Chapter 113
The golden light, repulsive to the satanic faithful, was slowly submerged by a new color: a dark green, like moss clinging to a tombstone or the rotten glow at the bottom of the deep ocean.
"A strike that is pure—silent, distant, and filled with conviction."
In the stillness that preceded the storm, reality above the border was cleaved open.
Not by wind or sound, but by a flash of light that birthed itself from nothingness.
That light was not singular, but many, each blazing with its own spectrum.
Icy blue light that froze the soul.
White-gold light that pierced consciousness.
Pale crimson light that shook memory itself.
They appeared first as tiny points in the distance, on the horizon where the Blessed City of Thalyssra stood in majesty, then swelled at a speed that defied the laws of sight.
The slashing light revealed itself to be two perfectly parallel lines, merging at one end to form the absolute sharpness of a divine arrowhead, streaking across distance while asserting that the concept of space itself no longer applied.
There was no curve, no arc—only flawless straight lines proclaiming an uncompromising intent to destroy.
It was an attack unleashed without bodily movement, a manifestation of purity of will so absolute that it required no ritual nor swing of a blade, but was born directly from the consciousness of the Angels who dwelled at the heart of the holy city, watching, and then judging.
And from afar, from their thrones of observation in Thalyssra, the Angels merely watched.
Their hands remained clasped behind their backs, above the tailbone, a posture of patience laced with contempt.
Their strike had already been delivered, not with wrath, but with a cold certainty akin to a law of nature.
They were in no hurry.
They possessed all the time in the world—and beyond the world—to witness how these rebels would ultimately be worn down, bit by bit, by a light that would never fade.
"Litany-Denying Resonance Shields—activate at full capacity."
Then, the panorama of defense changed its face.
At the very front line, where the air trembled like heated iron under hammer blows, transformation occurred through movements synchronized by collective instinct.
No longer passive shields awaiting impact, but living organs emitting a low hum.
The "Litany-Denying Resonance Shields" were activated.
At a glance, there was no drastic change to the cursed plates of metal and bone.
Yet across their surfaces, the air began to vibrate, visualizing three overlapping layers of invisible fields.
The first layer resembled the maw of a colossal beast that inhaled.
It did not deflect—it devoured.
Every intonation, every frequency of praise carried within the core of the angelic slash was absorbed into it, like sound swallowed by a massive sponge at the ocean's floor, losing its solidity before it could ever shake matter.
"As long as our rhythm cannot be read, Their strike will lose its purpose."
One step behind the trembling front line, in the space between physical shock and mental strain, the Orbit-Breaker Formation operated like a cadre of neurosurgeons in the midst of war.
Their task was not to withstand blows, but to amputate the invisible connections the enemy sought to form.
The Anti-Harmony Synchronization Telepathy Bands on the wrists of captains such as Shaqar, Onigakure, and Makakushi were no longer mere tools of silent communication.
Under the probing angelic slashes searching for patterns within the formation, the dark leather bands now pulsed with a dim violet glow, beating irregularly like a heart deliberately driven beyond its natural rhythm.
Their primary function shifted from message transmission to mental interference generation.
Each telepathic command, once delivered as a clean packet of information, was now deliberately encrypted, contaminated, and wrapped in layers of asymmetric psychic pulses.
When Shaqar sent the impulse to "tilt the left shield," his band did not transmit it as a complete concept.
Instead, it fragmented the order into a series of short bursts, long pulses, and random pauses, laced with meaningless dark static.
This was done intentionally.
The holy litany embedded within the slashing light did not merely erode the physical form, but infiltrated thought patterns, searching for order in commands, synchronization in movement, and harmony in collective intent—then using all of it as a conduit to amplify its impact.
By sabotaging order within their own command channels, the Orbit-Breaker Formation turned that "path" into a labyrinth that could not be traversed.
The effect felt like a maddened breeze inside the skulls of every Anti-Thunder soldier.
They received commands, but the commands arrived as if from within a dream—fragmented, yet still decipherable through deeply ingrained training instincts.
More importantly, the asymmetric pulses from the bands created a psycho-acoustic shroud around individual and collective consciousness.
This shroud functioned as an insulating layer that reflected frequencies of divine harmony.
The mental pressure from the slash, which attempted to attune itself to the army's rhythm—then shatter it from within—was repelled, finding no pattern with which it could synchronize.
Then came the most devious trick of all.
The captains, their concentration pushed to the limit, did not merely send commands.
Through the same bands, they actively "channeled" a portion of the metaphysical pressure borne by the front line.
They did not absorb it—that would have shattered their minds—but redirected it, like engineers diverting a flood through spillways.
The pressure was not routed into the bodies of other troops, but into "empty spaces" deliberately created and maintained within the formation.
Specific gaps of air between two soldiers.
A point on the ground directly in front of a boot's tip.
Or even toward the sky at carefully chosen angles.
"Do not release it for even a single second."
And at the heart of the storm, within a circle shrouded in the densest silence, the Banner of Zhulumat enacted a ritual more subtle and far more dangerous.
Here, among the Satanic High Elders with closed eyes and murmuring lips, the battle unfolded on a semantic plane, in the field of the most fundamental meanings.
The "Liturgical Pressure Reversers" coating the cables of their wireless earphone-like devices were not visually striking.
They glimmered faintly, like morning dew upon a black spider's web.
Yet it was this small device that served as the spearhead of their metaphysical counteroffensive.
It was a digestive organ for divine poison, and at the same time a gland that produced its own antitoxin.
This high-tier instrument functioned not by repulsion, but by comprehension.
When the wave of angelic slashes—laden not only with energy, but with liturgical charge, doctrine, and claims of absolute truth—reached the core circle, the Reversers flared brighter.
They opened like pouches of void.
Spiritual pressure capable of shattering mountains was swallowed without resistance, vanishing into a dark black hole of collective consciousness.
But the swallowing was only the first step.
Within the "stomach" of the device, the real work began.
The tightly woven litanies of praise embedded in the attack, structured with flawless heavenly grammar, began to unravel.
Word by word.
Tone by tone.
The meaning of "holiness" was bent into "rigidity."
The meaning of "submission" was inverted into "servitude."
The meaning of divine "love" was transformed into manipulative "control."
This process was not mere corruption, but a forced translation into a dark theology of equal complexity.
Narratives of salvation were rewritten into tales of oppression.
Hymns of praise were transformed into laments of denial.
Then, from this digestion and distortion, something new was born.
The device did not store the absorbed energy.
A portion of the distorted payload of meaning was reflected back into the world.
But it was no longer a clear echo.
To be continued…