Chapter 16
Ophistu stood at the center, their face serene yet commanding, their eyes reflecting the light of the sacred tome like mirrors, ceaselessly echoing the will of the heavens.
Nebetu'u let out a short, bitter laugh, sharp as shattered glass, brief yet piercing. The sound hung in the air, acidic and jagged, tearing through the sanctity that sought to dominate the space.
In their eyes, once cold, now burned the fire of mockery, as if the divine protections before them were nothing more than a joke.
But before the echo of that laughter could fade, Ophistu moved.
Their voice changed, no longer that of an angel, but something deeper, older, vaster. As if a mountain had suddenly spoken, or an ocean stirred from slumber. It was a voice that shook bone, tore through layers of reality, a sign that God Himself now possessed their throat.
It forced the world to listen.
Nebetu'u paused. Then grinned.
Darkness erupted from their body, swallowing Ophistu in a single, ravenous breath.
Yet from within that suffocating black, a voice still rang out.
Nebetu'u hesitated, the air thickening as if the earth itself held its breath before a storm.
Then, the grin widened.
Darkness exploded outward, not as smoke or shadow, but as a living tide of black—a dam breaking. It surged, devouring light, air, even sound. Everything it touched vanished in an instant. Ophistu was swept away, consumed by that ravenous void, as if the darkness were a beast unchained.
But from within that abyss, that should have been fatal, one sound remained.
A single word.
A single tone.
A single truth.
Then … silence.
The darkness froze, suspended in the air like a painting hung between moments.
No wind. No whisper. Not even the faintest breath of sound.
Only perfect, preserved emptiness.
In the ancient castle's hollow quiet, a structure that had stood long before time and space were concepts, terror began to creep like black fog. Ophistu, the cursed angel, sent by the One Who Is Damned, moved with unstoppable intent.
Their target was Nebetu'u, the keeper of balance, the fulcrum that maintained harmony between two opposing forces.
Nebetu'u, a child no older than thirteen, stood as a symbol of impossible unity. Two heads shared one body, one male, tainted by demonic essence, and one female, radiant with divine purity.
Ophistu knew exactly which one to tear apart.
The male head was the key, the representation of evil hiding behind the guise of balance. With each step, the cursed angel's breath of death drew nearer, while the castle's shadows watched, waiting to witness destruction.
It was inevitable.
The few remaining candles in the castle's halls flickered, trembling with unspoken fear. The stone walls, silent witnesses to millennia of history, shuddered under the sheer purity of Ophistu's unleashed energy.
This was no mere killing.
It was the annihilation of a principle.
Nebetu'u might not have realized the magnitude of the danger, but the universe itself trembled in protest, mourning the guardian who now stood on the brink of being crushed beneath endless terror.
Nebetu'u snapped back into position, their body rigid yet eerily still. Power thrummed beneath their skin, radiating from their gaze, sharp enough to slice through silence.
They spoke no titles, claimed no divine mandate. Yet every word that left their lips echoed with irrevocable finality, each syllable a hammerstroke against the fabric of reality.
Their eyes swept the chamber, sifting dust from air. In that gaze burned absolute rejection, of Ophistu's corruption, of the rot festering beneath celestial guise.
This was no threat.
It was law.
Written into the cosmos long before tongues of light first flickered across the heavens. Sooner or later, at this moment or at time's last gasp, something would come to end this.
The how and who went unnamed, yet any creature listening would feel it: the creeping chill of an ending, the weight of infinite eyes watching from the edge of existence.
Ophistu's sarcasm had barely left their lips, dismissing Nebetu'u's words as empty jest, when the world shifted.
The air congealed.
Before Nebetu'u could retaliate, a fog erupted, not gray, but blinding white, purer than any sanctity ever conceived. A deliberate mockery of the female head's divinity.
Then, between blinks, Ophistu vanished.
Only a ghost of presence lingered, teasing the edges of awareness.
Nebetu'u's twin heads swiveled, four eyes scouring the mist-choked chamber. Too white to be natural. Too perfect to be harmless.
Just as suspicion crystallized, just as their focus locked onto a glow within the fog, hands settled on their shoulders from behind.
No warning. No sound.
Ophistu stood there, hollow-eyed as a highway stretching into oblivion. Their grip held scripture etched into eternity. When their lips parted, a single word fell—
—and the male head screamed.
A thousand needles of hellfire pierced his mind. The female head shuddered too, but differently, wracked by revelation, as if handed a truth too bitter to swallow.
No time to flee. No chance to counter.
Then Ophistu multiplied.
Bodies split like reflections in a shattered mirror, each clone chanting overlapping scriptures, sacred texts turned dissonant, holy words twisted into a symphony of torment.
To the male head, it was the slow twist of a blade between ribs.
To be continued...