Chapter 185
Then, with an uncontrollable jolt, her clenched right fist slammed into the ground.
A dense, guttural sound erupted—not from her sealed mouth, but from the impact of her fist against the barren earth.
Dry dust burst into the air, forming a small golden cloud for a brief moment before falling back down.
And the movement did not stop.
After her right hand lifted, her left fist—already clenched with enough force to bleach her knuckles white—followed and struck.
One, then the other.
A mechanical and ferocious alternating pattern, like the heartbeat of a machine newly fueled by pure rage.
Each blow was a word in an unspoken language.
A crude word exploding in place of every praise she had once murmured in the pavilion.
The splashing dust replaced the tears that had already dried, tiny particles of a world that had rejected her now becoming the target of all the rejection she felt.
The rhythm of the blows was constant, without acceleration or slowing, as though she were hammering invisible nails, pinning herself to the earth, or perhaps trying to shatter the planet's crust to reach something else beneath it.
Her body swayed in time with the violence she created, her shoulders rising and falling harshly, yet her face remained lowered, hidden behind a dusty curtain of hair.
Her expression was unreadable, but all her suppressed energy, all her confusion transmuted into hatred, now flowed through the two small points of her fists repeatedly striking the ground.
The sound of impact was the only sound across the barren expanse, a monotonous symphony more cutting than any lament.
Behind the brutal physical act, a deeper inner deconstruction took place.
Each time her fist struck the ground, it was as if a beautiful memory of Quil-Hasa shattered into fragments.
The first blow destroyed the image of a compassionate face she had once worshiped.
The next crushed the voice she had once believed to be guidance.
The following buried her gratitude for her own creation.
She was no longer striking the earth; she was striking illusion, striking her naïve past, striking her first love that had turned out to be the grandest prison of all.
The force she used was so great that fine cracks began to appear on the hard surface beneath her, like traces of suffering etching themselves onto the face of the world.
The air around her trembled with every impact, and the remnants of the dim six-o'clock light seemed to pulse in rhythm with this silent, merciless fury.
And she kept striking.
Without pause.
Without purpose.
Only to feel that something—anything—could still resist her.
'So unbearably painful.'
At first, the blows merely released pent-up energy, an eruption of dust dancing in the air.
But then the memories came like a crashing tide.
Images of scornful words, contemptuous gazes that belittled all her devotion, and finally, the bitter realization that in Quil-Hasa's eyes, she was not a creation of worth, but merely a slave easily discarded like trash.
These memories burned away the remnants of rationality within her.
Thus, the blows that had initially only vented anger began to change in nature.
Their power increased—not linearly, but exponentially—driven by each flashback of betrayal that felt ever more real and agonizing.
Each fist that slammed down now carried the full weight of the betrayal of her purest loyalty.
Both of her palms, once so smooth, white, and gentle—said to produce waves of beauty upon contact—had now become blind instruments of destruction.
The skin that had once been flawless was torn as it collided with the hard, jagged ground.
The first tear might have gone unnoticed amid the numbness of rage, but as the blows grew more frenzied, the pain began to creep in.
Yet that physical pain became new fuel.
Each stab of agony from the wounds on her hands seemed to proclaim, "This is the reward for your loyalty."
So she struck harder still, as if trying to shatter the pain itself along with the memories tormenting her.
Blood began to mix with the dust.
At first, only damp brownish stains, then red splatters flung into the air each time her fist lifted.
Blood and dust merged, forming a bleak, reddish mud on the ground and across her hands.
The sight became a tragic, cinematic scene of violence.
Beneath a sky growing ever darker, the fallen Angel continued to pummel the ground with her bloodied fists.
Each blow was followed by small splashes of red mud and grains of dust weakly shimmering in the remaining light.
The rhythm turned wild, no longer regular, filled with sporadic impacts erupting from a soul tearing itself apart.
Her once-flat breathing became hoarse and ragged, yet no sobs or screams escaped.
Only the increasingly wet and heavy thuds remained—"dhem… dhem… dhem…"—like the dying heartbeat of a colossal being.
Her body shuddered violently with each strike, yet her head stayed lowered, as though she were witnessing the destruction of her own hands and self as a punishment she imposed upon herself for failing to become a creation worthy of recognition.
And within this blinding cycle of violence lay a profound irony.
The blood she now spilled, the pain she inflicted upon herself, might be the clearest proof of her fragile humanity—something Quil-Hasa had always denied.
She was destroying the remnants of her physical perfection, defiling the gentleness she once possessed, in an attempt to resist the existential imperfection imposed upon her.
Each spurt of blood was a silent, crimson question.
'Is this what You wanted? Does my destruction finally make me worthy enough to be acknowledged as existing?'
The blows were no longer merely about hatred, but about ritualistic self-destruction, a final sacrifice from a slave trying to carve her mark into the earth, because the heavens had refused to recognize her.
'It should be this way.'
That certainty arrived not as enlightenment, but as a landslide burying all other possibilities within Aldraya's mind.
Her bloody strikes gradually weakened, not because her anger subsided, but because a heavier, denser understanding had crystallized, draining every remaining trace of emotional energy.
Yes, it was only right that she stopped believing.
It was only fitting that she forgot.
It was only natural that she rise and continue living, perhaps as a teacher, like a faint shadow of another path that had once crossed her mind.
But "what should be" and "what is" are two realms separated by a chasm of betrayal.
And the reality now laid bare before her, written in letters of humiliation and neglect, pointed to only one blunt and painful conclusion.
She was merely an administrative tool.
She realized, with piercing clarity, that her existence from the very beginning had never been intended to be part of any meaningful divine plan.
She was not a cherished child, not a guided disciple, not even a recognized creation.
She was a function.
A device placed between Quil-Hasa the Most High and the twelve other Highest Angels—who were, in truth, her siblings.
Her duty was to observe, to regulate, to monitor their lives, ensuring the cosmic wheel turned without requiring the creator's direct intervention.
To be continued…