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  Majo no Yobikoe

  Chapter 10

  The chapter begins precisely where the last left off. Gabriel, bound in iron shackles, was being led forth by the cultists, their faces alight with the grim satisfaction of hunters who had ensnared a most precious prey.

  "This offering shall appease the gods for years to come," one of them murmured, his voice thick with reverence.

  The driver of the truck, a man with a voice like gravel, chuckled darkly. "Whether he serves as a sacrifice or chooses to join us, it matters little. He is the key to opening the gateway to the entities—so the bishop, Martin, has foreseen."

  Gabriel, his body bruised and bloodied, spat a mouthful of crimson upon the ground. He was dragged forward, barely able to keep his footing, yet defiance still burned within him.

  "Oh, you wretched bastards… sons of harlots… I have seen your accursed gateway to your false gods. It lies beneath the wretched hovel in the woods—a mural, vast and ancient, not painted but grown into the very stone itself. Nine beings… no, not beings, but nightmares, hewn into the wall in dreadful relief."

  "Specifically, from the drawings above them, there were the creatures of the wall. The first was beneath a massive snake, as if it were slithering out of the stone, looking like a black mamba. The second was an octopus, its tentacles extending as if trying to reach them. The third was an angel, but not fully human... The fourth was a skeleton curled around itself, like an eternal prisoner... The fifth was a wolf with empty eyes... The sixth was a ram with twisted horns... The seventh was a bat with torn wings... The eighth was a stone spider, its eyes following you wherever you looked... And the ninth, they weren't sure, but it seemed like the shadow of an orca whale, massive, with deep black eyes -

  He coughed, more blood staining his lips.

  "There was a crack in the mural," he continued hoarsely, "but I could not pry it open. You waste your time dragging me along."

  One of the cultists sneered. "That is because you know not how to wield yourself as the key. Now, cease your prattling and walk."

  Gabriel barked a bitter laugh. "Cowards, the lot of you. Even after I surrendered without a fight, you resorted to beating and binding me! What more could one expect from spineless wretches who kneel before gods of illusion? Cowards! Cowards!"

  One of them struck him then, the iron cudgel cracking against his ribs.

  "Silence, you damned lunatic," the man growled.

  Gabriel staggered, but he did not fall.

  He moved forward, his feet sinking into the cold mire. His mind reeled, the world tilting precariously—but then, something changed.

  At first, it was subtle—a weight in the air, a suffocating density pressing down upon him. Is the dizziness worsening? he thought.

  Then the trees began to dissolve.

  They did not wither, nor did they burn—they simply ceased to be, as though an unseen force erased them from existence. The snow… the snow did not melt… it was being drawn away as if the very earth was rejecting it.

  And then, silence.

  The cultists were gone. Their voices, their footsteps—vanished into the void.

  Gabriel was falling.

  Down, down, down…

  There was no ground beneath him, no sky above—only shifting darkness, swallowing him whole. And then, suddenly, he struck something solid—though it was not earth.

  He raised his head… and saw the throne.

  It was white—pale as ancient bone, its surface adorned with symbols that seemed to slither beneath the marble like living veins. Behind it loomed a colossal Masonic pyramid, at its apex an unblinking eye, its gaze piercing his very essence.

  And upon the throne, It sat.

  A faceless entity, its elongated neck concealing a void of utter blackness beneath a priestly shroud of alabaster. In one hand, it cradled an ornate box, adorned with a crimson cross. In the other, it held a whip, the leather frayed and stained with filth.

  At Its feet knelt two figures—a scarred demon, crimson and wretched, and a pale-skinned imp, unclothed, upon whose back was branded the symbol of the crescent moon. They knelt, heads bowed low, awaiting their judgment.

  The entity upon the throne did not acknowledge Gabriel.

  Yet when It spoke, Its voice did not come from Its form, nor did It deign to address him directly. Instead, the words seeped into the void, into the very fabric of reality itself:

  "Get off. Get even. Get off me, you killer."

  Then, silence.

  A silence so thick, so crushing, it was as though the universe itself had been smothered beneath a shroud of ice, waiting for the first crack to break it.

  Gabriel could not move.

  He could not even draw breath.

  ---

  After a grueling two-day march, the cultists finally reached their destination—a cathedral, long forgotten, nestled within the accursed mountains known to those few who dared whisper their name as the Madness Peaks.

  It was a vast structure, eerily grand for so desolate a place. As Gabriel was dragged inside, his senses reeled at the infernal spectacle before him.

  Colossal paintings adorned the walls, eldritch and terrible. Among them were entities he recognized—such as the Whisperer in the Darkness, depicted as a gargantuan, winged ghoul with the horns of a devil and the writhing appendages of an octopus protruding from its chin. Upon its abdomen was inscribed a pentagram, pulsing as though alive.

  Another depicted a being of shadow, a draconic form wrought from darkness itself, crowned with a sun held aloft in its grasp. Despite its bestial appearance, it stood unnaturally tall upon two legs, its posture eerily human. Its eyes were voids—empty, endless—and its maw, agape in a silent scream, bore teeth, unlike any beast of the earth. They were swords—long, cruel, as though forged for slaughter.

  And in the corner, another painting caught his eye.

  A woman—exquisite in her beauty, yet terrible in her presence. She was clad in a flowing black dress and a Victorian-style hat, her visage painted in ghostly white. Black kohl smudged her eyes, beneath which two inverted crosses had been drawn. Her lips, adorned with dark grey lipstick, stretched into a bat-like shape that extended to her cheeks. A crimson skull pendant hung at her throat, and from beneath the shadows of her hat, her eyes glowed—a piercing, scarlet red.

  Beneath the painting, a single inscription:

  "The Fairest in the Cosmos—Mistress of Witches, Erkantha."

  Before these dreadful effigies, throngs of slaves knelt in ceaseless devotion. What manner of existence is this? Gabriel thought. To live in perpetual terror, to surrender one’s soul to a false hope in exchange for the mere illusion of safety…

  Yet the horrors did not cease.

  As he was turned, his gaze fell upon a scene of unspeakable carnage—children, crucified upon inverted crosses, their small bodies mutilated, their heads severed. Others, still alive, were caged in golden prisons, awaiting their turn. They wept, their cries lost amidst the madness.

  Gabriel, his voice raw with fury, spat at the cultists.

  "You monstrous cowards! Where is your humanity, you vile whoresons?"

  They gagged him with a cloth and bound him to a golden cross, driving rusted nails through his hands and feet. Agony surged through him, his screams muffled as his blood mingled with the filth-strewn floor.

  Then, they doused him in a bucket of blood—thick, clotted, the lifeblood of the innocent.

  Gabriel’s mind reeled.

  And then—again—the world crumbled.

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  The church, the children, the cultists, the blood—all vanished.

  Reality itself was being erased.

  And once more, he was falling.

  Suddenly, there was nothing.

  No light, no sound, not even darkness—only an abyssal void, infinite and unyielding, as though existence itself had been cast beyond the outermost borders of reality.

  Then… there was the fall.

  It was not a mere descent, but a plummet into the unknown, an unholy spiral into a place where reason held no dominion. His stomach twisted, yet no wind rushed against his form—there was no air, no resistance, only the dreadful certainty that his very essence was being drawn toward some eldritch and unfathomable fate.

  Then, he struck the ground.

  Opening his eyes, he found himself sprawled upon an ancient wooden staircase—dust-laden, fractured with time’s relentless decay, its very presence anathema to logic. It neither ascended nor descended but stretched into infinity, coiling upon itself in impossible configurations, as though the very laws of geometry had been discarded in this accursed place.

  Beneath his feet, skulls lay in grotesque profusion.

  Not dozens, nor hundreds, but thousands—nay, an innumerable multitude, a grotesque ossuary amassed into a mountain of shattered humanity. Hollow sockets gazed at him with an accusatory stillness, as though bearing witness to his intrusion. Some yet bore the remnants of desiccated flesh, a morbid testament to a death unfinished, a lingering ruin of lives long forsaken.

  Something stirred within the darkness.

  Lifting his gaze, he beheld the motion of skeletal forms.

  They were not wholly bereft of animation. Some stood, eerily motionless, their empty sockets fixed upon him in a silent and unnerving vigilance. Others meandered along the stairway without apparent purpose, their trajectories unknown, their destinations unknowable. Some knelt, heads bowed, whispering in voices too faint to hear, as though engaged in supplication to an ineffable and unspeakable deity.

  But the most terrifying of them all stood at the summit.

  It was different.

  No mere skeleton was this, but a thing wreathed in an infernal blaze—its bones aglow with a searing crimson light, as if forged from smoldering embers. Fromsmolderingutted tattered wings, vestiges of a bat-like form, burned and ruined as though they had once spanned the heavens and been cast into oblivion. In its grasp, it bore a rusted axe, its edge dulled by the ravages of time, yet exuding an unmistakable aura of annihilation, as though a single stroke would suffice to rend him asunder.

  Then… it began to sing.

  "Heeeeey Meysoon s Aliens for yeah aehAliensvoice was neither mere sound nor melody but something far worse—a hideous symphony of laughter and weeping, of whispers and shrieks, of wrath and ecstasy. It did not echo in the air alone but resonated within his very being, embedding itself in the marrow of his bones, a creeping intrusion into the sanctity of thought itself.

  The sound reverberated through the stairway, through his mind, through all that was. He willed himself to flee, yet his form remained transfixed, ensnared within the nightmare’s embrace.

  And then… he fell once more.

  Reality convulsed, unraveling at its seams. The skulls crumbled into nothingness; the bones disintegrated; the staircase shattered as if it had never been more than a cruel jest in the mind of some malign architect. Everything collapsed into the void, and he was not spared.

  His body plunged into the abyss.

  This time, the descent was not silent.

  A force unrelenting dragged him downward, the winds howling in a cacophony of madness, his form twisting and tumbling as though robbed of weight, of substance, of being. He screamed, yet the abyss swallowed his cries, as though existence itself had no ear to hear them.

  Then… he beheld the light.

  It was no earthly illumination.

  A spectral argent radiance, colder than the grave and more unyielding than death, shone upon a surface of gleaming metal, reflecting and refracting in a manner both hypnotic and unnatural. Yet there was no time to comprehend, for the fall ceased with cruel abruptness, and he stood before something that defied all expectation.

  A woman.

  She stood in the gloom, her argent armor catching and distorting the feeble luminescence, as though woven from the very fabric of the cosmos. Her eyes—abysses of frozen oceans, vast and inscrutable—held no warmth, only the quietude of a distant, unknowable depth. Her raven-black tresses cascaded over her shoulders, gleaming faintly, as though absorbing the ambient glow of this forsaken domain.

  She bore a sword of monstrous proportions, its grip encased in an armored gauntlet, fingers clenched with the unrelenting resolve of one who has awaited this moment since time immemorial.

  Gabriel needed no further revelation to discern her identity.

  "Rose?"

  His voice wavered—a confluence of astonishment, confusion, and some nameless, lingering hope. She stood there, precisely as he remembered her, precisely as she had haunted his dreams and nightmares alike. A single step forward—an impulse to reach for her, to affirm that she was no mere phantasm, no cruel trick of this unreal domain.

  Yet her gaze remained barren, devoid of recognition or warmth.

  Then… her sword ignited.

  Not with flames of mortal kindling, but with an eerie, glacial conflagration—blue and spectral, as though frost itself had learned to burn. And though the fire was cold, he felt it, felt its impossible heat crawling through the marrow of his bones.

  In the blink of an eye, she was upon him.

  There was no time to flee.

  The azure blaze plunged into his chest, cleaving through his very heart and flooding his veins with a talent beyond mortal comprehension. It was no mere wound—it was an unraveling, a cosmic rift within him, an agony that transcended the physical, as if some ancient force had reached into his soul and set it aflame.

  Rose leaned closer, her voice a whisper of glacial dread:

  "Is fire… I know he burns inside."

  Then, all burns are lost to oblivion.

  Gabriel awoke, bound upon the cross, his laughter pealing through the accursed chamber in a fit of maddened hysteria—laughter unhinged, laughter that echoed the howling void itself.

  The cultists gathered around, their eyes alight with a fervor most profane.

  "What a psychopath," one murmured, as another raised his voice in exaltation.

  "We shall offer the Devil himself to our Goddess, brethren!"

  As Gabriel was drawn inexorably toward his accursed fate, a sudden breach in the fabric of existence erupted before him—a sorcerous rift, a fracture in the dimensions. And within it, adrift in the void of the infinite, loomed a visage most dreadful, a being whose countenance was known to him.

  It was the cosmic entity… Zulish.

  The skeletal horror gazed upon him, and with a voice like the grinding of worlds, it spoke:

  "What is this laugh, mortal? Have you ever considered becoming truly Evil?"

  Gabriel: What are you doing here, my skeleton, Helousti?

  Zolesh: I am not Helousti, mere mortal. I am one of the rulers. If I were of no use to you, I would have destroyed you and your world.

  Gabriel, laughing hysterically: What do you want now?

  Zolesh: Have you thought about signing the demonic pact I gave you?

  Gabriel, sarcastically: Do you see me in a position to think?

  Zolesh: Do you want me to save you? But that would turn it into a pact of servitude, not an alliance.

  Gabriel: In your dreams, skeleton. Anyway, let me die. I no longer care.

  Zolesh: You are such a miserable human. I don’t understand why you creatures grieve. Every day you wake up with the opportunity to kill many humans, yet you're sad!!

  Gabriel: Damn you, skeleton demon.

  Zolesh: Anyway...

  Zolesh snaps his fingers, and they both instantly teleport back to the demons' mansion balcony.

  Gabriel: What happened? How did we get here? What is this madness?

  Zolesh: What don’t you understand, little one? I am a cosmic entity. I can do anything.

  Gabriel: What the hell… What the hell just happened there?

  Gabriel is shocked by what he saw. Half of the island had completely disappeared, along with part of the sea. In its place was an enormous black void, as if the island and the sea had been drawn on a piece of paper, and one part was torn away. Gabriel couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He screamed hysterically, fell to the ground, clutching his head, trembling.

  Gabriel: What the hell happened there? What the hell is in that spot? Did you do this? Were there people there?

  Zolesh: Oh, you definitely don’t remember. I erased them from time and space. You won’t remember anything about them. But I’ll restore the memory for you. They were members of the cult that worships my father, the ones who kidnapped you.

  Gabriel: Oh, I wish you hadn't restored my memory. Wait, you did all this with a snap of your fingers?

  Zolesh: With a snap of my fingers, I can destroy 20 planets the size of Earth. I’ve been holding back my power severely.

  Gabriel: I wanted to know more about that red aura that comes from you and stretches into the sky. It looks like the demon king from an isekai anime or a fantasy game.

  Zolesh: Oh, that's the aura of terror. Every cosmic entity has one. I try to suppress it as much as I can. Do you see all these rings on my fingers? They help me suppress my energy.

  Gabriel: You’re impressive. If I were a teenager, I’d be in awe of you.

  Zolesh: You forgot to mention if I were a fictional character.

  Gabriel: I still hold on to the faint hope that you’re just another hallucination.

  Zolesh: Look, Dark Hunter, I am someone who believes in deals. I won’t force you to sign the contract. I won’t manipulate your mind into making you sign it against your will. You, in any case, long for death, so power doesn’t matter to you.

  Gabriel: For what, then?

  Zolesh: I am a cosmic entity, as I told you. So, wish what you want, and I’ll make it happen for you.

  Gabriel: One thing... can you...?

  A massive snowstorm arrives, so they can't hear what Gabriel wished for.

  Zolesh: Yes, of course. But there will be consequences after I grant it, and don’t hold any grudges against me. I have no control over it.

  Gabriel: Do it then. I don’t care about the consequences anymore.

  Zolesh: So, I understand this means you’ll sign it.

  Gabriel: Before that, I want to ask you: in that church, there was a painting of a woman. I’ve never seen such beauty before. Is she a cosmic entity as well?

  Zolesh: Yes, she is my older sister, Erkantha. She is one of the most powerful princes and one of the strongest children of the Shadow Demon, the Mistress of Witches, and the most skilled sorceress in the universe. Actually, that miserable house is hers. She would travel the planets, teaching creatures magic and turning them into slaves. When she came to Earth, she made this cottage her home. She manifested as a human, and people from all over the world came to her.

  Gabriel: Sounds like she had quite the reputation.

  Zolesh: Indeed, but before she left Earth, she erased her name from the records of history. She’s also the reason for my alliance with you. My father wants to give her five galaxies to rule, but the whole thing is just an experiment. He hasn’t decided yet, but his hatred for me is immense.

  Gabriel: It seems like you have something akin to mythology. Anyway, another question. What’s your story with slaves?

  Zolesh: In short, the smart ones increase power, and the foolish ones, like those who kidnapped you, are useless.

  Gabriel: All the information you know about your father... was there a god of the world who was defeated, for example?

  Zolesh: If you’re asking about old stories, well, before I came here, I destroyed a solar system because they didn’t have the avocado-flavoured crisps I like. Don’t test my patience, chatterbox.

  Gabriel: Alright, alright, I’ll sign. The rest of humanity is innocent, honestly.

  Zolesh: That’s good. I was thinking about returning you to the time of those cocaine addicts, just before you intervene, and leaving you frozen.

  Gabriel: Speaking of which, what happened to the children?

  Zolesh: Dead.

  Gabriel: Damn you, psychopathic skeleton. Anyway, give me the pact.

  As Gabriel signs the pact, a magical circle appears, engulfing them and transporting them to a vast, desolate desert. In the centre of the sky, there is a giant sun shaped like a skull resembling Zolesh’s head, and above them is the eye that sees everything.

  Gabriel hands the contract over: "Here is your contract. Though, I expect you want to be your son’s favourite. You must have realised that defeating him is impossible, right?"

  Zolesh: Actually, I am smarter than you. You are the smartest creature, and I am a cosmic entity.

  Zolesh takes the contract, spreads his wings, and soars high into the sky, saying, "Whatever my goal is, Gabriel, you will follow me, eyes closed, because you want your wish more than anything." He ends his sentence with an evil, terrifying laugh that shakes the island. "Hahaha... haaaaa..."

  ---

  We now shift to another island, the Island of the Devil's Skull, where Simon and Eva achieved the miracle that the poor prisoners had waited for many years.

  The helicopters flew through the night sky over the ocean, escaping from the bloody hell, finally escaping from the Island of the Devil's Skull. Below them, the black waves crashed against the sharp rocks, as if announcing their victory. The sounds of joy filled the sky, the joy of the prisoners who had survived after all that hell. Inside one of the helicopters, Eva sat beside Simon, her heart still pounding with the thrill of victory.

  She looked at him with a sideways smile, resting her head on his shoulder.

  "We did it, Simon. We survived."

  He kissed her forehead and held her close, his eyes gleaming with a shadow of a smile that wasn’t quite complete.

  "Yes, but survival is not the goal; it's only the beginning."

  Eva narrowed her eyes. She knew that Simon always had more secrets up his sleeve. But she couldn’t stop herself from asking:

  "You knew that some European governments were supporting you, didn’t you? Especially Germany?"

  A mysterious smile appeared on his face as he looked out at the vast ocean ahead of them.

  "There are things that should not be said at the wrong time."

  "Is now the wrong time?"

  "Anyway, we succeeded, and that’s what matters now." He turned towards her with his sharp grey eyes. "What’s left is meeting Gabriel and Rose... and finding a new hideout for us. We’ll need all the support we can get."

  Eva let out a short sigh as she relaxed into her seat, but an uncomfortable feeling began to creep into her heart. There was something bigger unfolding on the horizon, and Simon knew exactly what it was.

  They flew off into the distance towards their unknown destination. We leave the heroes and prisoners celebrating their historic victory, and we move to a faraway place in this universe, a place where no entity or creature dares to go – the throne room of the Shadow Demon.

  ---

  At the base of the throne stood Erkantha, her raven-black hair cascading like a waterfall of the night itself, interwoven with flickers of starlight, much like distant galaxies shimmering in the cosmic abyss. Her eyes were not mere pools of darkness but rather portals to the unfathomable secrets of the universe, as deep as the nebulous voids between the stars, as radiant as the flickering demise of a dying sun. She was a vision beyond mortal comprehension, a beauty surpassing by a hundredfold the portrait that had once captivated Gabriel’s eyes.

  Emerging from the flowing fabric of her robe, black serpents slithered onto the ground, their sinuous bodies coiling around her form like shadows given life. Her body was sculpted with an artistry that defied mortal understanding—a perfection of balance between ethereal grace and ominous power, as though the very forces of creation had conspired to mold her into an apex of existence.

  Her waist, delicate and slender, was the meeting point of a tempest and tranquillity, while her legs extended like pillars of celestial light—long, poised, and ending in feet that seemed barely to touch the astral void beneath her. Her arms, slender yet carrying an aura of concealed strength, moved with the slow precision of an ocean’s tide. Her fingers, elongated and refined, resembled the branches of an ancient tree that had witnessed the dawn of time itself.

  Her chest was not merely a detail of her form, but an artwork sculpted by the hand of the cosmos, full yet balanced, a harmony of delicacy and majesty, as though within its contours lay the very essence of beauty itself. Her skin, neither merely flesh nor mere surface, radiated a living luminescence, smooth as though woven from the finest marble and the most fluid of waters, glowing with an inner incandescence.

  Her crimson eyes, burning like molten rubies, slowly lifted their gaze towards the entity upon the throne.

  It was he… the Shadow Fiend.

  And Erkantha, the woman whom all creatures in existence feared—the untouched maiden whom no being, mortal or divine, had ever dared to claim, the one who had never bowed nor bent the knee to any ruler or god—knelt before him.

  She, whom the greatest sorcerers, the most terrifying of cosmic entities, and the rulers of forbidden realms had revered and feared alike, now prostrated herself in silent submission.

  The being upon the throne, the one who bore the true name of dread itself, remained unmoving. His favored form—an enigmatic woman draped in a formless abyssal cloak—sat in perfect stillness, an immeasurable presence emanating from the very fabric of their existence. Behind him, a colossal star loomed, pulsating with an eerie, unnatural rhythm, as though it were a heart beating at the threshold between life and death.

  One hand held within it a gathering of spiders and butterflies, their delicate, nightmarish forms writhing and shifting in ways that defied sanity. The other, resting upon the arm of the throne, bore the weight of innumerable worlds, as though the very act of existence itself was upheld by his touch alone.

  He did not turn to acknowledge her, nor did he offer any sign that her presence mattered.

  But she, in a voice that caused the very fabric of space to waver, the whisper of which made the unseen forces of the cosmos tremble, spoke:

  "Father… I believe Zulish is betraying you."

  End of the Chapter.

  .