Chapter 506
The Nothingness did not move.
It stood amid the storm of the Fourth through Tenth Sa that surged toward it in an unbroken wave—a wave that should have been enough to collapse the entire Multiversal Pathways at least three times over—yet it merely stood there, and then, with an unhurried motion, it began to strike poses.
Not defensive poses.
Not attacking poses.
But the kinds of poses people usually make when taking photos at tourist attractions, when they want to preserve the memory that they had once been somewhere, that they had once lived.
One hand rested on its hip, while the other remained tucked inside a pocket.
Its head tilted slightly, wearing a faint smile that never reached its eyes.
Its body leaned forward a little, arms spread to the sides like a bird preparing to take flight.
Each time it changed its pose, Lilith's attacks—which should have destroyed, which should have killed, which should have forced it to kneel—faded away in the air like snow melting before it touched the ground, like a dream forgotten before the eyes had a chance to open.
"Pretty good for a photo album," the Nothingness said in the middle of its fifth pose—one hand on its chin, the elbow supported by the other hand, like The Thinker, yet with an expression far too relaxed to be called thoughtful.
"But not enough to make me sweat. I don't have sweat, of course. But if I did, you still wouldn't be able to make it come out."
Lilith gritted her teeth.
Blood—or something resembling blood—flowed from the corner of her lips, not because she was wounded, but because she had bitten down too hard, too deeply, too angrily.
The Eleventh Sa, she whispered inwardly, gathering the remnants of strength still left within her fragile body, gathering the fragments of rage she had yet to release, gathering everything for one final strike that would either destroy or be destroyed.
But the Nothingness did not give her the chance.
Before the Eleventh Sa could form at the tips of her trembling fingers, before that fragment of reality could be launched toward the entity standing before her while still changing poses—this time with its hands behind its head, elbows spread outward like someone relaxing on a beach—the Nothingness stomped its foot.
One stomp.
Not loud.
Not grand.
Not dramatic.
Just a small stomp, like someone stepping on the ground to crush a passing ant.
Yet to Lilith, that stomp felt as though the entire Multiversal Pathways had fallen upon her all at once.
She was thrown off balance.
Not backward.
Not forward.
But completely overturned—her body tumbling through the air without her will, without control, without anything she could grasp to stop the momentum that sent her spinning like a rag doll tossed aside by a bored child.
She fell.
Her body slammed into the ground—or whatever remained of the concept of ground—with enough force to crack her spine, enough force to shift the organs within her already fragile body into places where they should never have been.
And when she finally stopped, when her battered body lay upon the widening fractures of reality, she felt something she had never experienced throughout thousands of years of existence.
Blood.
Not blood flowing from external wounds, but blood pouring from her mouth, her nose, her ears, from every pore of her body—blood born from shattered internal organs, from punctured intestines, from torn lungs, from a heart she had never truly possessed yet still felt as though it were being crushed by an invisible hand.
"Ah..." Lilith whispered, and her voice emerged not as words, but as bubbles of blood bursting upon her pale lips.
"You're cruel...
truly cruel..."
The Nothingness did not answer.
It merely stood where it was—still holding its last pose, hands behind its head, elbows spread wide—and gazed at Lilith lying on the ground, blood pooling around her body, her breathing growing uneven, that single eye of hers—the one that had never changed, never blinked—now beginning to close, beginning to lose focus, beginning to surrender to the darkness that approached slowly like waves that never reach the shore yet never stop trying.
Then it activated its Sa.
Not a Sa launched like an attack.
Not a Sa that formed mirror-glass, roots, or concepts of ownership.
But a Sa that pressed down—a Sa that forced all nothingness, including the very concept of nothingness itself, to kneel before it, acknowledging that it alone deserved to be called the beginning and the end, the source and the destination, the master of all things without form.
The sky—or whatever remained of the sky—darkened.
Not dark like night, but dark like a yawning void, like the gaping mouth of a giant beast opening wide to devour anything still daring enough to breathe before it.
The ground cracked.
The air trembled.
Time—which had already been torn apart since the battle began—now completely lost its direction, spinning aimlessly like the needle of a broken compass.
And in the middle of it all, in the vortex of destruction it had created itself, the Nothingness began to consume Lilith.
Not consume in the physical sense—because it had no mouth—but consume in an existential sense, absorbing Lilith's existence the way a sponge absorbs water, the way emptiness absorbs light, the way death absorbs life through a process that could neither be bargained with nor avoided.
Lilith felt it.
Every fiber of her body—which was already shattered, already perforated, already no longer whole—began to be pulled toward something unseen, drawn like threads being pulled from worn-out cloth, one by one, slowly, painfully, in a way that made her want to scream despite lacking enough air to produce a sound.
Yet amid that pull, amid the certainty that she would soon vanish like her eight sisters, Lilith did something she had never done before:
She smiled.
Not the bitter smile she usually wore.
Not a smile born of boredom or despair.
But a smile born from a decision—the decision that she would not leave quietly, that she would not allow the Nothingness to enjoy its victory without burden.
"If I live again," she whispered, her voice emerging like a murmur no one would ever hear, yet she spoke it anyway because words were the only weapon left within her broken body, "in a second chance... there will come a day when I kill You, the Nothingness."
She coughed—a cough of blood spilling from her punctured lungs, a cough that felt as though she were spitting out the last remnants of courage still left within her.
"And I will place my faith in whoever is more worthy of being called my Master. Whoever that may be... it certainly will not be You."
The words were not spoken loudly.
They were not spoken boldly.
Yet they were spoken with certainty—certain like the death drawing near, certain like the hatred she had harbored for thousands of years, certain like the decision that even if her body was destroyed, even if her consciousness would soon disappear, something would remain alive, something would remember, something would wait for the day this promise would be fulfilled.
The Nothingness's Sa grew stronger.
The pull deepened.
Lilith felt her body—or whatever remained of it—beginning to lose its form, beginning to merge with the nothingness surrounding her, beginning to become part of something greater than herself, something that would never remember her name, never remember her laughter, never remember that she had once existed, that she had once been angry, that she had once loved her sisters in a way that could never be explained through words.
To be continued…