Chapter 505
"Apophis—!" Lilith cried out, but her voice broke midway.
It shattered like glass struck by a stone.
It shattered like hope that had been betrayed far too many times.
Yet the Nothingness gave her no time.
It had already moved toward Rahab before Lilith's scream could echo through the cracks of reality.
And this time, it did not punch.
It compressed.
Its two arms—arms without form, yet still felt like two walls forged from condensed nothingness—closed in on Rahab's body from opposite sides.
Rahab, with her grayish-blue hair flowing like a sea without a surface, only managed to open her mouth to say something—perhaps her own name, perhaps a prayer she had never spoken, perhaps merely a faint sigh that no one would ever hear—before the pressure reached its critical point.
Rahab's body shrank.
Not like a balloon losing air, but as though it were being crushed into a space too small to contain her existence.
As though reality itself refused to acknowledge that she had ever existed.
And when the pressure reached the point where Rahab should have exploded—when flesh, bone, and consciousness could no longer endure in any state that could still be called "alive"—the same thing happened once again.
Rahab vanished.
Leaving behind no trace.
No sound.
Nothing except an emptiness that suddenly felt heavier because it had been filled with loss.
"Where did they go?" Asherah whispered.
And for the first time, her usually confident voice sounded fragile.
Fragile like paper crumpled by impatient hands.
Fragile like someone who had just realized she understood absolutely nothing about the world she inhabited.
The Nothingness did not answer.
It did not need to.
Because while Asherah's question still lingered in the increasingly fractured air, it had already moved toward Apollyon.
Then Chemosh.
Then Baal-Zevul.
Then Ashmedai.
Then Asherah herself.
One by one.
In sequence.
Like a poet reciting a death poem with a rhythm too swift for a still-beating heart to follow.
Apollyon, with her dark silver hair, managed to raise her hand to unleash a fourth Erasure Protocol.
But the Nothingness's fist struck her chest first.
And as she flew backward with shattered ribs and lungs reduced to pulp, the explosion inside her body began to spread.
Yet again.
Again.
And again.
Each time the explosion was about to reach its peak, her body vanished before it could erupt.
Vanished as though it had never existed.
Vanished exactly as Apophis and Rahab had.
Chemosh attempted to suppress fate with his Gravitational Ruin, trying to trap the Nothingness within unavoidable destruction.
But the Nothingness merely raised an eyebrow—an eyebrow that had no form.
With a single stomp of its foot, Chemosh was sent flying.
His body shattered from within.
And then he vanished.
Baal-Zevul unleashed his Plague of Voice, attempting to infect the Nothingness with a plague of meaning that twisted purpose itself.
But the Nothingness took a breath.
The same breath that made reality tremble.
And the plague was extinguished instantly like a candle beneath a hurricane.
Baal-Zevul's body flew backward.
Shattered.
Vanished.
Ashmedai attempted to erase the Nothingness's will through Null Desire Collapse, trying to rob the entity of its desire to attack.
But the Nothingness merely smiled.
A smile unseen, yet felt like a blade slicing across the throat.
Ashmedai was already thrown aside.
His body cracked apart.
And then he vanished.
Asherah, with her emerald-orange hair pulsing like a dying heart, managed to shout:
"Lilith, run!"
Before the Nothingness's fist struck her face.
Before her fragile body was hurled backward.
Before the explosion within her chest reached its peak.
Before she vanished like her sisters before her.
Lilith fell to her knees.
Not because she was injured.
The Nothingness had not touched her yet.
She had not felt the fists, the crushing force, or the stomps that had sent her sisters one after another into an emptiness she could not comprehend.
She fell because her legs could no longer support the burden she carried.
The burden of watching her eight living sisters disappear before her eyes within seconds.
The burden of knowing that the souls dwelling within her—Bes, Enlil, Lamashtu, Ahura Mazda, and Mictlantecuhtli—now also carried the loss of the sisters who had just fallen.
A loss piled upon loss like corpses left unburied because no land existed vast enough to contain every wound.
"No," Lilith whispered.
Her voice escaped like a breath that had remained trapped for far too long within lungs she had never truly possessed.
"No, no, no—"
She lowered her head.
Behind her closed eyelids, she saw Apophis's face disappearing.
Rahab's face disappearing.
Apollyon.
Chemosh.
Baal-Zevul.
Ashmedai.
Asherah.
All gone.
All vanished.
All leaving her alone before the mother who had never wanted them.
The mother who now stood before her with both hands still in her pockets.
With an unreadable expression.
With an indifference so absolute that Lilith felt she was mourning the deaths of shadows that no one had ever considered real.
Yet from the depths of her consciousness, from the place where the five souls resided, the voices began to rise.
Not to comfort her.
Because no comfort was powerful enough for a wound this immense.
But to remind her.
Lilith, Bes whispered.
And for the first time, he was not laughing.
"Stand up."
You are still alive, Enlil whispered.
"And as long as you are alive, you can still fight."
Lilith raised her head.
Her single eye—that eye which had never changed, never blinked, and had witnessed so much death that it had forgotten what it felt like to see something truly alive—now burned with an inextinguishable fire.
A fire born not from hope.
But from despair that had reached the point where victory and defeat no longer mattered.
Only resistance mattered.
She stood.
Not gracefully.
Not magnificently.
But with a trembling body.
With knees still weak.
With fists clenched at her sides.
Her body was drenched in blood.
Not her own blood, for she remained uninjured.
But the blood of her sisters who had vanished before her.
Blood unseen, yet felt burning within every pore of her being.
Fourth Sa, she spoke within her heart.
And from the tips of her pale fingers, fragments of reality began to form.
Not the shadow-glass of before.
But something denser.
Darker.
Angrier.
She unleashed it toward the Nothingness without hesitation.
Without calculation.
Without strategy.
Only pure rage poured into an Authority she should never have possessed.
Fifth Sa.
She released it before the fourth attack even reached its target.
Creating a second wave that collided with the first and multiplied its power through means that defied reason.
Sixth Sa.
Seventh Sa.
Eighth Sa.
Ninth Sa.
One after another, she unleashed Authorities she had never used throughout thousands of years of existence.
Authorities hidden at the depths of her consciousness like secrets too dangerous to share.
And now, before the mother who had killed her sisters, she no longer cared about danger.
"Tenth Sa!" Lilith screamed.
And the entire space around her collapsed.
Not like a building.
But like a concept.
As though reality itself had surrendered and allowed her fury to flow without restraint.
To be continued…