Chapter 513
Fuuuuh!!
The First Arc, Middle Episode 11, has come to an end.
The First Arc, Middle Episode 12, begins.
In a different place, within a layer of reality untouched by the fractures left behind by the battle between Lilith and The Nothing, stood the Land of the Gods, once magnificent before being abandoned by rulers who chose death over continuing to reign.
The great hall stood in an uncanny silence.
It was not the hollow silence of a place abandoned by its inhabitants, but a dense silence, one filled with restrained breaths, unblinking eyes, and faint smiles that never reached the depths of the heart.
At the far end of the chamber, upon the throne once occupied by King Xavier XVII before he and Myra Astrielle chose to end their lives together, sat the youngest one, the youngest among the Gods, the last child born of a royal bloodline that had nearly gone extinct.
His eyes no longer reflected the innocence of youth, but something darker, older, and far hungrier.
His snow-white hair flowed down his back like a frozen waterfall halted before it could descend, and at the tips of his slender fingers, a dim light pulsed in rhythm with his slow heartbeat, far too slow, like someone savoring their final meal before an endless fast.
"Very well," the youngest said, his voice emerging not from his throat but from deep within his chest, heavy and profound, like an echo from an underground chamber far too vast to be filled by a single voice.
"Who will be the first?"
From the line on the left side of the hall, a god clad in a faded dark-purple robe stepped forward.
His steps carried no hesitation.
They were the steps of someone who had rehearsed them countless times, steps that declared he knew exactly what he was about to say and precisely how he would say it.
He bowed, not too deeply, but enough to show respect.
Then he lifted his head, his eyes gleaming, not with joy, but with anticipation, anticipation that had long been buried and had finally found the moment to bloom.
"Your Majesty," the god reported, his voice as clear as a bell ringing through an overly quiet morning, "the logistical preparations for the Inverted Crucifixion have reached one hundred percent completion. The pillars of atonement have been erected in the inverted formation exactly as Your Majesty commanded. Not a single one deviates from its measurements, and not one has cracked despite being tested under loads three times greater than required. The chains that will suspend the victim upside down have also been prepared. Each one is forged from metal smelted within flames that have never gone out, ensuring that they can never be broken by prayer, tears, or false hope."
He paused for a moment, drew a breath, and then laughed.
It was not a loud laugh that shook the walls, but a quiet chuckle trapped in the back of his throat, rising like tiny air bubbles escaping from the depths of a river too deep to see.
From both the left and right rows of the hall, from every corner where the gods stood in their faded robes of many colors with eyes that never blinked, that laughter echoed in return.
Not as an echo, but as reinforcement, as approval, as something that united them into a single horrifying rhythm, a single horrifying heartbeat, a single horrifying joy.
"Ha... ha... ha..."
Their laughter rang out in perfect unison.
It was not particularly loud, yet it was unnervingly complete, unnervingly flawless, like a choir that had rehearsed for thousands of years for this very moment.
The youngest, seated upon the throne, did not join in the laughter.
He merely smiled.
It was a thin smile that never reached his eyes, etched upon his lips like a crescent moon hanging in a sky where the sun had never risen.
He nodded slowly, a single nod sufficient to send the god in the dark-purple robe retreating with satisfaction.
Then his gaze shifted toward the line on the right, where a goddess with moss-green hair tied into three braids stepped forward gracefully.
Far too gracefully, like a dancer who had spent thousands of years preparing for her final movement.
"Your Majesty," the goddess said, her voice gentle yet carrying an unquestionable certainty.
"The spiritual preparations have also been completed. Every incantation required to bind the victim's soul to the pillars of atonement has been engraved upon the wood's surface, not with ordinary blades, but with a stylus carved from the bones of a saint who died in sin. Thus, every stroke bears a curse that no forgiveness can ever remove. The victim will not escape. They will not pray. They will not hope. They will only... feel. They will experience every single second of what is about to happen to them, from beginning to end, without even the slightest chance to lose consciousness or die prematurely."
She smiled.
It was a broad smile, far too broad, revealing rows of teeth much too white to be naturally white.
Then she laughed, the very same laughter, the laughter the entire hall had been waiting to hear.
"Ha... ha... ha..."
Once again, from every corner, from every robe, from every unblinking eye, that laughter echoed in perfect unison.
Perfect.
Horrifying.
Like funeral bells rung by hands too impatient to wait for the corpse to fall.
The youngest still wore that faint smile, and deep within his mind, in the innermost chamber where no god, no human, and no living being was ever permitted to enter, the image of Erietta Bathee began to take shape.
Not as a picture, but as a sensation.
As a vibration.
As a pleasure he had not yet experienced, yet had already tasted upon the tip of his tongue.
He imagined the girl, the adopted illegitimate child from an orphanage, the daughter the Bathee family had never wanted, yet kept because abandoning her would have looked worse than raising her.
Now she lay among the inverted pillars of atonement, her arms and legs stretched in directions opposite to prayer, her body forced to face downward, toward the earth, toward Hell, toward anywhere except Heaven.
He imagined how Erietta's skin would begin to split apart the moment the incantations awakened.
How her blood would flow not downward, but upward, defying gravity, defying logic, defying every natural law she had ever known.
How her mouth would open in a scream, yet no sound would emerge because her voice had already been confiscated as part of the offering.
"Excellent," the youngest whispered, and his voice came not as praise directed toward the moss-haired goddess, but as a whisper addressed to the image of Erietta within his own mind, to the girl who did not even know that her death had already been arranged, scheduled, and savored by every god gathered within this hall.
"Truly excellent. Proceed."
The laughter gradually faded.
Yet somewhere within the farthest corners of his memories, the youngest could never remember hearing such joyful laughter during his own childhood.
"Happy birthday, my child," Myra Astrielle, his mother, said without even looking into his eyes before turning away and disappearing behind the black silk curtains.
Xavier XVII, the king, merely placed a small cake, no larger than a clenched fist and as hard as stone, upon the marble table before walking away without even stroking his son's hair.
Inside the room where his sixth birthday was held, there were only candles burning by themselves, a long table without a single sibling present, and the wind blowing through a window someone had forgotten to close.
Back then, the youngest was still a child.
He still believed that happiness was something one could ask for.
But the moment he blew out the candles, alone, with not a single voice wishing him a happy birthday apart from the echoes of the walls, was the moment determination pierced through his very bones for the first time.
"I don't need to be loved. I need to be feared."
To be continued...