Chapter 184
"Miara," he said, his voice no longer hoarse from weeping, no longer weakened by despair, but clear—clear like the water of a well too deep for its bottom to be seen, yet he knew the water was there, and he knew it would never run dry.
"Let me."
"Be careful, Absyumura," Miara whispered from behind him, her voice sinking into a tone she had never used before.
It was neither a command nor a plea, but something in between, like a prayer delivered to the wrong destination, like a last testament written on a piece of paper that would never be read by the one it was meant for.
The knife in her hand was still smeared with snake blood, while maggots continued to writhe slowly across the cutting board.
Yet her eyes no longer saw the knife.
They no longer saw the severed snake.
They no longer saw the kitchen that was gradually filling with black smoke from the oil beginning to burn.
They saw only her husband standing before the door, her husband whose hand had already wrapped around the cold doorknob, damp with mold and layers of grime that had accumulated over countless years.
"We don't know who's knocking like that. We don't know whether it's a friend or—"
She never finished the sentence.
She didn't need to, because the word enemy was already hanging in the air like a sword waiting to fall.
Absyumura nodded once, neither hurried nor hesitant—a nod that said he had heard her, that he understood, that he would do what needed to be done even though his chest was still heavy with grief he had never managed to release and his forehead was still damp with blood drying against his temple.
Then, moving as slowly as someone climbing the steps toward a guillotine, he lowered the hand that had been raised only moments before.
The palm that had hovered above his head like a white flag slowly descended, touched his chest, rose to his forehead, then returned to his chest again.
Three times.
It was a ritual he had performed thousands of times since childhood, yet never with the sincerity he carried now.
"Yes, Most Honored Great Sanse, Blessed Elder of All Universes," he whispered.
His voice sounded unlike it ever had before—not like a memorized prayer, but like a conversation with someone who truly stood before him, someone who could hear him, someone who could protect him.
"Protect this weak servant standing upon a threshold whose other side remains unknown. Protect my wife, who stands in the kitchen with a knife in her hand and fear in her heart. And if the one knocking beyond this door is a messenger of darkness whom these mud-stained hands cannot overcome, then—"
His hand tightened around the doorknob, and for the first time he felt the icy chill of metal that had not been touched by human hands for ages.
The cold spread from his fingertips to his wrist, from his wrist to his elbow, from his elbow to his shoulder, until his entire right arm no longer felt like his own, but like something borrowed by someone braver than himself.
"—Then take my life before my fear can ever reach Miara's heart."
The door finally swung open.
The gray light of a sky that had never truly known brightness surged inside like an unstoppable flood, washing over Absyumura's face still damp with dried blood and tears, sweeping across the muddy floor that trembled ever so slightly beneath something invisible.
And within that gray light—upon the threshold of a tiny house too insignificant to deserve a place on any map—stood a figure that robbed Absyumura of his ability to breathe.
Not because of fear, but because of disbelief.
Before his swollen eyes stood a man with a sharply triangular head, standing calmly, the serrated edges protruding from the tips of his feet gleaming sharper than a blade sharpened billions of times.
His eyes revealed nothing.
Neither joy.
Nor sorrow.
Nor anger.
Nor peace.
Only emptiness.
An emptiness so profound that it felt like staring into a bottomless well.
An emptiness that had been given a name by his parents from the day he was born.
Apathy Shelton.
"Absyumura...?"
Miara's voice drifted from behind him like the whisper of a ghost uncertain whether it had the right to disturb the living.
Her tone rose at the end, turning into a question she did not truly want answered.
In the kitchen, now nearly swallowed by thick clouds of burned oil smoke, she could not see what her husband was seeing.
Yet she could feel something cold spreading through the air.
A cold that seeped from the creature standing upon the threshold.
A cold so unnatural that, without even touching her skin, it made every hair on her body stand on end while her bones felt as though they were freezing from within.
Absyumura did not answer.
He could not.
His mouth hung half-open while his tongue felt frozen in place.
His eyes could not pull themselves away from the man before him, from the stomach exposed beneath the loose ceremonial uniform.
A stomach so filthy, so swollen with pus and blackened scabs that occasionally oozed pale fluid like tears flowing from a wound that had never healed.
A stomach that, if he closed his eyes for even a moment, his neglected sense of smell would detect—the stench of rotting flesh unlike the dead rats in the kitchen.
Older.
Heavier.
More like death itself had lived inside that body for years without ever being driven away.
Absyumura's head moved.
Not firmly as it had when he nodded to Miara moments earlier, but slowly.
Painfully slowly.
Like a withered flower no longer strong enough to support the weight of its own petals.
It swayed left.
Then right.
Once.
Twice.
A shake born not from conscious intention, but from the overwhelming shock suffocating every part of his body.
A shake as though trying to banish the vision of the creature before him—a being with a triangular head and a stomach overflowing with pus.
A shake that was less a response to anyone than a silent conversation with himself.
And in that muddy living room, for several seconds that stretched into what felt like half a lifetime, there was no sound except Absyumura's heart pounding far too quickly and Miara's hurried breathing through the smoke-filled kitchen, sounding like someone desperately chasing after something that continued to slip farther away.
"My name is Apathy," the creature standing at the doorway finally said.
His voice emerged not like an introduction, but like a piece of news spoken without any desire to be heard.
Flat.
Empty.
Without the slightest tremor to suggest that he was introducing himself to someone who might become an important part of the rest of his life—or the end of it.
Just words.
Just a name.
Just a fact suspended in the air like a tuft of cotton too light to fall, yet too insignificant to drift away.
"Apathy Shelton. One of Shaqar's nineteen subordinates. The nineteen who remain, I mean."
To be continued…