken from the mouths of beings that should never have existed in this world.
The sky vibrated like a guitar string plucked too hard, on the verge of snapping, a vibration not only heard but traveling into bone, into marrow, into the deepest parts of consciousness that no sound had ever touched before.
The ground beneath Heraclea Cybistra pulsed with the same rhythm, like a giant heart buried in the belly of the earth, like something dying yet refusing to perish, and Nirma, still suspended in the air, felt her sanity, something she had guarded fiercely through years of being hunted, begin to waver, begin to crack, begin to lose its shape.
She knew that an ordinary human, one untrained, one untempered by fire, blood, and loss, would collapse within two seconds upon hearing the three liturgies sung by those five heads, would lose everything that made them who they were, would become empty, hollow, nothing more than a breathing body devoid of anything worthy of being called a soul.
But Nirma was not ordinary.
She was the woman who had killed Ashita's parents at sixteen, who had evaded the Linear Time Police longer than the age of most agents pursuing her, who had seen things no one should ever witness, and at the moment her sanity began to falter, when the three liturgies seeped into her mind like water through cracks in a dam, she did something unexpected.
Nirma stepped forward.
There was no ground beneath her feet, no solid footing, only thin air filled with dust, sound, and relentless vibrations, yet she stepped, stepping with a conviction she had never possessed before, stepping with something she had long believed to be dead within her.
The letter she had been holding at her waist, a letter that looked like an ordinary diplomatic document, one she carried without ever truly knowing when she would use it, she slowly raised before her chest, lifting it with both hands like a royal envoy proclaiming a sacred decree before a roaring crowd, like a priest carrying the Ark of the Covenant among a plague-stricken people, like someone who knew that what she held was not merely paper and ink, but something heavier, older, more sacred than any weapon she had ever wielded.
Her right eye, covered in bandages, remained still, unmoving, unblinking, as if guarding a secret no one was allowed to see, but her left eye, the eye through which she had seen everything, everything she hated, everything she fought for, opened wide, sharp enough to make Arya beside her inhale, glowing with a light that had never existed before, perhaps the remnants of something she once believed in before deciding that the only god she knew was weapons, missions, and an unending vengeance.
Then Nirma began to speak.
And what emerged from her mouth was not merely a prayer, not merely words spoken in hope of being heard by something in the sky, but a counter-liturgy, a liturgy not born from a single holy book, a liturgy that did not praise one god alone, but all that had ever been worshipped by humanity, all that had ever given humans a reason to endure suffering, all that had ever made them believe there was something beyond the darkness greater than their fear.
She began with ancient prayers, prayers once uttered by the first humans who still lived in caves, who gazed at the night sky with eyes that knew no writing yet understood wonder, who believed the shimmering stars were the eyes of ancestors watching over them from the evils lurking behind the bushes.
Then her voice shifted, turning into hymns of praise to Yahweh, to the God who spoke from the burning bush, who led His people out of slavery with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, whose name was too sacred to be spoken yet too great to be forgotten.
Then prayers to Allah, ar-Rahman ar-Rahim, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful, whose name is uttered by billions five times a day in the same prostration, the same hope, the same humility.
Then Vedic mantras, ancient syllables believed to be the first vibrations that birthed the universe, needing no translation to be understood, for their meaning lived within their resonance.
Then Buddhist sutras, teachings of the middle path, of release, of wisdom born from the understanding that suffering is part of life but not its end.
To be continued…