Chapter 141
Her voice did not stop there.
She continued speaking, continued chanting, continued praising—prayers to Ahura Mazda, the god of wisdom in a belief born in the lands of Persia thousands of years before Islam came, prayers to ancient gods and goddesses whose names had long been lost to history, to the sun god worshipped by civilizations that had long turned to dust, to the goddess of fertility whose statues were found buried beneath cities no one remembered anymore, to ancestral spirits believed in by tribes that had never known holy scriptures yet understood they were connected to something greater than themselves.
All of it flowed from Nirma's mouth without pause, without breath, without hesitation, as if she had memorized every prayer that had ever existed in this world since birth, as if she were a vessel chosen to voice everything humanity had ever considered sacred, as if the entire history of human belief flowed through her vocal cords that had never before been used for something like this.
Her voice was not loud, did not echo like the Abnormal's liturgy that filled all of Heraclea Cybistra with waves of destruction, yet every word she spoke felt like nails driven into wood, like foundations rebuilt upon collapsing land, like something restoring the very concept of sacredness that the five-headed creature was trying to destroy.
The two liturgies collided in the air, not like waves canceling each other out, but like two oceans meeting in the middle of the sea—both vast, both powerful, neither willing to yield—and the sky of Heraclea Cybistra trembled with vibrations no longer explainable by physics, the air growing heavy, dense, like being inside the womb of a universe giving birth to something never born before.
But just as the clash of liturgies began to reach equilibrium, when Nirma's voice and the five-headed Abnormal's voice met with equal force, Arya intervened.
He opened the exorcism book given by Nirma, a thick-covered volume worn at the edges, a book containing compilations of exorcisms from all religions and beliefs across time, yet he did not read from it, did not chant its prayers, did not utter the words written on its yellowed pages.
Instead, he laughed—a soft laugh, one that held neither joy, nor mockery, nor bitterness, but a laugh born from understanding, that amidst the clash between a negating liturgy and a restoring one—
"Creatures like you dare to insult holy scripture?"
Arya spat onto the ground.
Then he began to speak.
But what came out of his mouth was not a prayer.
It was ridicule.
He mocked the form of the five-headed Abnormal.
He laughed at its liturgy, which to him was nothing more than a cheap parody of church hymns.
He cursed the creature with language that fused scripture quotations, theological sarcasm, and insults so sharp they sounded like a sermon turned inside out.
Strangely enough.
Arya's insults actually strengthened Nirma's liturgy.
Because every insult Arya uttered was directed solely at the Abnormal itself, not at God or any holy scripture.
As if he were saying:
"God remains holy. The wretched is only you."
And at the exact moment the five-headed Abnormal's attention was drawn into the duel of liturgies, Ashita moved.
Her body shot forward like a shadow.
The katana, fused in form with a sword, reflected the swirling sky above.
Without warning, Ashita slashed directly at the creature's left leg.
The strike was so fast the air itself had no time to make a sound.
At the same time, Tegar had already reached the creature's left shoulder.
The Mesopotamian mace from 3000 BC was raised high.
Then it came crashing down upon the base of one of its necks.
DUAAAK.
The five-headed Abnormal screamed.
Not a scream that came from its mouth, but one born from the entirety of its body, from every pore it did not possess, from every gap between scales that had never known sunlight, a scream that spread through the air like a wave carrying something beyond sound, something that was pain it had harbored since the first moment it was born from an unnamed darkness.
The scream struck the unseen walls of Heraclea Cybistra, struck ruins long turned to dust, struck the sky still fractured with lines spreading like roots searching for water in dry soil, and when that scream reached Nirma's ears, she felt her chest tighten, her lungs filling as if with sand, something within her mind, something she had long believed she controlled with unwavering discipline, beginning to dance to a rhythm she did not recognize.
Yet she did not release the mechanical ring in her hand, did not stop the flow of time she continued to slow, did not allow her fingers, now trembling under a burden she had never trained to bear, to let go of the device that might be the only reason Tegar and Ashita could wound the creature faster than its flesh could regenerate.
Blood flowed from her nose, thick and dark, too dark, too familiar, the color she had often seen when killing someone too close to her heart, and she knew her body was not designed to control a device meant only for tireless machines, yet she endured, enduring the same way she had for years amidst death lurking in every corner of time.
Meanwhile, atop the creature's shoulder, Tegar felt his mace—his weapon that had shattered the base of three necks in a single swing consuming all his strength—now feel like melting lead, heavy, hot, as if it wanted to slip from his grasp and return to the earth where it had first been found thousands of years before Christ was born.
He did not let it fall.
His left hand, still gripping the handle tightly, veins bulging like ropes pulled too tight, fingers beginning to lose sensation from relentless vibrations, he used it to swing again, to strike again, to ensure every blow landed not only on flesh but something deeper, something that might be the very core of the power that made this creature unable to die.
He did not know if his strikes mattered, did not know if all he did was merely wasting energy that would run out before this battle ended, but he did not care, because from the moment he chose to fall, chose to shut down all technology that made him light and let gravity pull him downward at unstoppable speed, he had already decided he would not stop until there was nothing left to strike, nothing left to destroy, until his own body would stop before his hands ever did.
Ashita, on the other hand, did not merely slash.
To be continued…