Chapter 496
Lilith HaRish'a never said goodbye.
Not because she was rude, not because she did not care, but because farewells were rituals for living beings who believed they would return—and Lilith had never believed in any certainty, including the certainty that she would return to the space that had been her home for all these years.
She simply left.
One second, she was still floating amidst the slowly rotating shards of glass, and the next second, she was no longer there.
Not because she vanished, but because the space itself left together with her, like the skin of a snake that had dried in the same place for years, only to suddenly be carried away by the wind toward a place it had never expected.
The scratched glasses with their own forms of damage, the partial fragments that felt like space itself, the cracks that never healed—all of them disappeared in an instant, as though they had never existed, as though that space had merely been an illusion created by Lilith's boredom over thousands of years.
And in its place, another world appeared.
A world that was no longer whole.
A world that had already rotted away.
Across its entire surface stretched a sight no science could ever explain—farmlands mutated in the strangest ways imaginable, plants growing upside down with roots above and leaves below, fruits pulsating like hearts, flowers blooming beneath an eternal night, and among them all, rivers flowing upward toward a sky without stars.
Beneath a sky still bearing traces of fractures—where the beacon of light from the Nothingness continued to rise upward like a tree whose roots never touched the ground, like a river flowing in the wrong direction, like a prayer that never arrived yet never ceased to be spoken.
Theo stood with his hands clenched tightly at his sides, his eyes unblinking, not daring to blink, because he knew that what was unfolding before him was something he might never witness a second time in his life.
Beside him, Aldraya occasionally shifted, not restless, not anxious, but curious in a strange way—a curiosity that did not suit the situation, a curiosity resembling a child asking why the sky was blue while a volcano erupted in the distance.
"Theo," Aldraya whispered, her voice sounding flat, far too flat, yet beneath that flatness something pulsed—something resembling excitement, even though excitement was an emotion she had never displayed in a way anyone could read, "do I look charming?"
Theo turned toward her, his eyes narrowing, unable to understand why such a question would appear at a time like this—when the beacon of light from the Nothingness was still calling out, when the sky above them had begun trembling like the skin of a drum struck by invisible hands, when something massive was approaching from a place he could not see but could feel at the tips of his cold fingers.
"Aldraya, this is not the time—"
"But I want to know," Aldraya interrupted, and for the first time, her monotonous expression appeared radiant—radiant in a strange way, radiant in a way that suddenly made Theo realize that all the questions she had asked over the past several minutes, all those questions about attraction and allure and whether she appeared captivating, were not questions about battle, or power, or the collapsing world around them, but questions about something more primitive, something more human, something that suddenly made Theo feel awkward amidst the ongoing apocalypse.
"You..." Theo sighed, unsure whether to be angry or laugh. "You're asking all of that—at a time like this—because you want to understand sexuality?"
Aldraya nodded flatly, yet her eyes—those eyes that were usually empty—now sparkled in a way she could not hide.
"I have never experienced it before. I never wanted to experience it before. But now... now I want to know. Is that wrong?"
Theo did not answer.
Because something in the sky changed.
Dozens of minutes had passed—or perhaps only a few seconds, because time felt different when standing beside someone asking about love amidst a summoning meant for beings born from emptiness—and the beacon of light from the Nothingness still continued to rise, neither weakening nor growing stronger, but remaining steady like something that was waiting.
Then, without sound, without tremors, without any warning whatsoever, the beacon began to branch out.
Not like the branches of a tree extending sideways, but like a river suddenly discovering nine tributaries that had never existed before, nine currents emerging from the same source yet flowing in different directions, nine beacons appearing around the central beacon—surrounding it like an unwanted crown, like a throne never desired, like something born not from will, but from a calling.
"Nine," Theo whispered, and his voice trembled.
Not because of fear, but because he knew the meaning behind that number, he knew who was coming, he knew that the world he knew might never remain the same after tonight.
Beside him, Aldraya suddenly fell silent, every trace of radiance disappearing from her face instantly, replaced by something older than herself—something resembling instinct, an instinct telling her that what appeared in the sky was not merely light, but presence, the presence of nine entities that had long hidden within fractures of reality never recorded on any map.
"They're coming," Aldraya said, her voice no longer flat, no longer monotonous, but heavy—heavy in a way that made Theo want to seek shelter, even though he knew no shelter strong enough existed to protect him from what was about to happen.
"The Disturbers. Lilith HaRish'a and her eight sisters. They heard Ilux's call."
And together with the appearance of the nine beacons in the sky—together with the moment those lights began pulsating in the same rhythm, like a heartbeat not inside a chest but outside a body, like nine pulses merging into one sound far too vast for human ears to hear—something else began to open around Theo and Aldraya.
Not from the sky, not from above, but from every direction, from the air that suddenly became far too dry, from the ground that suddenly became far too cold, from the space between them that suddenly felt far too dense.
Nine portals.
Imperfect—still trembling at their edges, still tearing reality apart in a crude manner, still learning how to become doors—but real.
Real in a way that could not be denied, real in a way that caused the hairs on the back of Theo's neck to rise even though he did not know why.
The portals were scattered randomly around them—some in front, some behind, some to the left, some to the right, some above despite there being no ceiling there—but all of them shared one thing, one similarity that Theo understood instantly even though no one explained it.
Every portal faced the same direction.
All the portals opened simultaneously, pointing toward a single location—the place where the Nothingness stood, where the pillar of light rose unwaveringly, where the figure known as the protagonist of the game Flo Viva Mythology, Ilux Rediona, resided.
To be continued…