Chapter 193
And Apathy, who had never been good at weaving beautiful words, simply smiled, a faint smile that was barely visible at the corner of his strange mouth, before replying.
"Perhaps we are both shadows, Saelindra. But at least shadows are never truly alone as long as there is light to create them, even if that light never touches us directly."
The two of them laughed, a laughter that no one outside the small space they had created for themselves could hear, a laughter that became their only anchor amid the endless ocean of mockery and isolation.
However, one night, when they were both twenty years old, on a night when the moon did not rise and the stars had never existed, Saelindra came to Apathy's small house with a different kind of step.
It was not the upright stride he usually carried, but one that was heavier, burdened by something he could not hide no matter how hard he tried.
He sat on a worn wicker chair, his hands, usually cold and steady, now trembling as they held a cup of tea he never drank. After a long silence, he finally spoke, his voice caught in his throat.
"Apathy... I received a message. From the One Accursed. It said that my sins would be forgiven. That I would be accepted once again as a faithful Xajuriosta. But on one condition."
Apathy, who sat across from him with his triangular head slightly lowered, slowly raised his eyes, eyes that had never been sharp, yet now suddenly felt like a freshly sharpened blade.
"What condition?" he asked, even though, deep inside his heart that was beating faster than usual, he already knew the answer would not be a good one.
Saelindra swallowed hard, the act feeling as though he were swallowing shards of glass, before continuing.
"I have to create chaos. At our school. At the place where they've mocked me, spat on me, treated me like trash all this time. I have to... I have to strike back. So they'll know that a Xajuriosta cannot be treated however they please."
Apathy stood up.
Not in anger, but with slow movements, slow like someone struggling to contain an explosion already waiting to erupt inside his chest.
He walked toward Saelindra, stopped directly in front of him, and then knelt so that his strange eyes were level with Saelindra's, which had begun to glisten with tears that had yet to fall.
"Saelindra, listen," he said, his voice neither loud nor forceful, but heavy, heavy like a stone sinking to the deepest bottom of a well.
"I know you're hurting. I know they've hurt you. I feel it too, every single day, every single hour, every single second since I was fourteen years old. But killing them, creating chaos that will take the lives of innocent satanic children, won't heal your wounds. It will only turn you into exactly what they've always accused you of being. A monster."
Saelindra's tears finally fell. For the first time since he entered the world of the satanic people as a fallen Angel, he cried. He cried in a way he had never shown anyone before, with trembling shoulders and a voice choked by sobs he could no longer hold back.
"You don't understand, Apathy! You never understand because you don't know what it's like to be cast out from the only home you've ever known, only to arrive in a place that was supposed to be neutral, yet turned out to be even crueler than the Heaven I left behind!"
Apathy took hold of his hand, the same cold hand that had been the only warmth he had known for the past four years, and answered in a gentle yet unwavering whisper.
"I understand, Saelindra. Perhaps more than you think. But I can't support you. Not this. Not a massacre. Because if you do this, you'll lose the only thing that makes you different from them: your heart, the one that refuses to hate even though you have a thousand reasons to."
And before Saelindra could answer, before his tears could become words capable of wounding or healing, the sounds outside the house changed.
It was not the sound of wind, nor the sound of rain, but something more like the roar of countless wings, a roar coming from every direction at once, shaking the walls of the house until even the leaking ceiling began to crack.
Apathy rushed to the window, and beyond the dusty glass, he saw something he had never imagined, not even in his worst nightmare.
Angels whose wings were not made of feathers but of blinding, agonizing light, Holy Beings whose bodies were woven from unanswered prayers, all descended from the gray sky like a swarm of locusts carrying death. They attacked the school where he and Saelindra had spent the last four years, striking down the satanic children who fled in terror with their uniforms stained by the first blood of their lives.
"This... this is an invasion," Apathy whispered.
Behind him, Saelindra stood frozen, his eyes wide with horror, because this invasion, the very invasion foretold in the message from the One Accursed, should never have happened if he had agreed, if he had accepted the condition, if he had been willing to become the executioner of the children who had mocked him.
"I... I didn't tell them to come," he said, his voice trembling, fragile, shattered.
"I haven't answered. I haven't decided anything."
But there was no time to explain, no time to blame one another, because the wall of the house was torn apart by a single slash of light, sending Apathy crashing into the corner of the room, his head bleeding and his ears ringing from a sound far too loud to bear.
When Apathy finally opened his eyes, whether seconds or minutes later, he saw a man standing before him, a man wearing a uniform he recognized from the heroic stories shown on television, a man whose face was no longer young, extending his hand in a motion that was neither hurried nor slow, the movement of someone who had saved so many lives that it had become second nature.
"Can you stand, son?" the man asked.
Even amid the deafening chaos of the invasion, his voice sounded strangely calm, calm like the water resting at the bottom of a well untouched by storms.
Apathy nodded and accepted the offered hand.
As he rose to his feet, his eyes caught the name embroidered across the man's chest.
SHAQAR.
"I'm getting you out of here," Shaqar said.
Without waiting for a reply, he grabbed Apathy's arm and pulled him into a run through the ruins, past the bodies of satanic children who had never managed to escape, past towering flames that rose like the trees of Hell grown overnight.
As they ran, Apathy searched frantically for someone, someone with long black hair and a scar shaped like a broken wing across his forehead.
Then he found him.
Saelindra stood in the middle of the schoolyard, now drenched in blood.
He was not running.
He was not hiding.
He simply stood there with both arms spread wide, as though waiting for something, or someone, to come for him.
And before those outstretched hands, an Angel with wings of light aimed a spear whose gleaming tip shimmered with unanswered prayers, a spear ready to pierce Saelindra's chest at any moment.
Apathy did not think.
He simply ran.
He tore free from Shaqar's grasp, abandoned the safety he had only just been given, and sprinted toward Saelindra as fast as he could.
On the ground, among the ruins, the flames, and the blood, he spotted a fallen spear, one that had belonged to a Holy Being whose body had already been obliterated by an explosion.
He picked it up, raised it high with trembling hands, and hurled it with every last ounce of strength he had left.
To be continued...