Chapter 42
Soft, almost teasing, like a childhood song left lingering in memory before the world learned how to wound.
Yet the longer it played, the more it changed.
Not in melody, but in meaning.
It cooled a fragile conscience while calling to something beyond the concept of presence, absence, or even the possibility of either.
The sound parted the borders of existence, once believed immutable, carving a space for emptiness, a silence deeper than death.
It was neither attacked nor summoned, and yet it arrived.
Quietly, without tremor, without a cry, a needle descended from a will already resolved.
Its point did not fall at random.
One pierced beneath the left breast, another through the stomach, and the last slid into the upper bridge of the nose.
These needles did not simply pierce flesh, they targeted, threading through the layered meanings that made up Ophistu.
Inside each needle was a voice.
The voice of that angel's head itself.
No longer a whistle, but a scream—a cry laden with such crushing force it could shatter consciousness if heard too long.
Each scream was embedded precisely at the part of the needle that pierced, making Ophistu feel the wound not merely in flesh but in existence itself, carried through the deepest, unnamed nerves.
Ophistu's vision blurred, not from losing control, but because they were being forced to witness.
They saw that angel's head—still beautiful, eyes bleeding, smile split, teeth of glass, screaming without pause—each cry linked to the pulsing pain from the needles driven in.
There was no vision of victory, no image of rising again, only the undeniable truth that suffering could be born not from enemies, nor fate, but from a part of oneself, most knowing of where the wound lies that can never be healed.
"Planting fear as though it grew from soil we've never walked, yet the memory of pain is not a wound.
It is immunity."
Ophistu snapped their fingers.
In an instant, all three needles vanished, devoured in a firestorm that left neither ash nor scar.
Only emptiness remained—a sign that the suffering had been annulled.
The illusion shown by the twisted angel unraveled, stripped from the mental plane, wrapped only in its own scream, like dust rejected by existence.
The pause was brief, too brief to be called relief.
Moments after silence crept back in, something without cause detonated, erupting to Ophistu's left and right.
Colors, rainbow hues, formed out of nothing.
Not as refracted light nor rain's reflection, but as self-sustaining matter, standing apart from any known reality.
They glimmered, not soothing, but alien and piercing, as though made from remnants of concepts the older world had refused.
From the front, a projection appeared, no frame, no heralding sound, only a radiance that demanded notice.
Ophistu watched.
They did not shift their stance, nor adjust posture, their gaze simply fused with the sight.
The projection was no simple weave.
It did not show Ophistu's memories, nor any event directly witnessed.
What appeared was a life, a fragment that felt far away yet carried a resonance too deep to be chance.
An angel, face unblemished, movements graceful, walked among the ruins of places long stripped of names, still holding to a loyalty so pure even as the surrounding world cracked apart.
In the scene shown, the angel did not rebel, nor curse.
Only hesitated.
A doubt crept in, touching the heart when commanded, told to carry out something that felt like a betrayal of their own nature.
They were ordered to kill, specifically, to stain the sanctity of Olyspharta, the pure and sovereign authority dwelling within, a bridge between will, purpose, and identity.
Afterward, they would be made to bow, swearing allegiance to the legion of unrest, outcasts under the name of the Cursed One.
The projection did not lie.
It showed the moment when conviction began to erode, not from weakness, but because loyalty still clung tight, even when faced with destruction.
When the angel finally refused, not with voice, not with resistance, they were cast aside, thrown into an unnamable void, as though unshakable loyalty were a sin worthy of punishment.
Ophistu did not move.
But the castle floors around them shuddered, ashamed for showing something that should never have been seen, something brushing against an old wound, planted deep, buried without a marker.
A pain that could never be followed, only carried, signaled in a gaze that refused to turn away.
"Approaching is a violation."
"Forgive Us all Our sins!!"
Then, without warning, Ophistu flinched.
A subtle vibration slipped into the edge of perception, too faint to be threat yet strong enough to disturb the quiet that had just settled.
They spread their wings, retreating slowly.
Not out of fear, but because something that should not exist had emerged.
The projection, once a contained memory, began to change.
It spilled beyond the frame of illusion, refusing to remain a mere vision.
Its presence pierced the boundary between real and represented, taking form, placing itself within the castle grounds.
Time neither quickened nor slowed, but the world below seemed to hold its breath, watching as something once locked in memory now stepped into reality.
From a place once filled only with shadow and ruins, a figure emerged, instantly recognizable, yet stripped of nearly all the beauty once adored.
The angel walked, or rather dragged, their body toward Ophistu.There was no majesty in their gait, no light in their form.
What remained was a broken body, mangled flesh, incomplete wings, a face more remnant than being.
But it was not the physical ruin that kept Ophistu hovering, it was the collapse of faith radiating from the angel's presence, rotting the air in silence.
They came not as redeemer nor messenger.
Only as a shard of what was once great, now defiant, refusing to bow even to the reason for their own existence.
Their body carried wounds that could never heal, wounds not from battle, but from choices that violated the deepest order of meaning.
And Ophistu, wordless, watched that ruin approach, dragged slowly forward, without sound, without a traceable aim.
The moment Ophistu declared that approach a violation, the cosmos seemed to spit, refusing to remain a passive witness.
The space once adorned with those causeless rainbow hues shifted violently.
The bright, harmless colors melted, not like liquid paint, but like rotting flesh, released from form and crudely reshaped into something that should never be.
On either side of Ophistu, new forms emerged.
Each side now housed a mouth.
Wide, misshapen, ownerless.
No face.
No head.
Only vast openings in the void, as if the universe itself had torn holes just to speak.
To be continued…