Chapter 227
It was neither a legitimate offspring of the will of Shi and Ramsh, nor an accident within their design, nor even a wild branch sprouting from the tree of possibilities they had planted.
It did not violate the laws of reality, because those laws themselves had never known it, had never been formulated with its existence in mind.
When the highest awareness of Shi and Ramsh cast its gaze upon it, there were no parameters that could be applied, no framework of categorization capable of containing it.
The Nothing did not refuse to be understood.
It existed beyond the mechanism of understanding itself.
It was not darkness opposing light, nor a void echoing fullness—it was something that lay outside the habitual source that recognizes "something" as either being or non-being.
Even if the entire spectrum of existence—everything that is, everything that is not, everything paradoxical, undefined, and every iteration without end—were declared to be a creation or consequence of Shi and Ramsh, the Nothing would still stand as an absolute anomaly that undermined that claim of perfection.
It could not be included in the list of creations, could not be concluded as a deliberate exception planted within the system, and could not be derived as a logical consequence of any premise whatsoever.
Every attempt to justify it, to stitch it into the fabric of a grand narrative, would collapse before it could even take shape, as if reality itself refused to nod in agreement or shake its head in rejection.
The Nothing did not ask for a place within the order.
Yet its simple presence, devoid of any demand, was precisely what forced that order to crack, opening a narrow fissure in a foundation long believed to be unshakable.
"Still standing, still able to be gazed upon."
The form of the Nothing that stood before him did not emit an aura of threat, nor did it spread any measurable waves of power.
It was precisely the absence of such traits that made Aldraya perceive it as an ordinary emptiness, a temporary anomaly born from the near-extinction of Ilux's desperation.
That skepticism grew from his absolute faith in dogma; within his framework of thought, everything that existed within this domain—even what appeared alien—would ultimately submit to the laws he embodied.
He thought, even firmly believed, that this was merely a final illusion, a desperate conceptual trick from a cornered traitor.
With the naivety of a judge who believed his law book had already accounted for every possible crime, Aldraya decided not to waste time analyzing the depth of the anomaly.
To the Overseer, this was nothing more than a final stain that needed to be erased.
With a calm that was still lethal, Aldraya opened both of his eyes, each patterned with blue grids of light.
However, he did not stop there.
Around him, the eighteen masses of flesh that continuously writhed and formed the Overseer Eyes simultaneously opened their grotesque yet sacred lids.
Eighteen pairs of eyeballs, each reflecting the same cosmic grid, rotated upon their axes.
Their gazes no longer divided themselves nor performed gradual assessments.
This time, they converged into a single, overwhelmingly immense visual concentration—an absolute focus directed at a single point.
The figure of Ilux—or whatever remained of him—stood opposite, shrouded by the alien presence of the Nothing.
"Just a reminder."
Ilux's movements no longer carried hesitation or defensive calculation.
In a state that was almost no longer himself, his actions were born from an intuitive understanding deeper than strategy.
Rather than engaging in the outdated game of elements and perception, he calmly raised his right hand to chest level, palm facing forward, like one who was either bestowing a blessing or driving something away.
His left hand extended to the side at shoulder height, forming a posture not of combat, but of balance.
The next movement of his right hand was remarkably simple and mundane.
A gentle swiping motion through the air, like shooing away a mischievous chicken trying to enter a yard.
The gesture released no energy, tore no space, and appeared entirely harmless.
Yet something fundamental changed the moment the motion ended.
The eighteen lethal gazes of the Overseer Eyes, which had been fully concentrated upon him, suddenly veered away.
Not because they were deflected by an external force, but as if they had discovered that their own axis was wrong.
In a rapid and unnatural rotation, the beams of their vision reversed direction, turning back toward their own source—the rotting masses of flesh writhing around Aldraya.
And in a silent, horrifying instant, the gazes that had been designed to judge and annihilate instead turned to destroy their own vessels.
The eighteen Overseer Eyes shattered.
Not by exploding, but by fading and unraveling like dust carried by the wind, as though they themselves had decided to cease existing.
The process of destruction was more than mere physical annihilation.
The existence of those eyes, along with their function of oversight, seemed to be "returned."
They were sent back to a state similar to Ilux's previous condition.
Cast out of comprehension, existing beyond the logic designed by Shi and Ramsh.
They did not merely vanish from sight; they vanished from the catalog of recognizable reality.
The void they left behind was not an ordinary emptiness, but an active nothingness—a hole within the narrative of Aldraya's dogma that could suddenly neither be explained nor repaired.
"No longer affirmed."
The consequences of that reversal did not stop at the destruction of the Overseer Eyes.
Aldraya's own gaze, still fixed upon Ilux, suddenly became a conduit for an unexpected recoil.
A reflected wave of judgment surged back directly into his consciousness, wounding him in a way he had never experienced before.
The first wound to strike was a wound to self-perception.
For a fraction of time that felt eternal, the axis of reality rotated.
Aldraya, who had always been the absolute observing subject, suddenly became the object being observed.
Not by an enemy, not by a disciple, but by a neutral principle that emerged from the collapse of his own system of surveillance.
He felt "seen" in the most naked sense—not as a grand teacher or a sacred medium of dogma, but merely as an entity occupying space, a data point within a larger evaluative frame.
This sensation tore at the core of his faith.
The world before him distorted, and the horizon of meaning he had clung to was forcibly displaced.
His once unshakable gaze trembled, and from that tremor was born a pain that was not physical, but the agony of awareness forced to relinquish its absolute status.
The second wound manifested as a fracture of reflected faith, beginning with the remnants of rotting flesh still lingering around him.
That obedient network spasmed briefly, then went limp.
Not due to external force, but because the cohesive command that unified it—the dogma embodied by Aldraya—had broken.
Its obedience evaporated, leaving behind meaningless material.
This severance rippled like a short circuit into Aldraya's chest.
It was not a sensation of collapse, but a sudden, piercing emptiness, as if a fragment of fundamental belief had torn loose and fallen into an abyss too fast for him to catch.
His breath, usually steady and cold, caught for a moment.
The dogmatic incantations that had always flowed through his mind were severed, replaced by a silence filled with an unfamiliar doubt—a question that was not his own, yet now nested in the space his belief had vacated.
The third wound was the most tangible.
A wound of existential orientation, manifesting as an unstoppable backward impact.
His body was driven back, eight heavy steps that shook the ground.
Each step was not merely a physical retreat; it was a forced adjustment to coordinates of reality that had already shifted.
The ground beneath him did not resist, but neither did it fully acknowledge his authority anymore.
He stepped upon a surface that was recalculating his weight and his place within the order.
To be continued…