Chapter 346
Anh-Bu-Sisi merely borrowed that session of judgment.
That session was one part of the authority belonging to Quil-Hasa, the God who had created them all, Aldraya included.
'At the very least, Theo has left me a faint glimmer of light.'
Further within the quiet space of her heart, Aldraya then drew a sharp comparison.
She told herself, as an effort to understand and sort through the chaos of her emotions, that although Theo in the form of Eshura Birtash and Ilux Rediona could both be called bastards, both known as lovers of women's bodies, there existed a vast and unmistakable chasm between the two of them.
The difference lay in something fundamental.
At the very least, Theo still possessed a fragment of conscience, a remnant of moral awareness that drove him to help, even to illuminate, the path of a woman's life.
And the woman in question was, of course, none other than Aldraya herself.
Theo had become a light in her fall, a hand extended not to push her down, but to lift her up.
Theo saw her not as an object, but as a subject to be guided, protected, and invited to work together.
It was a contrasting kindness, a form of redemption within someone who was also branded as vile by the world.
Meanwhile, Ilux stood at the opposite pole.
Rather than helping or enlightening, what he sought was outright seizure.
His actions were not salvation, but a vile act of plunder.
Aldraya remembered with painful clarity how Ilux had tried to take her purity in the most vulgar way possible.
Those hands had attempted to strip away her clothes, until they were almost—ninety-nine percent—completely exposed.
Only the intervention of fate and Theo's courage had stopped him at the very last moment.
And as she thought back on it, an unbearable physical sensation assaulted Aldraya.
A deep revulsion, mixed with anger and trauma, flooded her entire system.
Her already clenched left hand tightened even further, until her joints felt on the verge of shattering.
Her face, usually flat and unreadable, for a fleeting fraction of a second nearly twisted into a grimace of pure disgust and hatred.
She restrained it swiftly, forcing her facial muscles back into a neutral position, concealing the wave of revulsion that nearly made her retch in the middle of this silent corridor.
'Poisoning my core essence until it spreads to my heavenly siblings?
Such a vile and cowardly plan. Then it is only fitting that I require his head as a warning.'
The peak of all that emotional turmoil and understanding arrived when her memory touched upon an explanation from Theo.
An explanation that did not merely reveal vile intent, but exposed the sheer scale of betrayal—so vast and horrifying—that it nearly drove Aldraya's normally measured mind into a rage.
Based on Theo's account, which at the very least referred to the grand scenario within the game Flo Viva Mythology, Ilux's plan was far more wicked and ambitious than mere physical rape.
Theo explained that Ilux did not only intend to seize the Authority possessed by Aldraya.
That Authority was no ordinary power.
It was the right and capability to oversee all forms of life, a divine mandate borne by Aldraya as one of the Supreme Angels.
To strip it away was to tear out the core of her identity and the very purpose of her creation.
Yet Ilux's malicious intent did not stop there.
A darker and more dangerous scheme lurked behind it.
After seizing it, Ilux intended to poison the remnants of Aldraya's core essence.
That core essence was the purest form of her existence, the source of her power, her connections, and her bond to the Heavenly Realm and the Twelve Supreme Angels.
The poison in question was not an ordinary physical toxin, but something designed to corrode from within, to taint and weaken her existential foundation.
And its impact would not stop with her alone.
That poison, if successfully injected, would flow through the bonds that connected the Supreme Angels.
The consequences would be chained and fatal.
The contamination would spread, infecting and weakening the other twelve Supreme Angels, Aldraya's siblings in the Heavenly Realm.
Behind its complexity, Ilux's plan was an act of mass murder and cosmic-scale plunder, an attempt to collapse the pillars of universal balance, beginning with the most personal violation of Aldraya herself.
'Kill me? Go ahead.
But involve my siblings with poison and betrayal? That is a debt that can only be repaid with your most painful extinction.'
Without needing to be told or reminded by anyone, Aldraya knew what had to be done.
She would restrain her anger.
She would do her utmost, with every shred of discipline remaining from her angelic training, to keep it contained within, locked tightly behind layers of cold control.
Her expression, the flat visage that served as her shield against the world, would be maintained at all times.
No furrow of rage, no burning gaze, no outward sign that a volcano of hatred and fury was churning within her chest.
In this silent corridor, she had to appear as an ordinary student, not as a former angel consumed by blazing vengeance.
And yet, deep within the conscience that was still learning how to be human, there was a fierce rejection.
Aldraya could not—or more precisely, would not—believe that there could exist a human as savage and despicable as Ilux.
The magnitude of his evil surpassed ordinary understanding of malice.
She contemplated it.
If his motive had simply been to kill her, for instance as retribution for her sins—such as blowing up the sacred library or causing chaos in the academy—perhaps, just perhaps, Aldraya could have accepted it.
That would have been a consequence, a direct and personal retaliation for her own mistakes.
There would have been a logic to it, however cruel.
But Ilux's plan was entirely different.
He wanted to involve Aldraya's siblings.
Not merely to involve them, but in the most vile way possible—by poisoning them through her core essence, with the ultimate intent of seizing all the Authorities they held.
This was no longer just murder or revenge.
It was cosmic betrayal, an attempt to twist fate and tear down the heavenly order for personal ambition.
The scale of this crime was so monumental, so vicious in its essence, that it changed everything.
Thus, with conviction hardening like steel amid the turmoil of her emotions, Aldraya reached a final conclusion.
Even unto death, she would never forgive Ilux.
Forgiveness was a concept that had no place here.
If that vile act had truly come to pass, if that poison had succeeded in touching her siblings, then in every remaining breath, in every second of eternity or mortality, only one thing would remain toward Ilux.
A silent, unextinguishable curse.
And her still-tightened fist seemed to stand as a symbol of that silent oath, a promise to never forget, and never forgive.
"If not for Theo's command and that 'seed,' your eyes would have long since been crushed, and your filthy genitals destroyed over and over again."
If only there had not been that single binding factor, perhaps everything would have been different.
If only she had not obeyed Theo's command—the clear and firm order to safeguard Ilux Rediona—then Aldraya's hands might have moved long ago.
Not with hesitation or regret, but with a cold and final release.
Perhaps her supple yet lethal fingers would have already crushed Ilux's eyeballs, destroying the windows of his soul filled with vile intent, condemning him to eternal darkness as a reflection of what he had nearly done.
And perhaps another part of Ilux's body—his genitals, used only for debauchery and domination in the most despicable way—would likewise have been flattened beneath that same destructive force.
To be continued…