Chapter 143
His movements, fluid and effortless, revealed a perfect command of the self, where every breath, every heartbeat, every contraction of muscle aligned with a single purpose: to keep moving forward.
And so he continued walking, becoming a silhouette that gradually shrank in the distance, merging with the endless night.
'Was it ever truly that simple?'
A long, drawn-out breath finally slipped from his lips, carving a trail of pale mist that slowly dissolved into the darkness.
His exhale felt like the release of centuries' worth of burdens, a gust that expelled the weariness buried deep within the chambers of his soul.
Within that breath lay a silent confession that life could never be simplified into a mere dichotomy of black and white, that every happening always carried uncountable shades of gray.
Memories surged through his mind like a river overflowing its banks, sweeping away every boundary in its path.
A past riddled with wounds, conversations with Ilux that left a lingering bitterness, and encounters with Theo that disturbed his inner peace—each of them blended into a mosaic of experiences not easily unraveled.
Every one of those memories intertwined, forming a web of destiny so intricate that it proved life could never be neatly divided into simple categories.
He nodded slowly, reaffirming his belief that the world was far too complex to fit into rigid frameworks of thought.
Behind that nod rested a wisdom earned at a great price, forged through suffering and ceaseless searching.
Each distant gaze from his eyes seemed capable of piercing through the veils of illusion that often shrouded the vision of ordinary beings.
He realized that within every meeting and parting, within every spoken and unspoken word, lay infinite layers of meaning—like a boundless ocean that could never be fully mapped.
And with that understanding, he walked on, carrying the full weight of life's complexities in his chest, though now with a gentler acceptance.
'Perhaps—'
In the steady rhythm of his uninterrupted steps, an old door in his mind suddenly creaked open.
Long-buried memories, like treasures locked within the vault of his subconscious, began to surface, illuminating the dark corridors of his recollection with a warmth that was both tender and piercing.
Each step felt as though it tread upon different pages of time, guiding him across temporal boundaries into the past that had shaped the person he had become.
'Amid the primordial chaos that could not even be called nothingness, He called us one by one—thirteen sparks breathed into form and awareness.'
In the depths of his memory, fragments of a time older than time itself unfurled.
The universe still existed as an undefined chaos, a disorder too abstract to fit any known concept.
Even the notions of "presence" and "absence" had no foundation by which something could be said to exist or not exist.
Amid the boundless emptiness, Quil-Hasa drifted in absolute solitude, a pure consciousness that served as the source of all other sources.
Then, from the depths of His Essence, thirteen cores of primordial light gathered, each pulsing with limitless potential.
The Creator shaped those thirteen cores with a tenderness vast as the cosmos, weaving them into forms of the Highest Angels, beings who shone with unparalleled radiance.
Each angel emerged with its own unique nature, representing different aspects of a reality yet to take shape.
This grand act of creation unfolded in tandem with the birth of two twin realms—Heaven with its indescribable splendor, and Hell with its overwhelming grandeur.
When the Highest Angels opened the eyes of their consciousness for the first time, the very first sight that greeted them was the expanse of heavenly grass, soft as silk.
Every intricate blade shimmered with its own light, singing the purest melody of creation.
There, Aldraya and her twelve siblings felt the first touch of existence.
'We waited in immeasurable silence.
These heavenly fields became our cradle, the turquoise sky our only roof.
Yet He who breathed life into these forms remained absent from His own Throne.'
In the majestic solitude of Heaven, the thirteen Highest Angels grew in a mysterious quiet.
Aldraya, born first in the form of a perfect woman, naturally assumed the role of mother to her twelve siblings.
With a gentleness woven into her essence, she tended to them as though they were her own children, despite all of them being created within nearly the same span of time.
Every cry from her infant siblings was answered with her warm embrace, every need fulfilled with unconditional devotion.
The vast field of heavenly grass became both their playground and their first school.
Under the eternal light radiating from a sunless sky, Aldraya guided her siblings to understand the nature of the heavenly realm.
Her delicate hands guided their tiny fingers to touch the dew of wisdom, and her melodious voice whispered the most basic mantras of creation.
Though she herself was still growing, maternal instinct flowed through every fiber of her being.
Yet beneath all her loving care, a quiet longing remained rooted deep within her heart.
The presence of Quil-Hasa the Creator remained a mystery—an absence that felt more real than any presence could ever be.
Being not much older than her siblings, Aldraya often sat at the edge of the river of light, gazing at the heavenly horizon, hoping the Creator would one day appear and grant an explanation.
But silence was the only thing that ever answered her questions.
In that silence, she continued to wonder why the Creator brought them into existence, only to let them grow in ignorance of the purpose behind their creation.
'The first light I ever knew.'
The necklace that had adorned Aldraya's neck since her birth was a heavenly masterpiece unmatched by any other.
Forged from pure celestial silver, the metal glowed softly like a full moon trapped in physical form, its surface shimmering with divine depth that seemed to breathe in a cosmic rhythm.
When touched, it radiated a living warmth, like the heartbeat of the universe pulsing gently in the palm.
Its design blended the bright blue of an innocent sky with the white-gold of the first star's light—colors that shone with unwavering conviction and flawless loyalty.
Every curve of its accents told a story of purity and divine purpose bestowed upon Aldraya, as though each hue was a visual manifestation of absolute devotion.
The combination appeared perfectly harmonious, like the sky and the stars completing one another in the grand symphony of creation.
At the center of the necklace rested a circular sigil of power, its angles carved with perfect precision, emanating an aura of calm yet indisputable authority.
Every line was sharp and deliberate, reflecting a heavenly hierarchy that was orderly and flawless in every detail.
The emblem embodied her position as the first Highest Angel, a symbol of authority granted directly from the source of creation.
The moonstone embedded at its core glowed with its own gentle but resolute light, radiating a crystalline clarity as pure as Aldraya's heart in the earliest days of her existence.
Every facet of the stone reflected her unwavering faith and unconditional devotion to the Creator, like a mirror of a soul untouched by storms of doubt or betrayal.
Its constant, immaculate glow stood as a silent witness to a heart yet untainted.
'Why are we here? Why is there ground to stand on, a sky to behold, and questions that never stop circling in the mind?
Though silly as they may sound, I find myself growing fonder of them.'
To be continued…