Chapter 184
Those thoughts spun like blades being sharpened against the whetstone of consciousness.
Every ritual, every dogma she had held so tightly—faith, piety, and betrayal of any world other than Him—was unraveled thread by thread by the cruel hands of doubt.
Perhaps what she had believed to be piety was nothing more than fear in disguise.
Perhaps her stubborn faith was a form of violence against the natural doubt she should have acknowledged.
And betrayal?
Betrayal of all worldly bonds—was that not merely the escape of a child too fragile to face the complexity of creation?
Every moment of solitude, every prayer uttered in the silence of the pavilion, now appeared like a scene trapped inside a glass bottle.
Beautiful, isolated, and ultimately lifeless, never touching the essence of true devotion.
And at the lowest point of this physical collapse, amid dust and a forced posture of worship, her final question was no longer about technique or solemnity.
That question pierced deeper, excavating the foundation of her entire existence.
Was it possible that precisely because she had confined herself since the age of four, precisely because she had focused all her energy on the pavilion and verbal rituals, she had missed the true essence of serving?
Was the devotion she had painstakingly built, stone by stone, nothing more than a magnificent but hollow tower, erected upon a child's misunderstanding of what it means to love—not through dogma, but through a whole self, complete with flaws and the courage to be present?
That question hung in the dust-filled air, unanswered, adding weight to her already-collapsed shoulders, making her twisted body against the ground feel smaller, more insignificant, like refuse truly meant to be forgotten.
'Is not the duty of a Creator to bridge all that is incomprehensible?'
Fuuuuh!
'To illuminate what is vague, to guide misguided creations, not to destroy them with punishment devoid of explanation.
So where did I go wrong? At which point did my steps stray?'
That question froze in the barren air, heavier than all the dust across this endless desert.
Aldraya did not move from her shattered position, yet within her, a storm of logic and wounds spun with a force that split the soul apart.
She had survived the First Heavenly Betrayal by overturning fate itself, a tangible and blood-soaked proof of loyalty, not mere words whispered in a pavilion.
Yet all of it proved empty before the Almighty.
It was after victory that the humiliation came, after supreme devotion that the bitterest rejection was delivered.
Behind her dust-covered eyelids, she saw her pavilion again.
No longer as a sacred place, but now as a factory of futile words.
Every praise she intensified upon her return, every longer prayer, every harsher curse—none of it was an expression of faith anymore, but the panicked screams of a being trying to decipher her master's anger using the wrong language.
She was like a programmer told that her program was riddled with bugs, who responded by typing faster, adding more convoluted lines of code, without ever understanding the programming language itself, or the fatal flaw in its foundation.
The pavilion became an echo chamber that reflected only her own confusion, reinforcing the illusion that more rituals would yield more acknowledgment.
And this was the core of the wound gnawing at her.
Ambiguity as cruelty.
If Quil-Hasa was the Creator, was not His first and highest duty to explain?
To explain the laws, to explain expectations, to explain the reason behind anger?
It is natural for a masterpiece not to understand its maestro.
A sword does not understand why it is forged, a painting does not understand why it is given certain colors.
It is the Creator's duty—in any narrative—to provide context, to provide meaning, or at the very least, to provide clues that can be interpreted.
But what did Aldraya receive? Only silence, followed by rebuke.
Only devotion, followed by humiliation.
As though she were punished for failing to understand instructions that were never spoken, for not fulfilling expectations that were never stated.
Thus, the question "What have I done wrong all this time?" transformed.
It was no longer a search for a list of ritual errors.
It became a far more fundamental, far more terrifying question.
Was her mistake her very existence?
Was the fact that she was a being who required explanation, who possessed limited understanding, already an unforgivable inherent defect?
Was her creation from the beginning a failed experiment, or—as she had been scolded—a piece of trash born of a slave?
If so, then no amount of praise or curses would ever fix it.
Her pavilion was home to a lethal paradox.
She was created with the ability to question, yet punished for using that ability.
She was given a heart capable of devotion, yet rejected when that devotion was offered.
Her fault, perhaps, was being exactly what she had been made to be.
A creation that loved its creator, but whose creator was unable, or unwilling, to be loved in a way that the creation could understand.
'I hate you, Quil-Hasa.'
Thus, at that nadir, something dense and cold crystallized within the shattered cavity of Aldraya's chest.
No longer sorrow, nor doubt, but a hatred clear and sharp as a blade forged in the furnace of humiliation.
That hatred did not arrive as an explosive rage, but as a final narrowing of focus, a dark enlightenment.
All her naïve devotion, all her innocent questions, all the pain that had haunted her were suddenly drawn into a single point of cold, burning black fire.
Quil-Hasa.
She no longer saw the Almighty as a mysterious and exalted entity whose behavior must be understood or subdued with more prayer.
No.
Now, He was a bastard.
A coarse, worldly, human word.
A coward hiding behind omnipotence, skilled at only two things.
Delivering punishment and casting away.
An unjust tyrant who played with His creations like pawns, then destroyed them when those pawns asked about the rules of the game.
Aldraya's hatred was a radical simplification that brought liberation.
It cut through the Gordian knot of her confusion and suffering with a single blunt stroke.
The Creator was the enemy.
Memories of her former power, as one of the Thirteen Highest Angels, as a watcher over all life, now emerged not as nostalgia, but as evidence of the crime committed against her.
It was not a gift revoked, but property seized.
She had been made the eyes and ears of reality, witnessing beauty and suffering from a sacred distance.
Now, she realized that power was the most luxurious chain of all.
Quil-Hasa granted her responsibility over life, yet denied her understanding of the purpose of that life itself.
She was made a warden, yet kept blind to the architect's design.
She was an executioner who did not know why her sword was swung.
'You were my first love, and now you are the one who has destroyed me so perfectly.'
Sshhh!
'Is this what it feels like to hate something that once gave me a reason to worship?'
That newly born hatred required a physical outlet, a rhythm to carve itself into reality.
From her shattered kneeling position, both of Aldraya's hands, which had lain limp upon the dust, slowly clenched.
Not a fist filled with resolve, but a convulsive clench, as though muscle and bone were moving under orders from something deeper and darker than her own consciousness.
To be continued…