Chapter Thirteen
Upon the summit of an abandoned tank, Arkantha stood, her gaze shimmering with a blend of nostalgia and reverence. With a single bound, she launched herself into the air, leaving behind a trail of fractured ice, and surged forth to embrace her younger brother, Zolish, within her arms.
"I missed you, little brother," she spoke, her tone unexpectedly warm.
Yet Zolish, with a sardonic smile, withdrew slightly and replied with cool detachment, "And I... not so much."
Arkantha paid no heed, instead turning her attention to the human figure standing beside him.
"And who might this mortal be?" she inquired, her eyes scrutinizing him as though weighing his worth.
Within Gabriel's mind, the voice of Zolish echoed through telepathy: "Remain silent and follow my lead, boy... or we shall both perish."
Then, turning back to his sister, Zolish remarked playfully, "He's my new Sebestians, as you know... I enjoy seducing creatures."
Arkantha chuckled lightly. "Worry not, I have not come to fight. I merely wished to check on my dear little brother."
Zolish arched a brow. "I thought you were here to challenge me."
Arkantha let out a laugh. "A fight? Come now, we haven't fought since the planetary skirmishes, when we were but children."
A smirk crept onto Zolish's lips as the memory surfaced. "Yes, we hurled planets at one another, and I always emerged victorious."
"But our elder siblings would reprimand us," Arkantha added, "for drenching our garments in the fluids of shattered worlds."
"Yet that was never true combat," Zolish mused, his gaze scrutinising her. "You knew well that tossing planets at us did no real harm back then."
Arkantha nodded before speaking in a sly tone, "Then, what say you to a mere skirmish? A test of your present strength. We shall restrain our powers as much as possible; we wouldn't want to terrify this little human."
"I accept."
In that instant, Arkantha underwent a transformation before their eyes. No longer was she merely the bewitching half-elf; she became something grander. Small horns protruded from her head, her wings shifted into dark, leathery membranes, and her nails extended—sharp as the blades of night itself. She had become a fusion of half-elf and demon.
As for Zolish, his aura shifted. His crown grew more menacing, his sceptre gleamed with an eldritch radiance, and as he pulled back the hood from his head, he revealed a skeletal visage adorned with a spectral coronet, draped in a robe akin to the regalia of medieval monarchs—a wraith-like king, newly emerged from some accursed nightmare.
Before anything commenced, Zolish extended his hand, conjuring a translucent green barrier around Gabriel.
"This field shall shield you from the clash," he remarked, dispassionate.
Then, in unison, both he and Arkantha uttered the forbidden word:
"Ismusibonsknith."
And the battle began!
From Zolish's hand, spectral skulls erupted, radiating a deadly green energy. Meanwhile, Arkantha unleashed a torrent of writhing black serpents, eyeless and sinuous, slithering through the void toward their prey.
The two forces met at a single point, and the cosmos quaked.
Within the first three seconds alone, the earth was incinerated and vaporised, followed in swift succession by the solar system, then the sun, then entire galaxies—one after another. Within less than twenty minutes, naught remained. The universe itself collapsed, shattering into nothingness.
In the abyssal void, remnants of time drifted, and Zolish and Arkantha floated amidst eternity, Gabriel alongside them, still unharmed within the protective barrier.
Yet neither Zolish nor Arkantha bore expressions of concern. Rather, each extended a hand, from which radiated a pure, white light.
"Rebirth."
And with but a single stroke, all was restored. The universe was reborn anew, time regained its course, as though nothing had transpired.
And upon the frozen isle where it all began, the siblings stood as they had before, laughing as though the universe had not just been annihilated and remade.
Arkantha: "Is this mortal any wiser than the last, Zolish? Or is he but another worthless wretch?"
Zolish: "Yes, believe me, sister, he is far, far more intelligent."
Arkantha: "Very well, I shall leave you to your trifles—I have matters of greater import... Myanda."
(And in an instant, Arkantha dissipated into the void, as though she had never been. All that remained was a spectral whisper of her presence, as if the air itself had failed to acknowledge her departure.)
With a deceitful grin, Zolish waved farewell and uttered, "Farewell."
Then, with an exaggerated sigh of relief, he chuckled mockingly, "At last, she's gone. What a lunatic! We survived! Ha ha ha!" He turned to Gabriel, smirking. "Sisters are amusing, are they not, Gabi?"
Gabriel did not respond. His mouth hung open in silent horror, his eyes widened, his hands limp at his sides as though all life had drained from him. He had not even realised that he was no longer breathing.
Zolish snapped his fingers before his face.
Zolish: (snapping his fingers) "Gabi? Gabi? Have you turned to stone, mortal?" (Tilting his head slightly, he smirked wickedly.) "Damn, it seems his mind has burned out... I'll have to replace it with another." (He then gazed skyward, as though genuinely contemplating his options.)
He exhaled upon Gabriel, and at once, the mortal stirred, consciousness returning to his form.
Gabriel, trembling with anxiety and disbelief: "What… what just happened? Can you stop and tell me?"
Zolish, walking ahead, entirely indifferent: "What do you mean? Just a bit of playful jesting between a brother and his sister—where's the great catastrophe?"
Gabriel: "You… you just destroyed the universe you once dreamt of ruling… with a mere skirmish!"
Zolish: "Ha ha ha ha ha! So that is what nearly shattered your mind?"
Gabriel grasped Zolish by his robe, voice trembling. "Can you cease your indifference and give me some answers?"
Zolish: "My understanding of the universe—and that of my kind—differs from yours. As I am the weakest of the Princes, I perceive the true cosmos as comprising twenty-nine million of your universes—the one my sister and I obliterated just now. It is said that our father can comprehend the vastness of the real universe in its entirety. The stronger a being grows, the more universes they discern, their perception expanding ever closer to grasping its true magnitude."
Gabriel: "Then… when she said you would grant her four galaxies to govern as a trial…"
Zolish: "Yes—I meant four universes."
Gabriel's eyes widened in terror, his limbs trembling violently. Staggering backward, he recoiled six steps before collapsing, scrambling away in frantic retreat, his face contorted in raw, unrelenting fear.
Zolish regarded him with mild curiosity. "What ails you, boy?"
Gabriel, his voice unsteady, quivering with horror: "I… don't recognise you anymore."
And then, his mind cast itself back—to the warning once spoken by the truck driver:
"There's things we can't do anymore.
They're gonna recognise us.
And then they gon' despise us.
And then they gon' spy us.
And they won't understand it…"
As though at last grasping the hidden, dreadful truth lurking within those words, his thoughts were shattered by Zolish's voice:
"Hey, Gabriel… have you not noticed something?"
Gabriel: "What now…?"
Zolish: "That accursed house—the witches' house that haunted your nightmares—it was untouched by the explosion of the universe."
Gabriel: "That house… was the strangest thing of all…"
A moment of silence passed, then they laughed—soft at first, then growing louder. But Gabriel did not cease. His laughter swelled into something manic, something on the very precipice of madness, as though he had lost everything.
Zulish perched himself atop a fractured wall of ice, his legs dangling idly over the edge. Below him, Gabriel lay sprawled across the frozen ground, his mind still struggling to grasp the enormity of what had just transpired. The howling winds whispered like wayward spirits, yet his thoughts paid them no heed.
"Do you know something, Gabriel?" Zulish murmured, his fingers tracing unseen sigils in the air. "On that day, I beheld something I never deemed possible."
Gabriel, still dazed, merely stared at him, offering no response.
"The Devil's Skull Prison... Ah, my most cherished place," Zulish chuckled, his voice carrying the weight of a fond reminiscence. "A wretched pit where the vilest souls are stripped of their last vestiges of hope, where agony is etched into the marrow of their very being."
"But..." he hesitated, as if allowing the memory to fully manifest before his mind's eye. "On that day, the guards were no longer the masters. They had become prey."
His tone shifted—softer now, yet far more insidious.
"I watched them, Gabriel—the prisoners—those ancient beasts clad in human flesh. They were no longer captives... They had transcended into something else. Something untethered. The air was thick with the stench of blood, entrails were strewn like festive garlands, eyes were plucked from their sockets, and heads severed from their trembling bodies as though they were mere playthings. I bore witness to it all and asked myself..."
He turned to Gabriel, a sinister smirk slithering across his lips.
"Who set them free?"
Gabriel's eyes widened slightly. "You mean... someone aided them?"
"Not someone ordinary, Gabriel." Zulish rested his elbows upon his knees, gazing down at his own reflection upon the ice's glassy surface. "What transpired within those forsaken walls was no mere escape. No, it was the rebirth of a chaos I have not seen upon this planet for aeons."
Then, with an air of cruel delight, he declared, "But this presents an opportunity. A chance for you to join them, to reunite with your kin, and to shatter the wretched dominion of mankind!" He threw his head back, laughter cascading into the frozen wasteland. "Yes, boy, I already know where we shall begin. The first house to fall... is the House of Chivshenkov!"
Zulish's laughter, a dreadful symphony of malice, veiled the scene in a curtain of darkness, ushering us forth to the fog-laden streets of New Zealand's capital.
---
In another corner of the world, where ice did not cover the ground but fog crept over the damp asphalt, a black car came to a stop in front of an old building.
The rain was light, yet it cast a grim atmosphere over the sleeping city.
Wellington, New Zealand—The Apartment of Gabriel
The mist clung heavily to the streets as detectives Karl and Marcus brought their black sedan to a halt before an aged apartment complex.
"Are you certain this is the place?" Marcus asked, scrutinizing the slip of paper bearing Gabriel's address.
Karl offered no verbal response. Instead, he advanced toward the door with a resolute stride, lifting his foot and delivering a forceful kick that shattered the lock in an instant.
Inside, the air was stagnant, steeped in the faint, unpleasant musk of neglect.
Marcus flicked on his flashlight, its beam slicing through the gloom. "Doesn't seem like anyone's been here for days."
"Look at this." Karl's voice was grave as he plucked a folded note from a dust-laden table. Unfurling it, he began to read aloud:
"I have grown weary of everything. Humanity, its laws, this wretched world. I shall depart to a place beyond reach... to the desolation of Minto Glacier Island, where silence alone reigns supreme."
"Minto Glacier Island?" Marcus echoed. "That's absurdly remote."
But Karl was no longer listening. His gaze had fallen upon something else entirely... the refrigerator.
He approached it cautiously, wrapping his fingers around its handle before swinging the door open. And what he beheld therein sent him reeling backward, his breath caught in his throat.
Severed heads, meticulously arranged, their vacant eyes locked in an eternal stare. Severed hands, preserved in the icy tomb. Hearts—once vessels of life—now resting within glass canisters, suspended in a grotesque stasis.
Marcus exhaled in sheer disbelief. "Dear God... You were right all along."
Karl's expression darkened as he stared into the abyss of the refrigerator.
"I told you..." he murmured. "He is the Reaper of Wellington."
---
The Phantom's Gathering—Deep within the Deserts of Iraq
Far beyond prying eyes, concealed within the undulating dunes, lay an underground stronghold. Towering fences, charged with lethal currents, encased its perimeter. Upon the steel-clad gates, a singular insignia was emblazoned: ZPh.
This was the new bastion of Zero Phantom.
Within a dimly lit chamber, a vast, circular table bore witness to the assembly of figures draped in shadow. Among them sat faces that should not—by all conventional reason—still walk this earth. Former prisoners of the Devil's Skull Prison.
At the head of the gathering stood Simon, the enigmatic leader of Zero Phantom. Before him, an immense map was unfurled, crimson markings bleeding across its surface.
"Brothers and sisters," Simon intoned, his voice slicing through the hush like a sharpened blade, "this day... is the day we have awaited."
A myriad of gazes, brimming with anticipation, fixated upon him.
"These points upon the map..." He gestured towards the ink-stained nodes scattered across the globe. "They are the strongholds of the Chivshenkov family. From these fortresses, they weave their influence, dictating the fate of nations from the shadows."
A brief silence ensued. Then, with a forceful strike upon the map, he declared:
"But not for much longer."
A charged tension gripped the room. Some grinned in wicked delight. Others chuckled darkly. And some... some remained still, their eyes gleaming with echoes of bygone torment.
Lifting his gaze, Simon's voice rang with unshaken resolve.
"The time has come... for the House of Ashes to crumble into dust."
The Cursed Island—A New Delirium
Upon that forsaken island, the one cursed beyond redemption, a fresh hallucination seized hold of Gabriel's mind.
The world around him dissolved into an abyssal void, consumed by an endless nothingness. His body plummeted, weightless, untethered, spiraling downward through the empty chasm until—abruptly—he found himself elsewhere.
He was no longer falling. Instead, he sat, bound hand and foot, within the oppressive confines of an austere government office. The air was heavy, thick with the scent of aged parchment and the faint, sterile tang of ink. The dim, flickering light above cast restless shadows against the mahogany walls, stretching and contorting as if they harbored restless spirits.
Before him stood an old man, his very presence suffocating. The patriarch of the Chivshenkov family—an ancient wretch whose mere gaze exuded a power steeped in centuries of blood and tyranny. His gaunt fingers, dry and calloused like the bark of a dying tree, grasped Gabriel's face with unsettling familiarity.
The old Isac chevchenkov breath was cold, laced with something unnatural as he spoke, his voice a whisper wrapped in iron:
"You are dreaming, boy."
His grip tightened, his nails digging into Gabriel's skin with cruel amusement.
"You think you can bring down the House of Ashes?"
A chuckle slithered from the patriarch's lips—low, guttural, a sound devoid of mirth yet saturated with boundless certainty.
"Foolish child."
The laugh swelled into something monstrous, something greater than the withered man before him. It echoed through the room, through the very fabric of reality itself, consuming Gabriel's senses until his vision blurred, his consciousness wavered... and then—darkness.
---
He awoke with a violent gasp, his breath shallow, his skin clammy with cold sweat.
The cursed island loomed around him, silent save for the ceaseless whisper of the wind. But he was alone.
Zulish, it seemed, had grown weary of his company and departed to seek entertainment elsewhere, leaving Gabriel to the solitude of the damned.
Then, without warning, something unnatural began to unfold.
Feathers—dark as the abyss—began to descend from the heavens, slow at first, drifting lazily through the air. But soon, they multiplied, cascading in an eerie, relentless deluge. Raven feathers, thick as an unholy snowfall, coated the ground in a suffocating shroud of black.
Gabriel lifted his gaze skyward, and his breath caught in his throat.
The sky itself wept shadows.
The moon, vast and unrelenting, bled crimson against the ink-stained clouds. And there—soaring through the abyss—was a single raven, its wings outstretched, gliding effortlessly across the blood-red light of the forsaken moon.
A final omen.
A silent harbinger of the horrors yet to come.
---
End of Chapter.