Chapter 490
She floated higher, her deep black hair shimmering with traces of purple moved faster, as though the waves of anger within her had begun stirring something that had long remained still.
"The Gods are still watching. Still hunting us. Even if the intensity is no longer what it used to be—perhaps because they believe most of us are already dead—they never truly stopped."
She pointed toward the mirrors surrounding her, toward the cracks that never healed.
"Every Multiversal Pathway. Every box-shaped universe whose numbers are limitless. They have eyes everywhere. Not because they are great. But because they are afraid. Afraid that one day, the Nothingness will rise again. Afraid that we—the remaining Disruptors—will become the anchor that brings forth chaos."
She smiled, and this time the smile was not faint.
It was wide.
It was bitter.
It was the smile of someone who had witnessed too much death to still be able to cry.
"And they are not wrong. Because we will indeed become that anchor. But not in the way they imagine."
Fuuuuh!
"We never asked for this," she said, her voice suddenly lowering into a whisper that was almost inaudible, like the wind brushing between nameless gravestones.
"We never asked to be born from the nature of the Nothingness. Never asked to become scattered residue. Never asked to be hunted like beasts with no place in this world."
She closed her single eye, and within the darkness behind her eyelid, she saw the faces of her sisters who were gone.
Bes, who was always laughing.
Enlil, who was far too serious for his own good. Lamashtu, who secretly loved flowers despite living in a place where nothing ever grew.
Ahura Mazda, who spoke like a philosopher yet could never answer the question of why they all existed.
Mictlantecuhtli, the quietest, the most mysterious, the hardest to understand—and whose death was felt the most deeply, because he never had the chance to say anything before vanishing.
"We waited," she whispered, and when she opened her eye again, the boredom within it was gone.
What remained was only a cold fire.
"We waited for instructions from The Nothingness. For years. Decades. Perhaps longer. We do not know, because time feels different in every Multiversal Pathway."
She raised her hand, and within her open palm, another shadow formed—darker this time, denser, heavier.
"But those instructions never came. The Nothingness sleeps within Ilux's body, drowned beneath the seals created by the Gods. And we… we simply waited. Like dogs abandoned to die by their master in the middle of a forest, without leashes, without direction, without knowing where to go."
Ssssh!
"For now, we will continue waiting," she continued, and her voice began to rise, to harden, to carry something she had buried far too deeply for far too long.
"But if that summoning transmission truly happened, do not expect us—me and my eight remaining sisters—to come with open arms. Do not imagine us kneeling like servants longing for their master."
She clenched her fist, and the shadow within her palm shattered, scattering like the mirrors surrounding her, like cracks spreading endlessly in every direction.
"We will demand accountability. For the absence of instructions. For the deaths of our five sisters who were never protected. For all the wasted time spent hiding, pretending not to exist, holding our breath within every Multiversal Pathway crossed by the shadows of the Gods."
She floated there silently, and for a few moments, no sound remained except the soft rustling of her slowly moving hair.
Then, in a cold tone—cold like the emptiness that devours all things—she spoke.
"If the Nothingness refuses. If it says this is none of its concern. If it claims that we are nothing more than insignificant residue, remnants with no right to demand anything…"
She stopped, and her single eye ignited—not with light, but with a darkness denser than anything within this space.
"Then we will do what we never wished to do. We will kill the Nothingness. And because we are parts of it, that means we will also kill ourselves."
Back to the present—or whatever could be called "present" within this space that was never truly whole—Lilith HaRish'a still floated there.
Her hand, once clenched, slowly opened again, and between her pale fingers drifted several strands of harvested crops, the yield she had planted weeks ago within a field that possessed no soil.
She observed those strands with an empty gaze, not because she lacked interest, but because she had seen them far too many times already.
Every strand was exactly the same as yesterday's, last week's, last year's.
Every strand flourished with a life she never asked for, then died in the same way it was born—without reason.
"I want to ask something," she whispered suddenly, her voice echoing between the slowly rotating shattered mirrors, as though the space itself were listening.
"Not to these mirrors. Not to this space. But to something that has never been present."
She looked at the plant strands in her hand, then released them, letting them drift slowly downward without ever truly reaching a bottom.
"Why did you call us back then? When we had only just turned four years old. When we were still far too young to understand what it meant to be residue of the Nothingness?"
She closed her single eye again, and behind her eyelid, the memory resurfaced—so vivid, so real, as though it had happened only yesterday.
The early years of their existence as the fourteen remaining residues after the first hunt had subsided.
They were scattered across various Multiversal Pathways, each learning how to survive in their own way, each trying to understand what it meant to be something that had never asked to exist.
And then, on a nameless day, at a moment that could not be measured by the time of any universe, the signal arrived.
"We all felt it," she continued, her voice trembling at the edge of memories still too raw to be called nostalgia.
"Not merely a vibration. Not merely a premonition. But a call so clear, so powerful, so… undeniable. As though the Nothingness itself whispered directly into the depths of our consciousness, saying, 'Come here. I have awakened. I need all of you.'"
She let out a breath, and it felt as though she were exhaling something she had kept buried within her chest for far too long.
"We did not hesitate. Asherah left her dimension without a sky. Mammon abandoned the kingdom built from debt. Ashmedai emerged from the nightmare that had long served as his hiding place. Baal-Zevul left Earth—and you know how much he hated Earth, yet he still went. We all went."
"But the signal vanished," she said, and this time her voice sounded sharp, like a blade scraping across glass.
"Not because we were too slow. Not because we misread the direction. But the signal… it went dark. Like a flame smothered by something greater. Like a thread severed by invisible scissors."
To be continued…