Chapter 510
Just as the nine Disturbers—Lilith, Asherah, Mammon, Ashmedai, Baal-Zevul, Chemosh, Apollyon, Rahab, and Apophis—along with the five souls residing within their consciousnesses—Bes, Enlil, Lamashtu, Ahura Mazda, and Mictlantecuhtli—shifted their attention away from Aldraya and toward Theo, who stood in the distance with weary eyes, wrinkled clothes, and the appearance of a man who had not bathed in a thousand years, the silence shattered.
Not with an explosion.
Not with a scream.
But with screams—screams erupting from fourteen different throats, yet merging into a single voice so horrifying, so piercing, so overwhelmed with panic that even Aldraya, who had never reacted to anything in his life, took a single step backward.
Not out of fear, but out of horror.
Horror at the sight of the nine women's bodies trembling before him—moving as though they were fighting something invisible, something crawling beneath their skin, something gnawing at them from within, forcing their expressions into a desperate struggle against a death that came instantly, a death no protection could evade, a death that neither RWIA, nor Sa, nor even the strongest invisible shield could stop.
"Please—!" Lilith screamed, her voice breaking.
Breaking like glass struck by stone.
Breaking like hope that had been betrayed too many times, yet never truly died.
"Someone—HELP US—!"
Behind her, her eight sisters screamed in the same tone, with the same panic, their bodies shaking, their eyes wide, their hands grasping at empty air as though they were drowning and there was not a single piece of driftwood for them to cling to.
And Aldraya—Aldraya, who had never felt anything except boredom, emptiness, and existential exhaustion—for the first time felt something he could not name.
Something similar to fear, yet colder.
Something similar to pity, yet sharper.
Something born from witnessing fourteen beings who should have been dead, who should have vanished, who should never have been here to scream.
Screaming with voices that were still alive, still breathing, still existing, yet fighting desperately to remain that way in a manner no one could understand.
Aldraya stood at the edge of that vortex of screams—fourteen voices fused into a single torn lament.
Lilith's voice called the names of her dead sisters between ragged breaths.
Asherah's voice cried out against a reality that suddenly felt like a blade peeling away layer after layer of her identity.
Mammon's voice echoed with pure panic.
Not panic born from an external threat.
Not from the Sa of the Nothingness that had already departed.
But from something far more terrifying because it crawled from within—from the roots of an existence they had believed was solid for thousands of years, from the foundation of identities now cracking like spring ice that had arrived uninvited.
Amid the chaos, Aldraya turned toward Theo.
And for the first time in his long existence as a former Archangel who had witnessed nearly every form of suffering a living being could endure, his voice carried a tone he could not hide—a tone resembling genuine confusion he did not wish to acknowledge, yet was forced to reveal because there was no other choice.
"Theo," he called.
And as the name left Aldraya's lips, the screams of the fourteen beings rose even higher, growing deeper, sounding increasingly like those struggling against the possibility that everything they believed about themselves might be nothing more than a fragile illusion.
"What is happening to them? These are not physical wounds. This is not a Sa attack. This—this is as though they are at war with themselves."
Theo did not answer immediately.
He simply stood where he was, with his wrinkled clothes, disheveled hair, and weary eyes that had until now looked like those of someone who had only just awakened from a thousand-year sleep.
But now—amid the vortex of screams tearing through the silence between the fractures of reality—his eyes changed.
Not becoming sharp.
Not becoming alert.
But becoming understanding.
Understanding in the way only someone could who had witnessed the same scenario countless times, who had sat within the same darkness and felt the walls of his identity crack apart one by one without being able to stop it.
He shook his head.
One slow, heavy shake.
The gesture resembled someone remembering something more painful than a physical wound, something deeper than mere loss.
Then he turned toward Aldraya with an expression that could not be interpreted as sympathy, but as recognition—the recognition that what was unfolding before them was not a mystery, not a new curse, not an unknown poison.
It was something he had already seen.
Already felt.
Already endured in a silence he had never shared with anyone.
"An identity crisis," Theo answered quietly.
The words left his mouth like someone opening a closet door that had remained shut for far too long, only to discover that inside there were neither monsters nor treasures, but merely dust and memories of a younger, more fragile version of himself, one more easily shattered by questions that never ceased to come.
"They are at war with their own identities, Aldraya—just as you once were. Just like when you were in the loneliest place you ever inhabited, when you began questioning whether you still deserved to be called an angel, after that doubt slowly consumed you down to your very core."
Aldraya fell silent.
Theo's words—just as you once were—did not merely enter his ears.
They seeped somewhere deeper than hearing itself, into a place where memories were not stored as images or sounds but as vibrations, as a cold sensation creeping along his spine, as a lingering shiver that had never truly disappeared, even though his body no longer possessed hairs that could stand on end.
He remembered the cave.
Not the cave in a physical sense.
Not the damp stone walls.
Not the suffocating air.
Not the dim light cast by water seeping from the rocky ceiling.
But the cave as a place where the ruins of his identity lay scattered like the bones of a creature that died because it could not decide whether to keep breathing or surrender.
He remembered being forced to hover above the cold ground, his clothes torn, his body still trembling because Ilux's filthy hands had nearly left their marks everywhere.
And within his mind, nothing remained except the same questions repeating endlessly like a mantra that had long since lost its meaning.
"Am I still an angel after all of this? Am I still breathing because I deserve to breathe, or because no one cares enough to stop me?"
To be continued…