Chapter 136
Every fold that opened felt like lifting veil after veil that had long concealed the truth, like peeling away layer after layer that had hidden what they should have known from the very beginning.
Amid his slow and careful movements, his thoughts drifted for a moment to Miara, to his child who might now be somewhere far away, living her own life without caring about the existence of a father who continued to struggle on a battlefield that never ended.
The paper was now fully unfolded before him, stretching out in a size that was not particularly large, yet felt unbearably heavy with the information it might contain.
Shaqar lowered his head, staring at line after line of writing that he began to read with full concentration, aware that every word he absorbed now would determine the direction of everything that would follow.
His eyes, occasionally blurred by age, moved slowly from left to right, from top to bottom, absorbing every letter, every punctuation mark, every pause deliberately crafted by the writer of this letter to emphasize certain parts.
And the longer he read, the deeper he sank into the ocean of information laid out upon that paper, the more he could feel the change taking place within himself.
"Do not call this a resurrection. This is merely an experiment. A research conducted by the Creator—The Most Accursed—upon Himself."
Verse by verse began to flow from Shaqar's mouth, yet what emerged from those wrinkled lips did not match the physical act he was performing at all.
He was reading, yes—his eyes traced each line upon the paper, his head occasionally dipped to ensure not a single word was missed—but the voice that came from his throat was entirely different from ordinary reading.
It rumbled low like earth cracking before a volcano erupted, like the roar of a war engine being primed before charging into battle, like the final command of a general ordering his troops to advance through five thousand enemy tanks without regard for how many would fall along the way.
There was authority in it, there was power that could not be denied, there was a vibration that spread from his vocal cords across the entire room and pierced into the ears of everyone present.
The Satanist Elites gathered under the Banner of Zhulumat felt the hairs on their bodies stand uncontrollably, the other captains of Team Xirkushkartum sat with their backs straightening automatically, and even Zhulumat himself—the supreme leader who never showed excessive reaction to anything—was seen blinking one beat slower than usual.
In the midst of his blind obedience to orders, within the layers of devotion that had consumed decades of his life and demanded the greatest sacrifices he had ever paid, Shaqar had unknowingly found a small crack to rebel.
Not an open rebellion that would lead to execution or lifelong exile, not a frontal resistance that would destroy everything he had built, but a subtler, deeper rebellion—one that existed in a realm untouched by rules or hierarchy.
He read the letter, but he read it with the tone of a commander ordering his troops forward; he voiced words written by another, yet breathed into them a life entirely different from what their author had intended.
For the first time in a span he could no longer measure, he took control of something that was not his, claimed authority that had never been granted to him, carved out a space where he could be himself without bowing to anyone—even if only for a few minutes, even if only through a tone of voice that not everyone in the room might notice.
Yet when he reached the most crucial part of the letter, when his eyes caught the lines that changed everything, his tone began to shift into something else without his will.
Not weakening, not losing its strength, but becoming deeper, heavier, more laden with meaning that even he himself did not fully understand.
He read about how the observations of the members of Team Xirkushkartum—those who had previously been ordered to rest—observations carried out by the most trained, most experienced spies, those least likely to be deceived by enemy trickery, had uncovered something that had long escaped them all.
The ritual taking place in the Blessed City of Thalyssra, the ritual involving the lowest-ranked Angels and thousands of Holy Beings endlessly circling the castle, the ritual which Onigakure had described as having twelve prohibitions and ten obligations, turned out not to be an ordinary resurrection ritual.
Not merely a ceremony to summon back something dead or buried, not merely a rite to revive an entity that had long been dormant, but something far greater, far more terrifying, far beyond the boundaries of ordinary human comprehension.
Shaqar's voice grew deeper, heavier, as though he were delivering a death sentence upon all of humanity when he reached the core of these discoveries.
This ritual, according to the conclusion written in the letter, was not merely meant to restore life to a being, not merely to return an entity that once existed to the world it once inhabited, but something far more ambitious, far more insane, far more illogical when judged by normal reasoning.
This ritual was intended to strengthen the very nature of what would be resurrected, to elevate its existence to a higher tier, to make it more Almighty, more Absolute than before.
And if that truly came to pass—if this ritual succeeded—then what would be born from the womb of emptiness would not merely surpass the power of the Angels.
It would not only stand above all Holy Beings that had long been the greatest terror to the satanists, but would reach a level that had belonged to only one entity, one name, one existence they never dared to speak except in the faintest whispers.
The air in the room seemed to freeze as the meaning of Shaqar's words seeped into the consciousness of everyone present.
The Satanist Elites under the Banner of Zhulumat sat pale-faced, eyes widened beyond control, hands trembling upon their laps.
The other captains of Team Xirkushkartum—including Onigakure, who moments earlier had confidently explained the ritual theory, and Makakushi, who had fiercely opposed it—now fell into the same disbelief, the same horror, the same realization that what they faced lay far beyond every scenario they had ever calculated.
And at the center of the circle, Zhulumat Katamtum—the supreme leader who had shown no emotion for decades—was seen drawing a breath unlike any before, longer, heavier, burdened with a weight he could share with no one.
To be continued…