Chapter 173
"Don't listen, COVER YOUR EARS!" Zhulumat shouted, his voice nearly swallowed by the Third Angel Head as it emerged, tiny wings sprouting from both of its ears.
They were not beautiful wings like those painted across the ceilings of churches, but wings that had grown in reverse, their feathers pointing inward toward the ear canals, as though the sacred voices that had now become corrupted no longer needed to leave the body to be heard, for they were already dangerous enough when they merely whispered inside the mind.
While the six heads were still adjusting to their newfound existence, still murmuring, grinning, weeping blood, and chanting twisted liturgies, the final three heads began to emerge from Nebetu'u's neck, the heads of Gods that had long since fallen into the abyss of sin. Their arrival was accompanied neither by fangs nor laughter nor hymns, but only by emptiness.
The first God Head possessed hollow eyes, not blind, for blindness still acknowledged that light had once existed, but empty like a sky abandoned by prayer, like a house whose every inhabitant had died with no one left to bury them.
And when that head gazed forward, despite having no eyes with which to see, Shaqar felt his chest tighten beneath the crushing realization that he did not matter, that nothing mattered, that even the Gods themselves had abandoned the act of caring. If they no longer cared, then why should he continue the effort of breathing?
"Shaqar... DON'T LOOK INTO ITS EYES!" Apathy shouted.
But the warning came too late.
The second God Head had already opened its mouth.
Its teeth were perfectly ordinary, flat like those of any human being, neither remarkable nor intimidating. Yet its tongue stretched outward, impossibly long, unlike that of any living creature. Across its surface clung ruined scriptures like the scales of a serpent, books whose pages had been torn apart and whose ink had faded beneath tears, blood, and rain that had never ceased falling since the first sin stained the world.
The tongue continued to unroll like a cursed scroll without end, every new layer revealing verses that no one who still wished to remember their mother's name should ever read.
"What... what is written there?" whispered one of Shaqar's soldiers, not one of the nineteen survivors, but someone who had somehow remained alive despite blood pouring endlessly from his eyes.
Those eyes no longer saw the world.
They saw only whatever had been written upon the tongue of the fallen god.
Something that made him smile before his head slowly slumped to one side with the soft sound of an overripe fruit falling from a tree that no one had bothered to harvest.
"DON'T READ! DON'T READ ANY OF IT!" Shaqar roared.
But his voice was interrupted by the third God Head, the calmest among the nine, the least threatening, the most human in appearance.
From its eyes flowed wax, not in drops but in an endless stream.
Wax that burned without ever melting away.
Wax that continuously dripped onto Nebetu'u's main body, forming thin layers that hardened into something gleaming like gold while carrying the unmistakable stench of death.
Every drop of wax carried fragments of prayers, prayers offered to this god before its fall, prayers that had never been answered, prayers that had lingered upon the ceiling of heaven for so long that they eventually transformed into curses after being denied entry forever.
"Wha... what's happening to my fingers?" another soldier suddenly asked, his voice disturbingly calm.
When Zhulumat turned toward him, he saw the man's fingers slowly transforming into wax.
Not melting wax.
Solidifying wax.
Wax that hardened beyond movement.
Before anyone could even reach him, his entire body had become a statue of wax, forever preserving the confusion upon his face, a confusion that would never receive an answer because he no longer possessed a mouth with which to ask.
And amid the nine heads that continued whispering, screaming, murmuring, burning, weeping wax, and secreting thick fluids, Nebetu'u's pale gray body streaked with orange finally completed its transformation.
His legs, once perfectly ordinary, had reversed themselves.
His heels now faced forward.
His toes pointed backward.
Every step he took produced not the sound of footsteps but the sound of fabric being torn apart, because wherever those inverted feet touched the ground, reality itself ripped open beneath them, leaving behind tiny black voids that pulsed like wounds destined never to heal.
His right hand, once empty, now gripped a staff.
Not an ordinary staff, but one carved from the bones of a prophet, the bones of someone who had once spoken directly to God.
Every joint of that staff bore intricate carvings depicting betrayals that had never been recorded in any sacred scripture.
His left hand held a rosary of curses.
Its beads were not round but shaped like the skulls of unborn infants.
Every time his fingers brushed across one bead, a curse shot into the air without any chosen target, without any destined victim.
Those curses did not care whom they afflicted.
They cared only that they were spoken.
That they were heard.
That they did not remain alone in their hatred.
The eleven beings who only moments ago had pursued Shaqar with scythes, fire, and unquestionable certainty suddenly stopped.
Not like soldiers receiving an order to retreat.
But like a herd of deer suddenly realizing that the shadow before them was not a tree, but an enormous mouth already opened wide.
Nebetu'u, bearing nine heads that murmured, grinned, wept blood, and shed wax, stepped forward upon his inverted feet.
Every step once again sounded not like footsteps, but like cloth being ripped apart.
A sound that made the pale blue scythes of the Holy Beings tremble.
Not from fear.
But from recognition.
The recognition that before a being who had willingly transformed himself into the womb of destruction, power that continued increasing every passing second would never be enough.
It had never been enough.
Trying to oppose him was like attempting to flood the ocean with nothing but tears.
"H... he's too powerful," whispered one of the Holy Beings, a voice utterly unfamiliar with whispering, its edges splintering like cracked glass still struggling to remain whole.
In response, Nebetu'u raised the prophet's bone staff into the air.
Not to strike.
But to point.
He pointed directly at the fire creature, whose wings had begun beating in uneven, frantic rhythms, panic that even a face made entirely of flame could no longer conceal.
An invisible wave spread outward from the tip of the staff.
It could not be seen.
Only felt.
It felt like despair itself.
The instant the wave reached the fire creature, its wings neither burned nor withered.
They froze.
Not from cold.
But beneath the certainty that it would never become strong enough.
That every struggle to survive had been nothing more than a cruel joke told by a universe that had grown bored.
"This isn't a battle anymore... THIS IS AN EXECUTION!" Apathy shouted, his voice trembling with laughter born from sheer disbelief.
Beside him, Shaqar remained standing alongside his nineteen uninjured subordinates, watching as Nebetu'u, with a single movement of the left hand that held the rosary of curses, every bead shaped like the skull of an unborn infant, released three curses at once toward the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Holy Beings.
The curses did not kill them.
They paralyzed them instead.
The three beings collapsed to their knees, not in reverence, but because their bones had suddenly forgotten that they had ever been created to stand.
Yet amidst the overwhelming advantage Nebetu'u had never sought, amidst the nine heads that continued murmuring, shedding wax, and chanting their twisted liturgies, something utterly unexpected occurred.
Something no creature within that chamber had ever considered.
Because no one had been insane enough to imagine it.
To be continued...