Chapter 139
"We have heard the reports. We have considered the doubts. And we have also tested the worst possible outcomes. Whether this is a real ritual, a cosmic experiment, or merely the shadow of an old story wrapped in a new form—we will not move recklessly."
Fhuuuuh!
"We only need to endure in vigilance. Give them room to become exhausted by their own draining watch. We learn, we calculate the rhythm, we wait—until the chaos they create eventually loosens beneath its own weight."
Hhhh!
"There will be no open maneuvers. No provocations. We—"
BOOOOM!!!
But before Zhulumat could finish his sentence, before those final words could fully form at the edge of his lips and spill into the room already growing heated from debate, a deafening explosion tore through the silence of the night with a force beyond anything anyone in that room could have imagined.
The explosion came not from any direction they could have expected, not from beyond the city borders, not from enemy territory that had long been the source of every threat, but directly from the heart of the capital of Thalyssra Blessed by the Great Sanse, from the center of the city that for centuries had stood as the symbol of the Satanists' resistance against darkness.
Its tremor spread through the ground, through the walls of the chamber, through the air that suddenly became heavier and denser, sinking into the bones of everyone present with a force that made them feel terror at its most primitive level, at the level where there was no longer logic, no longer courage, no longer anything except pure fear born from the deepest instincts of living beings.
The bodies of every participant in the meeting froze where they stood.
Not a single one of them could move.
Not a single one of them could breathe.
Not a single one of them could pull their gaze away from the direction of the sound, even though all they could see were the walls of the chamber, walls that suddenly felt like thin sheets of paper incapable of protecting them from whatever was happening outside.
Zhulumat, who only seconds ago had been about to close the meeting with the calmness of a supreme leader who had endured thousands of storms, now sat frozen with his mouth still half-open from the unfinished words he never managed to complete.
The eyes of the Satanist Leaders widened in the same way, in a way that revealed that even they—people who had spent decades living on the edge of death—had never experienced anything like this before.
The captains of Team Xirkushkartum, including Onigakure, Makakushi, and Shaqar, felt their hearts beating in chaotic rhythms, felt their blood coursing through their veins at unnatural speed, felt cold sweat beginning to seep from their pores even though the temperature of the room had not changed at all.
And amidst the panic slowly spreading from one person to another, amidst the paralysis still gripping their bodies, realization gradually began forming within each of their minds about what this explosion truly meant.
The sound came from the same direction, from the same location, from the same place where the Angels and Holy Beings had been endlessly circling the castle in constant and orderly formations.
The sound came directly from around the castle, from the heart of the city that had been the center of their attention all this time, from the vortex of mysteries they had spent hours trying to solve through endless discussions.
And when that realization finally reached the point where no room for doubt remained, when every person in that chamber began to understand that this was not an ordinary explosion but the very sound they had feared all along without ever truly imagining its form, the room transformed into a place where time itself seemed to stop, where every second felt eternal, where nothing could be done except wait and hope that this was merely a nightmare that would soon end.
"Was that just now from the direction of the castle?!"
"The frequency… that wasn't a normal explosion!"
"The Angels' guarding formation is still active, isn't it?! How could something possibly penetrate the center of their circle?!"
"Step back a little! Don't stand too close to the blast radius!"
"Calm down! Don't panic! We still don't know the scale of it!"
"Calm down, you say?! The tremor reached the very foundations of this chamber!"
"It came directly from the heart of the capital, from around the castle they've been surrounding!"
"Has the ritual already begun?!"
"No—it can't be this soon!"
"If it truly came from within the guarding circle, then either something broke through it, or something inside exploded outward!"
The panic consuming the room was not ordinary panic that could be overcome with a few deep breaths or a reassuring pat on the shoulder.
This panic was something more primitive, more savage, something born from the deepest parts of the soul they had never even realized existed.
The captains of Team Xirkushkartum, trained soldiers who had survived hundreds of horrific battlefields, who had witnessed the deaths of their comrades in the cruelest forms imaginable, who had grown accustomed to situations where life itself was nothing more than a wager that could disappear at any moment, now slowly began stepping backward without being able to control their own feet.
That retreat was not a conscious decision they made.
It was not a strategy planned within seconds.
It was a bodily reflex they could not suppress, the automatic response of living creatures realizing that the danger arriving this time existed beyond the limits of any human being's ability to confront.
Among them, several individuals began speaking with trembling voices, uttering incoherent words, half prayer and half curse, half plea and half protest against fate that had suddenly overturned everything they once believed to be true.
Step by step, foot by foot, they moved farther away from the center of the circle where Zhulumat still sat frozen with his mouth not yet fully closed.
They moved away from the direction of the explosion, from the direction where the Castle of Thalyssra Blessed by the Great Sanse stood surrounded by Angels and Holy Beings, from the direction where something they had long argued about as mere possibility was now beginning to reveal its true form.
Some of them nearly stumbled over their own feet.
Others collided into one another because of their uncoordinated retreat.
Others unconsciously grabbed the arms of the comrades beside them, searching for support amidst the whirlpool of fear dragging them deeper into panic.
The faces that only minutes ago still carried the pride of fearless warriors, that only hours ago had been filled with confidence while questioning the validity of Onigakure's theory, had now transformed into masks of terror incapable of hiding anything, revealing clearly that deep inside them, in the deepest place of all, existed a fear they had never admitted even to themselves.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the circle, the Satanist Leaders gathered beneath the Banner of Zhulumat experienced something different, though no less unsettling.
They did not step backward like the captains.
They did not display the same physical panic.
They did not allow their feet to carry them away from the center of danger.
Yet within their hearts, in the most secret chamber they had spent decades keeping firm and unshaken, something called fear had begun creeping in for the first time in a very long while.
To be continued…