Chapter 171
With those words still hanging in the air like smoke that did not know where to drift away, Nebetu'u pulled a second object from his worn-out bag, a chain, neither long nor short, whose links were neither circular nor oval but square, squares whose corners were far too sharp to be called circles and far too blunt to be called daggers. Then, without warning, without the slightest hesitation, he hurled the chain toward the creature of fire.
The chain did not fly in a straight line like any ordinary object. Instead, it twisted through the air like a serpent searching for a gap between the fingers trying to seize it, and the moment it finally coiled around the creature's wrist, or whatever could be considered the wrist of a being made entirely of fire, the creature screamed.
It was not a sound escaping from a mouth, for the creature possessed none. Rather, the scream erupted from every part of its body all at once, a sound like thousands of people being burned alive upon the very same execution stake.
And while the chain remained tightly wrapped around the fire creature's wrist, while the screams of thousands burning alive upon the same stake still echoed through the chamber, time within that room suddenly ceased to be something measured by heartbeats or the swing of a pendulum.
It did not stop like the frozen hands of a broken clock. It stopped like a collective consciousness forced to listen, forced to become still, forced to acknowledge that a voice older than their courage was about to speak.
The voice did not come from Maharaja Krata, nor from the Angels, nor from Nebetu'u. It came from the walls themselves, from the cracks in the marble that had silently absorbed every unanswered prayer and every curse left forever unspoken.
"Attention to every soul who still draws breath into their lungs," the voice whispered, each syllable falling upon every chest like a gravestone crashing down.
"The ritual for the resurrection of the Almighty will be completed in... thirteen minutes. Beginning... now."
Zhulumat felt his knees weaken, not from fear but beneath the crushing weight of that number. Thirteen minutes, enough time to run, yet not enough to hide; enough time to pray, yet not enough to receive an answer. Beside him, Agatha drew a short, trembling breath like someone who had just been stabbed in the back.
"Thirteen minutes?" Onigakure's voice shattered the silence like fragments of broken glass slicing against one another. "That means..." Before he could finish the sentence, before the meaning of becoming two to a thousand times stronger could settle into their already exhausted minds, something within the enemy ranks began to change.
It was not the light that changed. Nor the temperature. Nor the pressure. It was the pulse, a pulse emerging from the chests of the ten Holy Beings and the lone creature of fire, beating like hearts that had suddenly discovered a rhythm never taught by any universe because no universe had yet finished creating it.
With every passing second, with every breath Zhulumat drew that felt like inhaling sand from the bottom of the sea, their power increased not linearly but exponentially, like the curve of a rage that had never intended to flatten.
Makakushi was the first to realize it. A pale blue scythe swung upward, not from the front but from below, emerging through a crack in the marble that yawned open like the mouth of some colossal beast. Before his lips could even form the word run, the blade had already torn his body into six separate pieces that would never again remember what it felt like to be whole. His blood never reached the floor because it too was shredded into droplets even smaller, dissolving into a crimson mist that screamed without sound.
"MAKAKUSHI!" Onigakure cried, only for his voice to become a scream of agony as another scythe, this one from a different direction, wielded by a Holy Being whose eyes now blazed like dying stars, ripped through his arm from shoulder to elbow. It did not merely sever the limb. It tore it apart with sadistic delight.
All around them, fifteen, twenty, thirty soldiers of Team Xirkushkartum collapsed, not in battle but in slaughter. The creatures had grown so powerful so quickly that every swing of a scythe which had once merely wounded now killed outright, every beat of the fire creature's wings which had once released only heat now unleashed explosions that reduced flesh to charcoal before the brain could even register pain.
"FALL BACK! RETREAT BEHIND THE GATE!" Shaqar roared, his voice hoarse, but his words were swallowed by yet another explosion, one that burned Onigakure from the inside out. It was not the flames that consumed him, but the fire creature's judgment, its decision that Onigakure no longer deserved to be called a warrior, only firewood that happened to retain the shape of a human being for a few fleeting seconds before collapsing into ashes that drifted through the chamber like black snow in a room that had already become hell itself.
Agatha seized Zhulumat with a strength she never knew remained within her second-degree burned arms, dragging him across widening pools of blood, across severed body parts that could no longer be recognized as friend or foe because death had never cared about uniforms.
"EIGHTEEN PERCENT! ONLY EIGHTEEN PERCENT OF US ARE LEFT, ZHULUMAT!" she shouted, her voice soaked with blood whose owner neither of them could identify.
Behind them, that percentage continued to shrink like sand spilling through a cracked hourglass. Eighteen percent remained as the seventh Holy Being slaughtered three people with a single horizontal swing. Nineteen... then even less, as the fire creature spread its wings and twelve bodies evaporated into ash before they could even thank life for lending them breath all this time.
Amid the indecent carnage, amid the scythes grinding relentlessly like machines that had never known fatigue, Shaqar stood alongside his nineteen subordinates, a unit that had somehow remained intact, still breathing, still gripping their exorcism tools with trembling hands that refused to surrender.
"They... they weren't hit?" whispered one of the Satanist High Officials beside Zhulumat, his eyes unable to believe the sight of Shaqar's formation still standing while death harvested everything around them without discrimination.
Above them, Nebetu'u's severed head continued to float gently as its pendulum swayed back and forth. His lips formed a single silent word that Zhulumat somehow managed to read.
"Lucky."
Or perhaps, "Endure."
Or perhaps simply, "Look."
At that very same instant, the creature's flames licked the back of Onigakure, whose face no longer existed. Yet he smiled, smiled with what little remained of his charred lips, and whispered something that no one else could hear except Zhulumat, who stood only three meters away.
"Tell my mother... I didn't die in bed."
Then his body burst apart into countless fragments that scattered through the air like confetti at a celebration to which no one had ever been invited.
To be continued...