Chapter 143
Tegar, who stood not far from Ashita, released his grip on the Mesopotamian mace he had been holding so tightly, and the weapon that had witnessed the rise and fall of dynasties in the land between two rivers fell to the ground with a sound far too heavy for an object of its size—a sound that echoed through the silence like something finally saying goodbye after waiting far too long to be spoken.
He did not look at anyone, not at Nirma, not at Arya, nor at Ashita who stood beside him with her breathing still uneven.
He only looked at the sky that was slowly stabilizing again, a sky no longer cracked, no longer trembling, no longer a massive dome made of sound and fury and hatred—a sky that was simply gray and quiet and empty, like every sky in every place he had ever visited in a life too long to remember and too short to forget.
He felt how his legs—legs clad in wooden sandals that had carried him running along the writhing, undulating limbs of that creature—began to feel as though they were no longer his own, as though they were merely two wooden sticks attached beneath his body by hands that did not know how to assemble legs, and he knew that within minutes, he would no longer be able to stand, that his body would force him to sit or lie down or do whatever was necessary to gather the energy he had spent in a battle that might have meant nothing at all.
The silence that fell over Heraclea Cybistra after the storm subsided was not a friendly silence, not one that invited a sigh of relief, but rather a silence that stood among the four of them like an invisible wall of glass, too thick to be pierced by any sound.
The dust that had once drifted slowly through the air had now settled upon the ground, forming a thin layer that covered the cracks left behind by the tremors of the three liturgies that had shaken the sky, and the wind coming from no discernible direction occasionally stirred the tattered edges of their clothing—moving like fingers that did not dare to touch, moving like something trying to remind them that time had not stopped, even if those within it chose to remain silent.
Nirma felt her heartbeat, felt how each pulse was heavier than the last, felt how her body—forced to remain upright until now—began to whisper to her in a language only she could understand, a language composed of pain at her temples, tremors at the tips of her fingers, and something like bitterness at the base of her tongue, and she knew that the true battle had not yet begun—that what had happened with the five-headed Abnormal was merely the opening of something longer, more exhausting, more uncertain than simply striking, slashing, and sealing an immortal being into a dimensional cage she could not open twice.
Dozens of minutes passed in a way she could not measure, could not count with any numbers she knew, because time in this place—in the ruins of an ancient city that had witnessed too many deaths to still care about seconds and minutes—felt like something that flowed yet did not move, like a river whose water kept running but never arrived anywhere.
She saw Ashita across the field, saw how the woman stood with a sword still gripped in her right hand, her breathing slowly stabilizing, yet her eyes never leaving Nirma—eyes that held something she could not explain, something that was not anger yet not forgiveness either, something more like a question that had never dared to be spoken for fear that the answer would destroy whatever remained between them.
She saw Tegar beside Ashita, saw how he now sat on the ground with his back resting against a stone of unknown origin, the Mesopotamian mace lying beside him like a beast exhausted after too long a hunt, his eyes closed but his ears still alert—ears that caught every whisper of wind, every scrape of dust, every heartbeat echoing across a field too silent for a place that had just been a battlefield between something older than civilization and four people who had never asked to become heroes.
And precisely after twelve minutes—or perhaps thirteen, or perhaps an entirely different measure of time, because Nirma no longer cared to count—Ashita finally opened her mouth.
Her voice was not what Nirma had expected, not what she remembered from the reports she had heard about the young agent who hunted fugitives with unreasonable persistence; instead, it was lower, heavier, like something that had just emerged from a space left unused for far too long.
"Thank you," Ashita said, and the words fell between them like a stone dropped into a well too deep—falling for a long time, with a sound that never reached the bottom because perhaps the bottom did not exist. "For your cooperation. In capturing that Abnormal."
She did not mention the creature's name—there was no need—because the four of them standing in the ruins of Heraclea Cybistra knew exactly what she meant, knew that within the dimensional cage now held in Arya's hand, within a prison that could not be opened by any force except those who held its key, the five-headed creature still struggled, still resisted, still did everything it could, even though the prison had nullified every frequency escaping from within it, leaving only silent movements—movements like a film without sound playing in a room without a projector, movements that made Nirma realize that even though she had defeated the creature, she had never truly seen defeat in the eyes of something that had lived longer than every prayer humanity had ever uttered.
Within Nirma's heart, in a space long filled with hatred, vigilance, and wounds she had never allowed to heal, something shifted in a way she had not expected.
For the first time in a span she could not measure, she found herself somewhat admiring Ashita's way of thinking—the way the woman chose to begin with gratitude, the way she understood that the battle they had just fought was not one that could be won by a single person, the way she was perceptive enough to realize that amidst the ruins of an ancient city forgotten by all, beneath a sky that had just recovered from fractures that nearly destroyed it, nothing was more valuable than allies who had proven they could be relied upon when death arrived with five heads and three liturgies capable of shattering the sanity of ordinary humans within seconds.
But that admiration lasted only for a moment—like lightning tearing across a night sky—lasting no longer than a single breath drawn and released, because she was Nirmala Surdaya, a top-tier fugitive hunted by every Temporal Cross-Police agency across all timelines, the woman who had killed Ashita's parents at the age of sixteen, the woman who could not allow admiration to blur the reality that across the field stood two people who were, officially, her enemies—two people who, given the chance, would not hesitate to capture her and bring her to a place where time would never grant her an escape.
And so she answered, her voice no louder than a whisper yet clear enough for ears that were listening deliberately—her voice emerging from a throat still dry with dust and blood and the lingering tremors of liturgies that had not fully left her mind.
To be continued…