Chapter 178
Not destroyed, not burned, but forgotten, forgotten by the reality being rewritten through Shaqar's explosion, forgotten like a name that had never been important enough to be recorded in history. Before Agatha could scream, before the sound could even form in her throat, already dry with dust and grief, Zhulumat Katamtum, commander of Team Xirkushkartum, a high-ranking Satanist who had survived one hundred and twenty-seven cleansing operations without losing control even once, was gone. Nothing remained except a faint imprint in the air shaped like a human body, just like the other Satanists who vanished alongside him, together with dozens of other High-ranking Satanists who had participated in the final mission, a mission that would never be told by anyone because there was no one left to tell it.
Apathy did not witness Zhulumat's death, because he had already run, already leaped, already decided that he would not become another number added to the growing death toll on the third floor of the castle that had never possessed a proper address.
He leaped through a window that had never existed before, a window opened only because Shaqar's explosion had torn the marble walls apart, transforming them into emergency exits designed by no architect. As his body fell, through air still scorching from the ritual flames, through fragments of stone soaring like tiny meteors that had never asked to fall to the earth, he felt something strange.
Salvation, not because he deserved to survive, but because Shaqar had planned everything. Within the formula of his explosion, within the equation of destruction written with his own blood and bones, there was an exception reserved for his nineteen subordinates, including Apathy, including those who still stood frozen at the edge of the chamber when the explosion began racing outward from its center with impossible speed.
"RUN! EVERYONE, JUMP!" Apathy had shouted moments earlier, and his voice reached the nineteen soldiers who remained loyal to Shaqar, still waiting for orders even though their commander had already become ashes.
And so they ran.
They jumped.
They followed Apathy through the windows opened by destruction itself, plunging into the darkness beyond the castle, uncertain whether they would land upon solid ground, jagged stone, or a bottomless abyss. Yet that was the choice Shaqar had left them.
To die with honor within the flames of the explosion, or to live burdened by guilt beyond them.
They chose to live, because dying was too easy, because living was the heavier burden, because someone had to remain alive to remember that Shaqar had once existed, that he was more than just a name buried in mission reports destined to gather dust inside archives no one would ever open.
Meanwhile, within the chamber that no longer possessed walls because everything had become ash, light, and ruin, Nebetu'u remained standing amid flames that would never be extinguished.
Not standing as a creature still whole, but standing like a shadow learning how to disappear. Of his nine heads, only three remained. His pale gray body, streaked with hints of orange, was now covered in cracks like porcelain dropped from an impossible height. From every fracture emerged light, not the agonizing golden radiance of the ritual, but a white light, white like bones buried for far too long, white like a letter that had never reached its destination. It slowly escaped into the exhausted air, carrying fragments of Nebetu'u with it, as though even the atmosphere itself had grown too weary to bear any more suffering.
Several days after the explosion that rewrote reality on the castle's third floor, the world of the Satanists was still bleeding.
Not with real blood, but with grief, grief concealed behind heroic news reports written by journalists who had never witnessed a father blowing himself apart while whispering his daughter's name.
In a small house on the outskirts of a town too insignificant to be marked on any map, Miara, Shaqar's only daughter, the only child who had never known that her smile had been the sole reason her father dared to die, was busy in the kitchen. She sliced vegetables with movements that were neither hurried nor slow, the practiced rhythm of someone who had cooked for two people so many times that the sound of a knife striking the cutting board had become a form of meditation requiring no thought.
"Absyumura," she called without looking away from the pan that hissed as the oil began to heat.
"Please turn on the television. I heard there's an important announcement today."
Her voice carried no overwhelming curiosity, only polite weariness, the weariness of someone long exhausted by endless reports of battles, death, and rituals she had never understood yet had heard in every broadcast since childhood.
Absyumura, seated in the living room with a cup of tea that had long since gone cold because he had been too absorbed in reading a book on the history of exorcism, a book he had never managed to finish because every time he read it, he always stopped at the same page, the chapter discussing self-sacrifice in sealing rituals, let out a quiet sigh. He placed the book upon a table whose legs had already begun to crack and reached for the remote control lying beside the sofa cushion.
"All right, all right," he replied in a tone that sounded like a complaint without truly being one, more a habit developed after loving someone for so many years that even laziness had become another form of intimacy.
When the television screen flickered to life, not loudly but softly because Miara disliked noise in the morning, the face of a female news presenter appeared between advertisements for joint pain medicine and promotions for the latest model of exorcism equipment. Her hair was tied into a neat bun, and although her expression struggled to remain neutral, her tear-filled eyes betrayed her.
"Good morning, viewers," the presenter began, her voice resembling shattered glass desperately trying to become a mirror once more. "We have just received an official report from Team Xirkushkartum Headquarters regarding a large-scale ambush operation that has recently been completed by..."
She stopped, drawing a breath that sounded as though she were swallowing something unbearably bitter.
"... By one of Team Xirkushkartum's units."
The knife paused above the cutting board.
Not because Miara had finished chopping, she had not, and she never would finish the routine that had become her only anchor amid an uncertainty she had never asked for, but because her eyes caught something on the television screen that she could no longer look away from.
Faces she did not recognize.
Uniforms she had seen countless times upon her father's shoulders whenever he returned home carrying wounds he never spoke about.
And in the lower corner of the screen, a single name.
Zhulumat Katamtum.
"Absyumura," Miara's voice emerged unlike ever before, no longer gentle, no longer calm, but urgent enough to make her husband, who had been reading his history of exorcism while sitting on a chair stained with filth and maggots, immediately stiffen.
"Turn up the volume. Quickly, make it louder."
She did not wait for his reply.
She did not wait for confirmation.
Because within her heart, in the deepest chamber she had guarded so fiercely against fear, something had already begun to crack, cracking like a plate striking a stone floor, cracking like a father's promise when he always said, "I'll come home," yet could never explain when.
Her hands resumed moving through the seasonings unique to the Satanists, black liquid that smelled like stagnant water behind a house untouched by sunlight, spices whose scent would make ordinary people vomit, yet to Miara they were the fragrance of home, the scent of childhood, the scent of her father sitting in the kitchen, quietly laughing as he watched her prepare something the outside world called disgusting but which he simply called love.
Even as her hands continued their work, her eyes never left the television screen.
The news presenter, a woman whose hair was styled far too perfectly to deliver news of death, whose makeup was far too heavy to conceal that her eyes had been glistening with tears for the past ten minutes, swallowed hard as though forcing shards of glass down her throat. When she finally spoke, her voice trembled in a way she could no longer hide, despite twenty years of training to become a neutral, impartial, and emotionless broadcaster.
To be continued...