Chapter 210
The contours of her body constantly shifted, pulsed, and warped, causing Ilux's mind to immediately reject identifying the shape as anything familiar.
All of this left a single, overwhelming, and terrifying impression.
Aldraya had not merely changed.
She had become something that human eyes were never meant to witness in such a state.
"What did you encounter in your hometown that made you return in a form like this?"
Witnessing all the abnormalities enveloping the figure he once knew, Ilux still felt a cold shiver crawling along his spine.
Yet, within that terror, another force proved even stronger.
A sense of responsibility, genuine concern, and the lingering remnants of a teacher–student bond that had not fully faded.
He chose to steel himself.
With unsteady and cautious steps, Ilux began to move closer.
Each step felt heavy, as if pushing against an invisible pressure radiating from Aldraya's utterly transformed presence.
He tried to approach as closely as possible to where Aldraya stood motionless, her grotesque form becoming a terrifying silhouette amid the remnants of the spreading silvery mist.
As he advanced slowly, almost like approaching a wounded wild beast, Ilux opened his mouth.
His voice emerged softer than he expected, trembling slightly as he struggled to suppress the panic and revulsion boiling in his chest.
"If not for your filthy words, I would not have been summoned, not accused, not had meaning spat upon me by Him like this."
"I don't understand what you mean, Aldraya.
If you are angry, say it clearly.
Did what you just said arise from your own anxiety, from fear of your current position, or from something that forces you to blame me?"
The voice did not come from a human mouth, but rather like shards of glass vibrating inside Ilux's skull, piercing straight into his consciousness.
Aldraya's eyes, now resembling rippling pools of darkness, lifted from the ground and locked directly onto Ilux's face.
Within that gaze gathered a storm of hatred, disappointment, and suffering so ancient that Ilux felt his bones creak with cold.
He no longer recognized his young teacher behind that pulsating silhouette.
What remained was only a severely wounded entity, desperately seeking an outlet for the misery gnawing at its core.
The air between them hissed, saturated with silvery corrupt energy, as if every spoken word might trigger lightning within that metallic fog.
Ilux stood like a statue carved from pure vigilance.
Though his heart pounded like a trapped bird within the cage of his ribs, not a trace of that turmoil surfaced on his cold expression.
Instead of responding with shouting or fear, he immersed himself in every syllable hurled at him, trying to feel out the shape of logic behind the chaos.
The question forming in his mind was not self-defense, but a compassionate investigation.
Was this truly about him, or was it Aldraya's cry, distorted by suffering beyond comprehension?
He saw beyond the accusation, into a deeper fear.
A fear of rejection, of failure, of punishment from something far greater—something Aldraya referred to as "Him."
Ilux became a cold, clear mirror, reflecting that darkness not with hostility, but with silence that demanded explanation.
"To attack Him with words is an act of betrayal.
Anyone who dares to insult, belittle, or attempt to twist His meaning with reckless speech will face me directly."
That scream exploded into the air, tearing apart the suffocating blanket of silence with inhuman vibrations.
It was not a scream of rage, but a long lament rising from the depths of a soul utterly shattered.
It sounded like the final cry of one who is drowning, after all strength and hope have been eroded away, leaving only torn vocal cords and dense despair.
Its vibration stabbed into Ilux's spine, creating a horrifying resonance deeper than mere fear.
It was a confession of suffering so absolute, so far beyond human comprehension.
The scream crystallized into words which, despite emerging from a grotesque form, carried the intensity of a blazing and wounded religious conviction.
Each syllable was the final defensive bastion of an identity that felt besieged.
For Aldraya, an attack on her faith was not merely a theological debate.
It was a violation of the deepest core of her existence, a betrayal equal to the destruction of her personal universe.
Faith, devotion, and loyalty were no longer concepts, but vital organs now laid bare and slashed apart by the words she had heard.
The threat she cast forth was the natural law of her world in ruins.
And anyone who touched this sacred wound would face the wrath of herself, transformed into a living weapon.
'The world felt as though it were coated in something never meant to touch human eyes.'
In that instant, before a single word could form on Ilux's lips, the universe around him underwent a sudden and brutal distortion.
It was not ordinary darkness that surged forth, but an active, living blackness.
It burst from the grotesque energy vortex within Aldraya's body, like a colossal ink made of night and despair, flooding violently in all directions.
Yet an anomaly immediately became apparent.
This darkness did not blind the eyes.
Ilux's vision remained intact, sharp, and clear.
What enveloped him was a dense, bleak silvery fog, as though sick and dying moonlight had somehow seeped into the core of absolute darkness, producing a foreign and oppressive spectrum of color.
The bleak silvery mist moved with its own intelligence, swirling around Ilux and forming incomprehensible illusory walls.
Within it, he could see Aldraya's silhouette growing increasingly blurred and erratically pulsating, yet every detail of the ruins, every fallen body, even the dust drifting in the air, appeared with almost painful clarity.
"What has possessed you, Aldraya?"
Fooooh!
"What was the motive behind the bombing?
What drove you to choose such a destructive method?
And tell me the truth—am I also part of the destruction you have created?"
Amid the bleak silvery fog that wrapped the world, Ilux decided to move.
Feet rooted like anchors slowly released, stepping forward with resolve hardening amid all uncertainty.
Each step was measured, piercing through the fog that felt dense yet offered no physical resistance.
His lips trembled, forming a series of questions that had been boiling in his mind from the very beginning, yet no sound emerged, or perhaps it was entirely absorbed by the strange atmosphere surrounding him.
He continued shaping those words with intense lip movements, three core questions that lay at the heart of all this chaos.
First, about what disaster had truly befallen his young teacher.
Second, about the reason behind the act of destruction that shook the academy.
And third, about the burden of blame now being cast upon his shoulders.
Those questions were anchors for his rapidly spinning mind, a final attempt to find logic amid madness.
His face, usually cold and controlled, radiated a mixture of forced courage and deep anxiety.
His eyes, still seeing everything within that bleak silvery hue, stared straight at Aldraya's silhouette, which continued to pulse and shift within the fog.
He approached not with an attacking stance, but with the posture of an investigator, or perhaps a healer attempting to diagnose an affliction far deeper than physical wounds.
To be continued…