Chapter 509
"You are still alive," Aldraya said, and his voice returned to its natural tone—flat, far too flat, like the surface of a lake concealing unseen currents beneath. Yet beneath that calmness, there was something warm, something akin to certainty, something that made Lilith suddenly feel tears she had never possessed begin to form at the corner of her eye—not her usual eye, but the other one, the eye that had remained closed all this time, the eye that was now open and seeing that the world still held wonders no Authority could ever explain.
"Because every time the Nothingness sought to claim your lives, an extension of someone—whose name you do not need to know—wrapped you in something that death could not penetrate, that nothingness could not reach, that reality itself could not forget. It erased your identities from the sight of the Nothingness... long enough to save you, precise enough to make any observer believe that you had died, when in truth... you were merely hidden."
Aldraya did not have the chance to answer Lilith's first question—because it escaped her lips before her breathing had returned to normal, before the blood at the corner of her mouth had dried, before the confusion on the faces of the nine women had transformed into something more measurable with words.
"You," Lilith said, her one unchanged eye now fixed upon Aldraya with an intensity she had not even shown toward the Nothingness mere minutes ago. It was not anger but recognition, the acknowledgment that she had seen this face somewhere before, among the cracks of realities that had never been recorded on any map, during those moments when boredom became the only guest that never left.
"You are Aldraya. An Angel—the former Archangel who once whispered doubts to Baal-Zevul in the place he hated most. Earth."
Aldraya did not answer immediately.
He simply stood where he was, his posture unchanged, his expression unreadable, and for a few moments, the silence between them felt like a cliff too wide to leap across yet too narrow to avoid.
"Yes," Aldraya finally replied. His voice remained flat, but beneath that flatness was something he rarely showed—something resembling vulnerability, though vulnerability was a luxury he had never allowed himself because he was never certain he deserved to feel vulnerable.
"I knew Baal-Zevul. And Baal-Zevul knew me. But that was then. Now..."
He glanced behind him, toward Theo, who was still standing in the distance, breathing heavily, his body trembling from overusing his TKNA within far too short a period of time. His eyes remained fixed on them, yet he dared not approach because he did not know what to say.
"Now I am here. Together with him."
Lilith followed Aldraya's gaze, and for the first time since opening both of her eyes, she truly saw the man standing behind him—not merely with her eyes, but with her consciousness, with the emptiness she had carried as a residue of the Nothingness, with the Sa still pulsing at her fingertips despite her exhaustion rendering her unable to use it again.
The man—Theo, though Lilith did not yet know his name—stood in a strange posture. He did not resemble a samurai preparing to strike, nor a hermit deep in meditation, but rather someone who had only just awakened from a long sleep and had yet to fully realize that the world around him had changed.
His hair was disheveled, his clothes wrinkled, and from his appearance—from the way he stood with slightly slumped shoulders, from the way he looked toward them with weary eyes—he appeared like a man who had not bathed in a thousand years, an impression that made Lilith furrow her brow despite being someone who almost never did so.
"That man?" Lilith asked, her voice carrying a mixture of curiosity and disgust she could not conceal.
"What is your relationship with a man who—pardon me—looks like a walking corpse that forgot it was already dead?"
Aldraya did not smile.
Aldraya never smiled.
Yet for a brief moment, something in his eyes changed—not warmth, because Aldraya did not possess warmth in any way recognizable to ordinary living beings, but something akin to loyalty, a loyalty that required no explanation because it had already been proven through action.
"He saved all of you," Aldraya replied. His voice remained flat, yet his words fell like stones into a once-still pond, creating ripples that no one could stop.
"And I am with him because I chose to be with him. Not out of obligation. Not out of debt."
Before Aldraya could continue, before Lilith could ask her next question about the ragged man standing in the distance with weary eyes, another voice interrupted.
Not Lilith's, but Asherah's.
She had remained silent until now, her eyes no longer fixed on Aldraya or Theo, but elsewhere—toward the place where the Nothingness had departed, toward the gaping fractures in reality, toward the void that had never learned the meaning of gratitude.
"Wait," Asherah said. Her voice was no longer fragile as before. It had hardened, hardened like iron forged within an eternal flame, hardened because she had just realized something she had not considered amid the confusion, relief, and tears she had never shed.
"You said that you—both you and the man behind you—saved us. You said that every time the Nothingness's attack sought to take our lives, an extension of someone wrapped us in something death could not penetrate."
Asherah stepped forward—one step, then another—enough for her emerald-orange hair to brush against air that suddenly felt colder, enough for her eyes, once filled with confusion, to ignite into flames that fear could never extinguish.
"But why?" she asked.
Behind her, Mammon moved. Ashmedai moved. Apollyon moved.
They did not move in unison, but like waves triggered by the same earthquake, waves that would not cease until the question was answered.
"Why did you save us?" Mammon continued, her voice carrying a rare tone—one that resembled suspicion, suspicion born from thousands of years of being hunted, betrayed, and abandoned by their own mother.
"We do not know you. We have no connection to you. We possess nothing that you could take as compensation—no wealth, no power, no Sa that you might desire."
"So what obligation did you have to save us?" Ashmedai added. Her voice was soft yet sharp, like a blade deliberately scraping across glass.
"What do you gain from all this? What do you expect from us after this?"
And Apollyon—Apollyon, the quietest among those who still lived, Apollyon who never spoke unless absolutely necessary—finished the thought with a voice that seemed to emerge not from her throat but from her chest, still aching from the explosion that had nearly taken her life.
"We do not believe in kindness without repayment," she whispered.
The words fell among them like a dagger plunged into a wooden table, trembling with the strength that still remained beneath her exhaustion.
"So explain. Before we decide whether to be grateful... or become even more afraid."
To be continued…