Chapter 160
He heard Makakushi beside him begin to groan, his voice growing higher, thinner, drawing closer and closer to the same frequency as the choir above them.
And within his head, which felt as though it were being boiled from the inside, Onigakure realized something horrifying.
Makakushi was not screaming in pain.
He was singing along.
His broken voice began aligning itself with the vibration filling the room, and the terror born from that realization drove Onigakure to do something he had never done in thirty years of life.
He raised one hand and struck Makakushi hard across the face—not to hurt him, but to stop that sound.
To remind him that they were human.
That they were creatures created to hate whatever was singing above them, not to join in its song.
"STOP—STOP SINGING, MAKAKUSHI!" he shouted.
His voice no longer possessed any structure, only notes colliding against one another.
And for a moment, Makakushi fell silent.
His empty eyes blinked once.
Twice.
Then awareness returned.
But within that brief silence, Onigakure felt the hum pressing deeper, searching for openings, searching for weaknesses.
And he knew that the battle they faced was not against something that could be stabbed or cut apart.
It was a battle against something that would continue singing until they forgot they had ever possessed a different voice.
Shaqar did not know when he had begun to pray.
Not a prayer to the Great Sanse, whose name had always been the only one worthy of being spoken while surrounded by death.
Instead, it was a prayer older than that.
More primitive.
A prayer with no structure and no clear recipient.
Only a string of words escaping from his bloodied mouth because he no longer knew what else a mouth could do except speak something—anything—as long as it meant he was still capable of speaking.
Above them, the Angels continued turning the pages of those transparent books with fingers that never trembled.
And each time a page turned, the hum changed frequency.
Changed color.
Became something new that was no less painful than before.
Among the eighty-seven bodies scattered across the floor, not a single one still possessed enough strength to lift their head and see that the eyes of the Holy Beings, once closed, were now beginning to open one by one.
Not quickly.
But with a gentleness that was somehow even more terrifying.
Like someone who had just finished reading something both beautiful and agonizing, and was now deciding which page should be read aloud once again.
Just as the scythes began to form—not from metal, not from light, but from folds between space itself, as though someone were squeezing reality from opposite sides until all that remained was a curved line with no thickness yet absolute certainty to separate what was whole into what had never existed—Zhulumat felt something within his chest that he had never experienced before, not even when his exorcism tools had been reduced to dust.
It was a premonition without words.
A premonition made of color.
A color he had never seen before, yet instantly recognized as something his bones had been waiting for all along.
And before the first scythe could swing—
Before its curved edge could even touch the air with the intent to divide—
The second floor above them split open.
Not cracked like weakened marble.
It opened like an eyelid that had been deliberately kept shut from the very beginning.
And from that sudden opening, an impossible light began to descend.
Not in beams.
But in curtains.
Like a waterfall flowing upward while gravity was occupied with something else entirely.
"W-What is that...?" Agatha murmured.
Her voice was still wet with blood and vomit.
Her eyes, reddened by burst blood vessels, struggled to focus on something that belonged to no category she knew.
Beside her, Zhulumat felt the hum that had been crushing his brain for the past five minutes suddenly retreat.
Not stop.
Not disappear.
Retreat.
Like an incoming tide that had suddenly realized it was not invited, leaving behind a silence that felt like a fresh wound upon eardrums that had already bled for far too long.
The light was not white.
It was not gold.
It was not any color human eyes had ever witnessed.
It was the quotient of two colors that had never been permitted to meet.
Heaven and hell.
Ice and lava.
A holiness that burned and an atrocity that froze.
And within that fusion—one that violated every law the universe had ever written regarding what could stand beside what and what could not—the spotlight began sculpting something in the center of the room.
Not creating.
Reminding.
Like a sculptor who was not shaping a new figure, but merely brushing dust away from a statue that had existed long before time possessed a name.
The Angels above ceased moving their fingers across the pages of the transparent books.
Not because of fear.
Not because of doubt.
But because of acknowledgment.
Their perfect wings unfolded slightly, not to fly, but to bow.
A gesture they had never shown to anyone since the moment they were first created from an undying light.
"That... that's impossible..." Onigakure whispered.
And for the first time in his life, as someone who had turned his disbelief in miracles into an art form, his voice carried something he had never allowed into it.
Hope.
And he hated himself for it.
Yet he could not stop, because his eyes had already seen what they had seen.
The Holy Beings who only moments ago had been prepared to swing their annihilating scythes now stood frozen in place.
The scythes in their hands—fashioned from condensed nothingness—trembled at a frequency different from before.
Not the frequency of death.
But the frequency of doubt.
As though their own weapons were asking them a question.
Do we truly have the right to cut down something that may also be loved by a being higher than ourselves?
And within the light that could never agree on what color it wished to display, a silhouette began to form.
Not solid.
Not liquid.
Not gas.
But something between all three.
A possibility that had not yet decided to become real, yet was already real enough to make everyone in the room forget that only seconds earlier they had been writhing on the floor with blood pouring from every opening in their faces.
The silhouette did not fall.
Did not float.
Did not descend in any manner ever taught by the physics lessons of Satanist academies.
It condensed from the light that continued pouring down from the split-open second floor.
And as its shape began to solidify into something that could be perceived by eyes that were no longer merely seeing but also feeling, Zhulumat felt a stirring within his chest that he could not name.
Not fear.
Not relief.
But something older than both.
Something that those who still believed the universe possessed an inviolable balance might have called reverence.
To be continued…