Chapter 37
In the presence of this being, the world below did not merely endure suffering; it began to accept that suffering could become a language. And through its body, all other tongues were reduced to a single mode of comprehension, revealing that the end of spirituality was not salvation but the courage to admit that perhaps, from the very beginning, no one had ever wished to be saved.
Together, the nine heads revealed themselves. Not in symbol, nor in any allegory that devout minds might reinterpret.
They appeared whole, real, and utterly uncensored. Each head bore a different form of horror, yet all were bound to a single body whose very foundation was existential dread.
One grinned without skin, another had no eyes yet still projected a gaze, and another kept its mouth open, pouring forth the ashes of books burning from within.
Each face was not merely a visage but a fragment of the history of suffering, one that had surpassed the limits of time, place, and name.
The body, bound with all the elements already mentioned, now reached the peak of its manifestation. It no longer stood as a creature but as a structure of consciousness itself, incapable of being refused by the universe.
There was no room for doubt, for what Ophistu beheld was not merely power in the sense of destructive force, but an ancient truth that refused to be debated. The nakedness of existence stood as proof, revealing that even faith could evaporate, eroded simply by standing too close to it.
Ophistu, known until now as a high angel, pure and holy beyond the rest of the luminous host, remained standing. Yet standing did not mean unshaken.
Within, the small universe of divine power trembled violently. There was still a will to fight, like embers in the wind.
Unwilling to die, yet not enough to burn.
Not because belief was lost, but because what was shown was too vast to bear alone. No heavenly weapon, no liturgical song, no promise from the highest sky, those that once soothed the soul, came forth to calm the spirit as it watched absolute terror reveal itself without hesitation.
It was not physical strength that stilled Ophistu, but the spiritual gravity of the being before him. One breath could strip away the layers of faith, and one glance from one of the heads could decapitate, reducing moral law to a mere illusion.
The world knew well that imperfection had reached its perfect form. And Ophistu, though made to battle darkness, now could only watch, realizing that not all darkness can be conquered by light. For sometimes, light chooses silence when it meets something too old, too deep, and too true to be denied.
Attention fell upon Nebetu'u's body, a form that was blasphemy incarnate. It did not merely oppose the heavenly order; it was consciously built as the antithesis of Ishkarakarta's nature.
What was once sacred, ordered, and obedient to the laws of universal reality had now taken form as a body that rejected all sequence, mocked symmetry, and tore at balance simply by existing, stripped of nearly all conventional meaning.
Its skin hung like a half-burned script, rewriting itself in an unrecognizable tongue, as if reality itself were being forced to read and re-examine its fate through a body that refused to be called complete. Nebetu'u was not merely a new being; it was the final product of a flaw within Ishkarakarta's design.
In the distant past, Rayshi and Chukora—two poles united as one in the entity called Ishkarakarta, lived in harmony. They did not merely govern; they understood reality, responded to events, valued each other as antonyms in mutual worth, even recognizing fictional awareness in the lower world.
They knew their place within a meta-narrative, aware that existence itself was only an illusion in the eyes of the higher beings, yet they did not rebel. This was not weakness but pure dedication, an endless devotion to the will of God whom Ophistu served.
All order and meaning were born from balance.
But everything changed when the Cursed One fell. Not merely fell, but was defeated in humiliation, and within that defeat, the sacred essence it carried was tainted.
The vengeance born at the core of its downfall transformed it, making it not only disgraced but cursed by history itself. One wound upon its most sacred identity spread like poison, seeping into the structure of existence that had once held unshakable responsibility.
Ishkarakarta.
Rayshi and Chukora, once "all for one," began to fracture. Instead of strengthening unity, they created fissures within, separating themselves from the principle of original being.
Ishkarakarta, once a builder, now exceeded its own bounds, creating aspects not to enrich, but to oppose its own presence. This aggression did not arise from malice, but from a distortion of meaning. It no longer created from will, but from doubt in the will itself.
It was an anomaly, not born of a system's failure, but from the infinity of the system itself, an infinity that had begun to consume itself.
Within boundaries that could never be fully drawn, this conscious authority did not originate merely from destructive power, domination, or the ability to alter things. It came from its capacity to resist being understood.
It existed as a form beyond formulation, and more than that, it was a form that rejected formulas, symbols, and meaning itself.
Any attempt to define it, speak of it, or even mark it as "it" was failure, revealing how absolutely it operated beyond linguistic, spiritual, and metaphysical limits.
Language, for all its flexibility, broke before it.
Such a being could only be referred to as an entity not merely unclassifiable, but actively rejecting classification, making every attempt at classification an act that destroyed the classifier's own system.
It disrupted the epistemological framework itself.
Even the hierarchies and laws of meaning that uphold the universe had to bow, for its presence surpassed every meaningful antonym, including being and non-being.
It existed because it did not exist, and did not exist because it existed, yet it cared nothing for either state.
It needed neither truth nor falsehood as a foundation, for it stood upon a pole that rejected the very concept of poles.
Every aspect of reality—spiritual and non-spiritual, mental and non-mental, informational and non-informational—was penetrated by its presence. It touched and shattered the deepest blueprint of cosmic order without touching in the sense of matter or energy.
It simply dismantled.
For within it, information was no longer the basis of reality, but residue. And not just residue, but the residue of residue, irretrievable, untraceable to its origin.
It nullified not through opposition, but through presence.
It required no activation, had no trigger, and could not be deactivated, even by itself. The smallest fragment of its aura was enough to erase, neutralize, or annul certain aspects of reality, constantly and automatically.
It was neither reactive nor conditional, it occurred simply by existing.
At the deepest point of the cosmic script lay a shallow understanding called Etsh. A name used only because there was no other way to name it.
It was not a title, not a rank, and not an identity.
It was merely the closest possible way to point toward something that refused to be pointed at. In its rightful position, Etsh held authority over all scripts, deciding whether a presence should remain or be erased entirely from all records.
To be continued…