Chapter 166
Nirma, who had been standing silently the entire time, with her left eye no longer confused and no longer empty, finally opened her mouth.
Now her eyes burned, not with fire, not with light, but with something that could perhaps be called understanding, or perhaps pain too immense to be mourned. Yet no sound came out, because what she had just heard required no response, no commentary, nothing except profound silence—a silence like a well so ancient that no stone heavy enough existed to create ripples upon its surface.
The old man continued, his voice no longer trembling—he now spoke like someone reading a report, flat and emotionless, because perhaps after so long, the only way to tell of cruelty without going mad was to strip every feeling from the words and allow the facts to stand naked before the listener, without clothing, without apology, without justification.
"And because the Ningsih bloodline became the reason behind all of this—because the first contact with Faith came from one of us—we were given a crown. Not a crown made of gold or precious stones, but a crown forged from power itself. We ruled over all life, including the Abnormal families that differed from us. Those who did not carry Ningsih blood, even if they too were Abnormal, still had to submit."
And when the apocalypse first arrived, it did not come with trumpets or burning wings—but with a silence so perfect that every being in every corner of the universe felt their ears go hollow before their eyes could even witness anything.
The explosion was not red, not white, not any color at all; it was nothingness spreading like water rising through a cracked floor, swallowing stars, planets, and entire civilizations one by one—civilizations that had once dared to breathe beneath the rule of the Ningsih family.
Nirma felt the bandage over her eye pulse when the old man clutched his own chest, his voice escaping like a whisper from a grave:
"They all died. Everyone we had discriminated against, everyone we had mutilated, everyone we had considered lower than dust—gone in an instant. No screams. No prayers. Only perfect emptiness."
Yet within that empty universe, amidst the fragments of light that never even had the chance to become ash, the Ningsih family and the Abnormals who had not yet died in their destined time continued to drift—their bodies untouched, their clothes unripped, their breathing undisturbed—like statues suspended in an exhibition hall with neither floor nor sky. And Arya, hearing this while gripping his wooden staff with both hands, unconsciously whispered:
"You… you witnessed everything vanish, and you all remained intact?"
The old man nodded slowly, his once-bright eyes now dim like embers left untouched by wind for far too long, and when he continued, his voice sounded like someone reading an inscription upon an unclaimed gravestone.
"We cannot die from age. We cannot wither from time. And within that empty universe—where nothing moved, nothing made a sound, nothing lived except us—we stood for thousands of years with our eyes closed, enduring an eternity that felt like a curse we never asked for."
From the first apocalypse to the ten-millionth apocalypse, the Ningsih family chose to continue ruling, continue dominating, continue becoming the hand that determined who lived and who died in every civilization born from the womb of emptiness—and they did so not out of necessity, not out of fear, but out of habit, because power had become the only language they understood after centuries in which no one dared to speak to them in the same tone.
Ashita, whose hand still supported the old man's arm, felt her chest tighten as she realized that the Ningsih blood flowing through her body was the same blood that had once ordered the executions of millions of beings simply because they were born into the wrong world.
"So… you became bored?" she asked softly, and the old man smiled bitterly, a smile that deepened the lines at the corners of his temples like the map of a land he never wished to visit again.
"Bored is too gentle a word, child. We became sick of ourselves. But we continued anyway, because none of us were brave enough to say: 'enough.'"
Yet during the ten-millionth apocalypse—when the universe collapsed and was reborn as it always had been, and the Ningsih family once again floated within the emptiness with eyes no longer capable of perceiving any difference—a pair of lovers from the youngest bloodline made a decision that every descendant of the Ningsih family would later come to regret.
They gave birth to a daughter in the silence, without a midwife, without prayers, without any hope that the child would become anything more than a continuation of endless boredom.
"Sinta Melina Ningsih," the old man said, and when the name left his wrinkled lips, the wind blowing through the date palm leaves transformed into a coldness sharp enough to pierce bone, as though nature itself recognized the name that had once shaken the foundation of everything.
The old man drew a long breath—not the breath of someone continuing a story, but the breath of someone reopening a wound that had never truly dried, and when he spoke again, his voice sounded like two stones grinding together at the bottom of the deepest well.
"When the novel Abnormality merged with the real world, Nirma, it was not only cities and skies that fused together. Not only rules and logic that became tangled like paint stirred by impatient hands. But Faith—Faith itself—spilled from the pages of paper into the veins of every creature inhabiting this merged world."
He looked at Nirma with eyes that suddenly appeared old, far too old for the age they should have carried, as though he were once again witnessing the day the universe trembled and everything he knew changed without permission.
"The members of the Society Abnormal Secret who vanished alongside Sinta—they did not disappear because they were forcibly erased, nor because they were slaughtered by the same hands that massacred her family. They vanished because the source of their Faith, whether toward the Society itself or toward Sinta Melina Ningsih as the main protagonist in Theo Vkytor's novel, suddenly evaporated like dew in the desert beneath the rising sun."
Arya, hearing that, tightened his grip on his wooden staff, and unconsciously asked in a hoarse voice:
"You mean… they stopped believing? Or did Faith itself disappear?"
And the old man merely shook his head slowly, a bitter smile spreading across his dry lips.
"Both, child. Or perhaps neither. What is certain is that when the center of that Faith—Sinta—vanished, everything revolving around her lost its axis as well. Like a windmill that no longer knows the direction of the wind."
And within that newly born merged world—a world where the walls between fiction and reality had collapsed like cracks left unattended for far too long—the Great Abnormals who had existed since before the first apocalypse now lived without passion, without direction, like massive ships whose engines still roared while their rudders had long since snapped apart, with no one knowing when or why.
To be continued…