Chapter 533
"They... they're ready," Aldraya murmured inwardly, and the voice within him, which had once sounded like a whisper from the bottom of a pond, swelled into a mighty roar, like waves rising before a storm, like a tempest taking shape upon the eastern horizon.
"Then I must be ready as well."
He opened his left eye—not slowly like the petals of a flower blooming in spring, but in an instant, like a window flung open by a raging hurricane—and then closed his right eye.
One second. Two seconds. Three seconds. Four seconds. Five seconds. Six seconds. Seven seconds. Eight seconds.
Eight seconds that felt like eight centuries. Eight seconds during which the youngest one's assistant's hand remained suspended only centimeters away from Aldraya's wrist. Eight seconds during which the left hand and the right hand stood frozen mid-step, neither advancing nor retreating, like statues that had forgotten how to move. Eight seconds during which the air surrounding Aldraya began to change.
Not gradually like the changing of the seasons, but instantly, like a switch being flipped from off to on.
"Wha—" the left hand uttered, but before the unfinished word had even dried upon his gravestone-flat lips, an explosion erupted.
It was not an explosion that burst from within Aldraya's body like a bomb detonating inside him, but one that erupted from the space surrounding him, from the air itself suddenly deciding it could no longer contain the pressure that had silently accumulated within it, from reality itself growing weary of remaining passive and choosing instead to scream.
The explosion had no color, no scent, no sound.
Yet it could be felt.
Felt in the bones.
Felt in the blood.
Felt in the deepest place where even gods hid the fears they had never dared to acknowledge.
And when the dust, the light, and the trembling finally subsided, the three gods—the right hand, the left hand, and the youngest one's assistant—were no longer standing where they had been only a moment before.
They had been hurled backward, thrown through the air like rag dolls cast aside by the impatient hand of a giant. Only after crashing into two pillars of atonement and a cracked marble column several meters away did they finally regain their balance: the left hand with his claws dug deep into the ground, the right hand spinning like a top on the verge of collapsing, and the youngest one's assistant skidding across the marble floor, leaving behind ten parallel smoking grooves.
"What... what was that?" the right hand asked, his usually emotionless voice rising by half an octave, carrying something he had never experienced since the moment he had been born from the youngest one's shadow.
Shock.
"That wasn't merely Sa," the left hand replied, his narrow eyes widening far beyond their usual limits, revealing pupils that were no longer black, but gray, gray like the ashes left behind after a fire had burned itself out.
"That... that was something else. Something that cannot be rewritten."
And when the three gods, after clearing their throats, brushing the dust from robes that had never before known dirt, and assuring themselves that their bones remained intact despite the sensation of having been struck by a hundred fists at once, turned their gaze back toward the place where Aldraya had been lying, they no longer saw a former Highest Angel sprawled upon the ground, breathing in short, ragged gasps.
They saw light.
Not the light of the sun, nor the moon, nor the stars, but an impossibly brilliant white radiance, a light so blinding that it could not be looked upon directly even with tightly closed eyes, a light that felt warm and cold at the same time, like the embrace of someone they had not seen for ages without ever realizing how deeply they had missed them.
"That's... that's Aldraya," whispered the youngest one's assistant.
For the first time, his face did not change.
It remained Aldraya's face, a flawless copy, but it no longer resembled mockery or ridicule.
Instead, it looked like a shadow that no longer dared approach its original.
"He... he has risen."
The light began to withdraw—not slowly like morning sunlight dispersing the mist, but in rippling waves, like curtains being drawn aside by impatient hands.
Behind that curtain of light, Aldraya stood.
No longer lying down.
No longer on his back.
No longer breathing like a man running out of time.
He stood upright.
His feet no longer touched the ground.
He floated.
Higher.
Higher still.
Like the sun rising upon the eastern horizon after a night that had lasted far too long.
And upon his back, beyond his silver-white robes that were now torn in several places yet still fluttered proudly like a battle standard that had never once been lowered, something unfolded.
Wings.
Not one.
Not two.
Not three.
But thirteen.
Thirteen primary wings spread to their fullest extent, each as long as his own body, each as white as untouched snow, each pulsing with the very same radiance that had only moments ago blinded the eyes of the three gods.
"Thirteen wings," the right hand said, his voice emerging not from his throat but from deep within his chest, heavy and resonant, like an echo reverberating through an underground chamber too vast for a single voice to fill.
"That... that symbolizes that he still belongs among the Thirteen Highest Angels. That his status has never been revoked. That he still... possesses authority."
"Silence!" the left hand shouted.
For the first time, his gravestone-flat voice rose in pitch, carrying something that resembled fear, a fear he had never experienced since the day he had been created to serve his lonely master.
"Do not speak of that authority. Do not grant him more power than he already possesses."
And Aldraya, now floating high above the ground, his thirteen wings spread in magnificent splendor, his silver-white hair whipping wildly in a wind that came from nowhere, his unblinking eyes fixed upon the three gods who still stood below with knees trembling ever so slightly, slowly opened his mouth.
At first, no sound emerged.
Only vibrations.
Vibrations that rippled through the air, through the earth, through the cracked Pillars of Atonement, through the marble columns that had begun to groan beneath invisible pressure.
Those vibrations spoke in a language taught in no school, for it was the language of resurrection, a language known only to those who had once died and chosen to return to life.
Then, from those vibrations, from the pregnant silence, from the air that had suddenly become too dense to breathe, six fragments of words emerged.
Not as whispers.
Not as cries.
But as a song.
As an instrument.
As something no theory of music could ever explain, because it had been born not from melody or rhythm, but from memory, from devotion, from a name that had never changed even as the universe shed its skin a thousand times over.
"Silvia... Cantika... Putri..." Aldraya sang, and every syllable that left his lips caused the wings upon his back to tremble, pulse, and bloom like flowers blossoming in spring after remaining closed in bud for a thousand years.
"Matriarch... Mother of Angels... I have risen..."
And when that final name left his lips, the name he had never spoken since departing Quil-Hasa, the name he had buried deep within his heart alongside every memory of devotion that had transformed into hatred, something happened beneath the earth.
To be continued…