Chapter 146
It didn't take long after the order to move again was given.
Maybe only a few minutes.
Maybe only a few hundred steps.
Maybe only a few turns through the underground corridor that gradually ascended toward the surface.
And then, without warning, without any clear transition, without any dramatic moment they could anticipate, the corridor ended.
Before them stretched a sight they had only ever seen from afar, only imagined through war strategies, only heard about in reports from observers.
The castle stood magnificently at the very center of Thalyssra Blessed by the Great Sanse, towering into the night sky with a dark silhouette that somehow seemed to glow in an unnatural way.
Its intricate architecture, its sharp towers, its massive walls—everything looked exactly as they remembered, exactly as they had studied, exactly as they had fought for all this time.
And yet, at the same time, everything felt different.
There was something in the air, something that could not be seen yet could still be felt, something that could not be touched yet whose existence could still be sensed.
Something that made the hairs on the back of one's neck stand upright, that made hearts beat faster, that made every breath feel heavier than it should have.
They stopped right in front of the towering black iron gate, beneath the shadows of the castle towers that seemed to bend their necks downward just to see who dared to come this far.
Shaqar slowly lowered his hand, a signal instantly understood by Onigakure, Makakushi, Zhereth, and the two Satanist leaders who had been walking in thick silence the entire time.
"We wait," Shaqar said, his voice quiet yet sharp enough to slice through the silence of the night.
"No one enters before the others arrive."
Onigakure nodded, his eyes scanning the surroundings, catching the tension that wrapped around every corner of the gate.
Zhereth stood with his arms crossed, his back facing the castle, choosing instead to watch the underground passage they had just crossed.
And one of the Satanist leaders—known as Arkhaz—added in a cold tone.
"If this is a trap, then at least we won't die separately."
No one laughed at the statement, because no one considered it a joke.
Time flowed like honey spilled onto cold ground—slow, thick, and painfully wasteful.
Dozens of minutes passed accompanied only by the night wind carrying faint whispers from within the city, perhaps remnants of the attacks still raining down upon the other teams, or perhaps merely the sound of footsteps that had yet to arrive.
Makakushi sat cross-legged at the right side of the gate, his twelve soldiers spread out in a vigilant circular formation, while Apathy stood directly behind Shaqar with both hands tightly clasped behind his back—a posture he never showed unless the situation was truly dire.
"From the east, Captain Vorlag has already entered the route we shared," reported one member of the Orbit Severance Unit after receiving a transmission.
"From the west, Captain Yushur and his twelve men have just passed the third checkpoint."
Shaqar let out a long breath before replying.
"Let them come at their own pace. What matters is that everyone arrives here, at this gate, before dawn decides to greet us."
From afar, they began to see small silhouettes emerging one by one from the mouths of the dark underground tunnels, like sand flowing through the neck of an hourglass, and the hearts of everyone waiting began to beat with a new rhythm—a hesitant rhythm of hope.
In the end, after waiting for more than twenty minutes that felt like twenty hours, all the captains of Team Xirkushkartum stood before the castle gate.
Vorlag from the east.
Yushur from the west.
Gharzakh from the north, his face still bearing the marks of fierce battle.
And dozens of other captains who had once only existed through reports and radio transmissions now stood there in person, complete with their subordinates lined up neatly behind them.
The Satanist leaders of the Zhulumat Banner had also gathered, their numbers increasing to dozens—with six of them having joined Shaqar's team from the very beginning, while the rest arrived alongside the captains from various directions.
But the figure everyone had been waiting for appeared only at the final moment, when the near-perfect silence was broken by the sound of heavy footsteps approaching from the darkest corridor.
Zhulumat Katamtum emerged from the shadows in his patchless black robe, followed by three other Satanist leaders acting as his personal guards.
"Check the ranks," Zhulumat said bluntly, his deep voice impossible to defy.
"Make sure not a single soldier is missing, not a single warrior is left behind, not a single one has fallen on the way here."
And without waiting for the order to be repeated, the captains and leaders moved along their respective formations, recounting numbers, matching faces, ensuring that the figures written on paper matched exactly with those standing upon the ground before the gates of the Castle of Thalyssra Blessed by the Great Sanse.
During that long period of waiting, amidst the sighs and the bone-piercing silence, strange things began to reveal themselves to those willing to lift their gaze toward the castle.
The Angels and Holy Beings never stopped circling the magnificent structure—they floated, spun, and moved in ever-quickening circular formations, as though dancing for something unseen, as though chanting a voiceless hymn that could only be felt through the vibrations in the air.
"What are they doing?" Makakushi muttered beside Shaqar, his eyes narrowing as he followed the pale streaks of light flickering between the towers.
Vorlag, standing not far from them, answered in a hoarse voice.
"A ritual. It's a ritual of worship. And their tempo is getting faster—I can feel it in my chest."
Shaqar did not answer.
He merely watched as every beat of the Angels' wings brought heavier pressure, as every step taken by the Holy Beings in the air left trails of light that faded slower than before, and within his heart grew an unsettling certainty.
That their time outside the castle might soon come to an end, with or without permission.
From beyond the black iron gate, strange sounds began to emerge—not screams or cries, but a kind of low hum vibrating deep within the ears, like thousands of glass-winged flies or like a song with time reversed.
The members of the Anti-Rumble Division stationed at the outermost perimeter reported that the Angels' movement patterns had changed—what was once merely a circling formation had now become a kind of double spiral, with the center located precisely atop the highest tower.
"They are summoning something," said Arkhaz, the Satanist leader who had remained silent until now, his voice nearly inaudible even though he stood directly beside Zhulumat.
"Or perhaps… awakening something."
From the eastern ranks, a captain named Gharzakh reported that the three subordinates who had been injured during the rat-path ambush had now fully recovered, and that there were no casualties despite several of their energy shields having cracked in multiple places.
"We're fortunate no one fell," Yushur from the west remarked, though Zhereth merely let out a quiet snort upon hearing it.
"Luck has never accompanied you this far, Yushur. This is something else."
When the final report reached Zhulumat's hands—that every soldier had recovered from the minor injuries sustained during the journey, that every formation had been recounted with no discrepancies found, that every warrior stood firmly in position with weapons ready and determination still burning—Zhulumat Katamtum stepped three paces forward, away from the protective shadow of the gate, and faced the castle directly in all its strangeness.
To be continued…