Chapter 23
In an instant, a gust of wind shook the chamber. This was no ordinary wind, not the kind that rustles leaves or carries the scent of life. It was an assault disguised as mere movement, strong enough to force even divine eyes, untouched by mortal dust, to blink.
And in that fleeting moment, lasting only as long as doubt itself, the world twisted.
The figure that once stood motionless had now fractured.
One became two.
Two became four.
Then it shattered endlessly, multiplying into a hundred.
They were all replicas, prototypes spawned from a single original, identical in appearance yet vibrating with entirely different souls.
Swarming the center where Ophistu stood, they formed a circle, so tight it left no gap for light to slip through. Dozens of them climbed atop one another, standing on shoulders and heads, as if hierarchy had dissolved into pure obsession, leaving no room for freedom.
From within that suffocating formation, a voice spoke.
Devoid of emotion, devoid of inflection, and that very emptiness made it pierce deeper.
An accusing, condemning, reflecting voice.
It did not belong to any single replica, yet it carried wounds too profound, even for a mere copy.
The replica declared its existence a masquerade of emptiness. It rejected all praise—praise Ophistu had once received, instead labeling the true Ophistu as nothing more than a vessel, a pacifier for collective fear.
Then another voice followed, this time from behind Ophistu. On the creature's cheek, a symbol of three windmills had begun multiplying into eyes.
Each eye burst like pus, forming a grotesque cycle of micro-creation and destruction. Another replica hurled accusations without moving its jaw, its words slithering out like echoes from a burned altar.
They called Ophistu a disposable tool, will-less, dignity-less.
The original Ophistu, who had known silence longer than anyone in that room, finally acted.
He raised his staff.
Copper, sacred, radiating a divine aura potent enough to intimidate both mortal and immortal realms.
In that decisive motion lay absolute rejection.
None of them were him. None bore the purity he recognized.
He began to utter a name, a prayer that would burn them all in holy light, leaving no escape, especially not for such falsehoods.
But before the incantation could fully form, the unexpected occurred.
A child, a girl no older than thirteen, appeared abruptly at Ophistu's left side.
No warning.
No ripple of preceding power.
She simply was, clutching a pale-yellow head and holding a narrow curtain.
On that curtain, a single word was written.
BURN.
Without a sound, save for one shrill scream, she hurled the curtain into the swarm of replicas.
The explosion that followed was no ordinary blast. It shook the very foundations of abstract order, the laws that governed existence and nonexistence themselves.
It did not matter whether the earlier strike had truly shattered the infinite fabric of space and time. One thing was certain, the first explosion had been cataclysmic, followed by another, and then another. The castle trembled violently, not from physical force, but because the very universe within it was being toyed with.
The formation shattered.
The replicas vanished.
The child disappeared from where she had stood.
Ophistu remained. His body was still, though his breath had briefly faltered. He exhaled softly, not in weakness, but as an act of control, reasserting the rhythm of a world brutally violated.
When the chaos finally settled, not a single replica remained.
The child, too, was gone.
Only one object lingered, suspended in the air: the curtain she had thrown earlier, now draped across the castle's interior like a shroud over unhealed wounds, or perhaps wounds never meant to heal.
"Playing games here? Forgetting who holds the script of this world—today, tomorrow, and all days before?"
Praise be to the One, Master of Unending Dark and Light. Shield this servant from creatures—fleeting, living things that should never have trespassed into existence.
By the will of the ordained mediator, begone, shadows festering in the folds of twilight.
Perish, O devils even history refuses to name.
Return to the void where you were cast by irrevocable decree."
Hufffffh!
'This is no ordinary sky. Nor is it the castle's grandeur—only jagged strokes, wounds masquerading as shelter.'
The castle's ceiling, once immovable in its ancient silence, began to distort, torn by vortices of unnatural hues. Between the tattered curtains clinging to primordial pillars, dark clouds coalesced—not black, not red, but a dismal pink, like hatred crystallized at the edge of a rainbow.
The mist did not simply appear. It crept, swallowing the ceiling's carvings of angels and sinners in colors no holy scripture had ever named.
Ophistu stood frozen, his majesty dwarfed by absurdity. His eyes darted, grasping at uncertainty in a space once sacred, now foreign. He raised a hand, to praise or to banish, even he couldn't say, but the air refused sanctification.
In that urgent silence, he understood.
This was no celestial phenomenon.
It was a message.
As the castle's sky groaned in visual silence, Ophistu's awareness spiraled beyond his control. An unheard knock echoed in the depths of his mind, compelling him to turn, not by call, but by threat, meticulously woven into the guise of miracle.
It had appeared.
Floating above the cold floor without touch, seated in meditation, silent and still, time held no claim over it. Its head remained perpetually bowed, acknowledging no one, yet denying nothing.
Malā Qudshī.
The one who should have been erased—not just destroyed, but unwritten by the highest authority of reality itself. Purged from the minds of witnesses, unmade by cosmic memory. Its existence wasn't merely buried; it was denied by all creation.
Yet here it lingered.
No, hovered.
Untouched by time or space, an irony given form.
An impossibility made manifest.
To be continued…