Chapter 494
"Rebels stray from the path that has been set because they believe that path is wrong," he answered softly.
"We did not stray because we believed the path was wrong. We strayed because we believed in nothing—not even in our own disbelief. Rebels resist. We simply... hesitate. They scream. We remain silent. They destroy. We create a new path, then sit upon it and refuse to let anyone pass—not because we are cruel, but because we see no reason why they should pass at all."
Slowly, like mist pulling itself back into the cracks of reality after drifting aimlessly for so long, Lilith HaRish'a opened her eyes.
Not different eyes—because that same single eye, unchanged and eternal, remained open in exactly the same way it had closed moments ago—or perhaps centuries ago.
She stayed silent.
No breathing.
No blinking.
No movement at all, none of the things living beings usually do to reassure themselves that they still exist.
Only her eye moved, slowly tracing the shattered glass around her, tracing cracks that had never healed, tracing reflections that had never once been honest. Then, from one of those fractures—from the deepest gap among the glass scarred by its own ruin—a gleam slipped through.
Not light.
Nor darkness.
But something between the two, something nameless, something that made the space around it tremble like leaves shaken by the wind before a storm.
Lilith caught that gleam with her lone eye, and for a moment, she merely stared—as though it were speaking in a language only she could understand.
"Those four races," she finally murmured, her voice escaping like a breath that had been trapped for far too long within lungs she never truly possessed, "compared to our presence—to the presence of the remaining nine Disturbers—they are no different from comparing a subatomic particle to every universe-box within the infinite tracks of the Multiverse Path."
A faint smile appeared upon her lips, a smile that never reached her eye. "Small. Meaningless. Barely worthy of being called a surprise."
"But that is not what makes them shiver even more," she continued, and for the first time, her tone changed—not flat anymore, not bored anymore, but carrying something heavier, deeper, older than anything she had felt throughout the thousands of years spent drifting within this never-whole space. She raised her hand, her pale fingers touching the nearest glass surface, and from her fingertips, small ripples spread in every direction—like stones cast into a bottomless lake.
"What truly terrifies them is this," she whispered, her single eye staring into its own reflection upon the glass—a reflection that never truly became her, because the glass was too fractured to reflect anything honestly.
"That the cosmic records—which documented the birth of the universe from the Realm of Chaos before it was ultimately shaped by God Quil-Hasa into the universe that exists now—wrote us down with a name. A title. A curse we never asked for."
She paused for a moment, and within that silence, the voices deep within her consciousness—the ever-laughing voice of Bes, the overly serious voice of Enlil, the quietly flower-loving voice of Lamashtu—fell silent as well, as though they too were listening.
"Kol Choshech," Lilith spoke, and the moment those words left her mouth, the glass around her trembled.
Not because her voice was loud, but because the words themselves were heavy—far too heavy for this fragile space.
"In Hebrew: קול חושך. A silent strike that devours. Forcibly dragging every earned virtue down beneath the backs of dead children and their mothers."
She exhaled, and that breath felt as though she were releasing something she had carried since the dawn of her existence.
"The religions in this universe are vastly different from the religions of the real world that you know, of course. They resemble no Abrahamic faith whatsoever. Yet that title still feels like a knife stabbed into our backs without us ever realizing it."
And within those cosmic records that never blinked—between lines written not with ink, but with fractures spreading across time and dimensions—there were five sentences that made even the Gods hunting them fall silent for a brief moment before continuing their pursuit.
Not because the sentences were long.
Not because the sentences were complicated.
But because the sentences were naked.
Naked in their hatred, naked in their fear, naked in the way they revealed something no one wished to acknowledge.
That the Disturbers were not merely threats, but the antithesis of everything that upheld reality itself.
"If Rebels reject the path," Lilith read in a voice so flat, so painfully flat, like someone reciting a grocery list from a market she had known since birth, "then the Disturbers create paths solely so they can destroy them again and again—while laughing loudly atop the ruins of the narrative itself."
She stopped, and for a while, she simply stared at the glass before her—the glass whose reflection had begun to change, no longer reflecting her face, but something else entirely.
Laughter.
Laughter she had never uttered, yet written there within the cosmic records as a part of herself she least wished to acknowledge.
"The second sentence," Lilith continued, her lone eye shifting toward another fracture, toward another shard reflecting something different.
Not laughter, but a void so dense she could almost feel it brushing against her pale fingertips.
"If Sinners are passive emptiness, then the Disturbers wield their emptiness to consume every Paragraph, devouring even the moral blueprint of existence itself."
She exhaled, and that breath felt like dust being blown from scriptures left unopened for far too long.
"The moral blueprint of existence," she repeated, her voice carrying a tone impossible to define—whether it was laughter, bitterness, or something entirely new. "They truly wrote that. As though morality were some blueprint that could be sketched onto paper, folded into a paper airplane, and thrown straight into the face of God Quil-Hasa Himself."
Fuuuh!
"The third sentence," Lilith said, her voice beginning to rise, to harden, to carry something she had long buried beneath layers of endless boredom—something resembling anger, yet colder, calmer, far more dangerous.
"If Deceivers choose whom to deceive, then the Disturbers deceive the system of selection itself—and then declare that every form of selection is a lie."
She clenched her hand, and within her open palm, the shadow formed again—but this time it was not mist, nor shattered glass, but another hand, one she did not recognize, perhaps belonging to the cosmic records themselves as they rewrote her before her very eyes.
"And the fourth sentence," Lilith spoke, her voice suddenly soft, too soft, like someone reading her own gravestone—or perhaps the gravestone of something far greater than herself.
"If Hypocrites transcend yin and yang, then the Disturbers tear apart the paper upon which yin and yang were drawn, mock its principles, then turn the symbol into a waist accessory at the grand festival of universal humiliation."
She fell silent. For several moments, no sound existed except the soft rustling of her hair and the heartbeat she never truly possessed.
Then, she laughed.
Not a small laugh like before, not a warm laugh like when she heard Bes' voice deep within her consciousness.
But a wide laugh, a bitter laugh, a laugh carrying every ounce of despair she had buried beneath that suffocating layer of boredom.
To be continued…