Anomaly

Chapter 412 – Worship of the true gods [58]

Standing before the dome, my slightly golden eyes, though nowhere near Althea’s intensity, remained locked onto the structure in front of me. The massive barrier continued its relentless expansion across the city, advancing like an inevitable, distorted tide while corroding everything in its path.

Buildings cracked apart and crumbled from the mere touch of the anomalous dome. Streets warped and twisted as if reality itself were being rewritten incorrectly.

Even though it was an absurdly dangerous and unnatural power, a phenomenon where concepts themselves seemed to have been completely lost, inverted, or reduced to something unrecognizable, there was a certain exotic beauty to it in my eyes.

As destructive as it was, there was something strangely mesmerizing about the chaotic manifestation, like watching a living painting made of destruction and distortion, equally fascinating and unsettling.

Beside me, Victor, Rupert, Emily, and Laura seemed to share similar thoughts, at least to some extent. Their eyes were fixed on the dome as well, but their expressions told a different story: apprehension, tension, and clear discomfort with the situation.

Victor kept his jaw clenched. Rupert furrowed his brows as if trying to rationalize what he was seeing. Emily looked restless, her fingers twitching slightly, while Laura watched in silence, stiff as though any wrong move could somehow make the entire situation even worse.

Ironically, from my perspective, I couldn’t gather any truly alarming thoughts about the dome. I didn’t feel genuine fear, nor enough urgency to have me grinding my teeth with anxiety.

Hovering in front of the dome, I slowly let my gaze drift over the small group formed by my little sisters. Their anticipation toward all of this was obvious.

They definitely looked excited, something especially noticeable in Althea, who could barely contain herself, her small wings fluttering restlessly every now and then.

The others were slightly more restrained, but no less eager for it. Their eyes remained fixed on me, gleaming with curiosity as they patiently waited for my revelation.

Tenebrya was the only one who still didn’t fully understand what was happening, her childish and curious mind unable to completely grasp the situation. Even so, with my little sisters’ emotions practically filling the air around us, even she could tell that something “exciting” was about to happen.

The problem was that, despite all the anticipation surrounding me, I still had absolutely no idea how to actually perform this so-called revelation. My sisters’ explanations had been, at best, minimally helpful.

From their point of view, everything seemed to revolve around the feeling of revealing yourself, a sort of natural instinct, something as simple and intuitive as breathing, rather than a conscious process with clear steps that could be explained in any practical way. In other words, it was like asking someone to describe in detail how to move an arm. Laura, however, was the only one who offered something remotely useful.

With her calm and observant demeanor, she tilted her head slightly before subtly suggesting that it was probably similar to wearing some kind of cloak that completely covered your body, then tearing it open from the inside out. The analogy was oddly specific... but considering my current options, it was also the best guidance I had.

After thinking deeply about Laura’s words and about what my little sisters kept insisting on calling a “feeling,” I came to a single conclusion... I genuinely had no clue what they were trying to tell me. The harder I tried to understand, the more illogical everything seemed. That was exactly why I decided to follow my own path when it came to this revelation.

Instead of continuing to interpret vague explanations and abstract feelings, I began piecing together everything I had discovered so far alongside my sisters. During the tower climb, on the mission where we rescued my little sister, Tenebrya, from that place that most closely resembled hell itself, something happened.

I caught a glimpse. It was brief, so brief that, for a moment, I questioned whether it had even happened at all or if my mind had finally short-circuited given everything going on at the time. Even so, the memory remained absurdly vivid. It wasn’t the image itself that I remembered clearly, but the sensation.

The exact, overwhelming sensation that took hold of me the instant whatever that thing was appeared before me. It felt as though, for a fraction of a second, I had made contact with something unfathomable... something far too vast to comprehend, far too ancient to describe.

A presence so distant that it didn’t even seem to exist within the boundaries of the universe itself. As though I had looked beyond. Far beyond. Toward a place where concepts like distance, time, or reality simply held no meaning.

That was me. Not my true form, but a limited and imperfect version of something my current mind was actually capable of processing, a flawed representation shaped by the limitations of my own perception. Even so, there was no doubt about it.

That was definitely me. To access my powers, my true powers, I had to connect to that thing, even if only for a brief moment. The memory of that connection remained vivid in my mind, like a scar carved directly into my consciousness.

And if I had managed to do it once, then there was no reason I couldn’t do it again. That was exactly what I tried to do. I slowly closed my eyes, shutting out every distraction around me, and focused all of my attention on the sensation from that day.

I mentally relived every detail: the instant an absurd amount of power flooded through my body like an unstoppable current, filling every fragment of my existence, and the indescribable sensation of facing that unfathomable presence, something so vast and incomprehensible that my very concept of reality felt insignificant in comparison.

As I sank deeper into those memories, my body began to react. First came a subtle, comforting warmth, like embers hidden beneath my skin. But it didn’t take long for the sensation to intensify at an alarming rate.

The heat spread quickly through every part of me until it became nearly unbearable. I could feel my gelatinous skin bubbling and boiling, tiny ripples running across its surface as if my own body was being pushed far beyond its limits, struggling to contain a force much greater than it was ever meant to hold.

It hurt, a kind of pain I hadn’t felt in a very long time. Not mild discomfort or an annoying sting, but real pain, raw and absolute, so excruciating it felt as though my entire body was being boiled alive in scalding oil. Every second dragged on like an eternity, and I could’ve sworn even the air around me was trembling from the unbearable heat.

But at the same time, as the sensation consumed me, there was something strangely liberating about it. It felt like finally tearing off a tight, grotesquely uncomfortable outfit, a suffocating shell so unbearably wrong that staying inside it for even one more second felt like its own form of torture.

The sensation of breaking free was almost visceral, as though something inside me was finally snapping invisible chains that had kept me restrained.

I watched as the poles of my gelatinous skin began glowing with an intense golden light. No, intense didn’t even begin to cover it. The glow was absurdly vivid, almost unnatural, like tiny stars had been compressed beneath my translucent surface. The brightness kept growing, pulsing in uneven waves of heat.

Even from my own perspective, it was blinding. The light overwhelmed everything, burning my vision painfully, like staring directly into the sun without protection, except infinitely worse. It felt as though the star itself was only inches away from my face, radiating merciless heat and light.

Amid the searing pain, something strangely contradictory was happening inside me. Alongside the nearly unbearable discomfort, an overwhelming sense of liberation spread through my body, as if invisible chains were being shattered one after another.

It came with a growing surge of raw, intoxicating power, making me feel as though, in that moment, I could do absolutely anything, break the world around me apart or reshape it with my own hands.

Somewhere in the background, buried beneath that whirlwind of sensations, Laura’s voice cut through my mind like a distant, muffled buzz, almost as if I were submerged underwater: “Is she okay? It looks like smoke is coming off of [Angel of Death]’s body... is that supposed to be happening?” Laura suddenly cut herself off mid-sentence. I couldn’t see her expression, but something in her voice had changed. It no longer carried its usual softness, replaced instead by a subtle tension.

Even though every word reached me distorted, like broken echoes bouncing off the walls of my mind, I still understood them perfectly.

Not just the words themselves, but everything underneath them too: the strain in her voice, the rising anxiety, the genuine, almost suffocating concern Laura felt for me.

That said, Laura wasn’t the only one showing concern. Victor and Emily wore the same apprehension plainly on their faces, and even Rupert, the last person I’d expect to show any obvious reaction, looked visibly uncomfortable with the whole situation. That alone said a lot. Maybe it was because of how I looked right now.

“Didn’t you guys say earlier that [Angel of Death] could literally turn to ashes if something goes wrong?” Rupert was the next to break the silence. His tone sounded slightly less anxious than Laura’s, but it still carried an unusual tension, far removed from the sarcastic calm he usually maintained.

He shot a quick glance at the others before continuing: “Shouldn’t we be a little more concerned about the whole turning-into-ashes part?” His voice rose slightly at the end, like he still couldn’t believe this wasn’t being treated as top priority.

Rupert let out a short breath through his nose, almost like a humorless laugh, and shook his head in disbelief: “Because honestly, this definitely doesn’t look like any kind of positive sign I’ve ever seen” He paused, and I could feel his gaze settle directly on me: “Most of the time, turning into ashes is usually just a very dramatic way of describing a slow, painful, and absolutely horrible death”

I couldn’t see myself, so I had no idea what I looked like right now, but it had to be bad if everyone could tell I was in pain without me saying a single word. Even so, in the middle of all that tension, at least one conclusion seemed crystal clear: a full revelation would kill me.

That wasn’t exaggeration or dramatics. I could feel it with instinctive certainty, as though my own body was screaming a silent warning. If I tried forcing everything at once, I’d probably fall apart before I even finished, reduced to ashes from the inside out, consumed by something far greater than I could ever hope to endure.

With that in mind, the only remotely viable option I could come up with was simple, though far from ideal: stay exactly as I was right now. It was uncomfortable, unstable, and probably unsustainable in the long run, but it still sounded infinitely better than dying by being reduced to ashes.