Chapter 186
She was a caretaker, an administrator, a gardener entrusted with a grand garden, yet never permitted to understand why that garden existed, or for what purpose the flowers were planted.
Her love, her devotion, her self-sacrifice through isolating herself in the pavilion—all of it was merely access to a function carried out with excessive earnestness.
She had believed herself to be a player in a divine drama, when in truth she was only the keeper of the spotlight, ensuring the stage remained lit for the main actors, while she herself stayed hidden behind the curtain of darkness.
And Quil-Hasa's absence after their creation was not some profound mystery, nor a test of loyalty.
It was the final proof of indifference.
A master does not explain to a tool why it has been left in a storage room.
The tool merely needs to be there, ready to be used when required.
The prolonged departure of the Almighty, without a single word, without a hint or a message, was not sacred silence.
It was an empty silence, a total abandonment.
Aldraya and her twelve siblings were simply left behind with the burden of their powers, without guidance, without context, like children abandoned in the middle of a forest with devastating weapons but no map.
And all this time, Aldraya had busied herself worshiping the figure who had abandoned her, viewing that absence as a hidden form of presence, a test of faith.
Now she saw it for what it truly was.
A comfortable exile.
And yes, that conclusion was final.
For she was a slave.
Period.
'Cowardly god.'
That laugh broke from her dry, cracked lips, tearing through the silence of the barren expanse with a sound that felt alien and unnatural.
It was not a laugh of joy, nor an explosion of sarcasm.
Her voice was flat, hoarse, and heavy to lift from her throat, yet it carried a vibration of such deep sorrow that each note felt like a tear crystallized into bitter shards.
The laughter was terrifying, because it was not accompanied by even the slightest light in her empty eyes, no movement on her face still frozen in a mask of ruin.
Only the corners of her lips pulled mechanically, forcing the shape of laughter without its soul.
Her rigid, seated body did not sway, her bloodied hands hung limp at her sides, making the laughter feel like a recorded sound played from a cracked statue.
The words emerged wrapped in the same flat tone as her laughter, as if she were reciting a dull weather report.
Yet beneath that flatness lay an entire, devastating enlightenment.
"A cowardly god's soul."
She finally understood the absence not as a mystery, not as a test, but as an escape.
Quil-Hasa, the Almighty, was ultimately incapable of facing the consequences of His own creation.
Creating thirteen conscious beings and then disappearing without a trace was not an act of wisdom, but the abdication of responsibility by a parent afraid of hearing their children cry.
Aldraya and her siblings were left behind not so they could grow, but so the Creator would not have to watch them grow, would not have to answer their questions, would not have to bear the weight of the love and hope they would inevitably direct toward Him.
Her laughter rang out again, short and broken, like someone choking on memories.
This was the answer to the old question buried deep within her heart.
Why was she, only slightly older than her twelve siblings who were still infants, forced to bear the task of guiding them?
Not because she was the smartest or the strongest.
No.
It was because there was no one else to do it.
Quil-Hasa, after creating them, merely pointed to her in silence—through fate or negligence—and then left behind an emptiness.
Little Aldraya, with her own fear and confusion, was forced to stand before siblings who were just as afraid and confused.
She became a teacher because the Teacher had fled His own classroom.
She clung to dogma and discipline because they were the only means to create an illusion of order amid the void left by the one who was supposed to be the source of all order.
And within that flat, sorrowful laughter, Aldraya's entire identity reached its final turning point.
She was no longer a lost Angel, no longer a student seeking a teacher, no longer a slave longing for recognition.
She was a cosmic orphan who had just realized that the parent she believed to be great and wise was merely a fugitive wearing the robe of omnipotence.
This knowledge did not free her, but stripped away the last remaining illusions supporting her soul.
She laughed because there was nothing left to trust, nothing left to believe in.
She laughed at her own foolishness, at the emptiness of the heavenly throne, and at the bitter irony that her entire life of devotion had been built upon a foundation of cowardice.
That laughter was a gravestone for the death of her love, and the first stone of a new life—cold, without heaven, without a master, and without any reason to look upward again.
'I don't know anymore.'
The silence that closed in was not calm, but a siege.
The air that had once trembled with anger and blows now froze into a dense, heavy stillness, as though the barren land itself were choking, unable to bear a lament too vast to be voiced.
The dust that had once danced wildly now settled slowly, clinging to every curve of Aldraya's hunched body, giving her a second layer of petrified sorrow.
No wind dared to whisper, no nocturnal creature roamed, even the starlight above seemed dim, dulling itself so as not to become an intrusive witness to this intimate destruction.
The surroundings became a mirror of her inner state.
A fullness of emptiness, a silence that screamed.
Aldraya remained in her position, head deeply bowed, her empty gaze fixed on the small pool of blood and dust beginning to form between her knees.
Her wounded hands hung limp at her sides, each drop of blood falling from the gashes on her knuckles landing with a sound barely audible.
"Plok… plok…"
Each drop left a darkening red stain on the pale ground, like the final punctuation marks in a chapter of life that had just ended in tragedy.
The blood flowed without restraint, as if her wounded body now agreed with her shattered soul to release everything that remained, purifying itself through exhaustion.
There was no more boiling anger, no more bitter laughter, only a fatigue so deep it felt like a bottomless hole in her chest.
The title "former" hung in the silent air, sharper than any blade.
She was no longer a Highest Angel, no longer a watcher of life, no longer an administrative tool.
She was former.
A word that defined her through absence, through something that had been lost and would never return.
Each drop of blood seemed to carve that word into the ground, affirming her new identity as something disgraced and rejected.
In this total silence, she could almost hear echoes of her past.
The cheers of praise in the empty pavilion, the whispered prayers that now felt like lies, and the voice of Quil-Hasa that may never have truly cared.
All of it now sank into a greater silence—the silence of final banishment, the silence of acknowledging that she had become someone—or something—that no longer had a place in heaven, nor in the heart of her Creator.
To be continued…