Anomaly

Chapter 393 – Worship of the true gods [39]

(POV – Emily Parker)

After a few moments focusing on her breathing, slow, controlled, almost forced, and relying on the few mental stress-relief techniques she could still remember, Emily managed to pull together what little sanity she had left.

It wasn’t much. Not even close... but it was enough to keep her mind from completely falling apart. Unfortunately, regaining clarity also meant remembering. And the memories came back in cruel detail.

The vivid sensation of her body being slammed against the wall like something fragile and insignificant, the sharp impact, the overwhelming pain that seemed to tear through every fiber of her being, and the sound... that grotesque sound still echoed in the back of her mind. Even knowing she had somehow survived, her body still remembered, reacting with small, involuntary spasms.

Swallowing down the discomfort, Emily forced her thoughts forward. She began mentally reconstructing recent events, piece by piece, trying to extract some kind of meaning from the chaos. At first, there wasn’t much to hold onto. The reaction of the [Angel of Death] was still an outlier, intense and strangely personal, especially considering that the target of her discomfort had been just... some random crazy priest.

Or at least, that’s what it should have been. Emily frowned slightly as she revisited that detail. The priest’s behavior wasn’t exactly normal. Worshipping anomalies was already strange enough on its own, especially when those anomalies were entities like the [Angel of Death] and her sisters, whose very existence defied reason and common sense.

Still... she sighed, running a hand over her face, exhausted. In the end, Emily had initially dismissed all of it as just another case among many. A human who had lost their sanity after the string of anomalous incidents that had been piling up over the past few months. After all, it was practically becoming common. You’d be surprised how many people break when the world around them starts to fall apart and lose all meaning.

Finally, Emily exhaled slowly, as if that simple act was enough to seal her acceptance. Deep down, she knew, she had died. It wasn’t a guess or some irrational fear. She had felt the exact moment everything ended: the cold seeping into her body, the excruciating pain fading away... and then, nothing.

Even so, it wasn’t like the idea of death was unfamiliar to her. Considering the kind of work she did, facing a violent end had always been a constant and inevitable possibility. It was the kind of thing you learn to accept... at least in theory.

In practice? It had been horrible. Far worse than anything her mind had ever dared to imagine. And if she had a choice, would she go through that again? The answer came instantly, firm and instinctive: no.

Emily was absolutely certain she would rather stay dead than relive that pain with complete clarity, even if her body now seemed perfectly intact, functioning as if nothing had happened. But there was no room for that kind of reflection. Not now.

Emily narrowed her eyes slightly, forcefully pushing away the storm of thoughts threatening to drag her back to that moment. There was something far more urgent at stake. A completely unhinged priest was out there, chasing the anomaly known as the [Angel of Death] for reasons she still didn’t understand.

And that... that made no sense at all. Taking a deep breath once more, Emily forced herself to focus. Fear, pain, confusion, all of that could wait. Because above all else, she needed answers.

Running her hands impatiently through her hair, Emily let out a quiet sigh before abruptly turning toward the only beings who could, in theory, give her even a remotely satisfying explanation. Her fingers still tangled in her hair, as if she were trying to organize not just it, but the whirlwind of thoughts raging in her mind.

“Alright...” she began, her voice tight with tension: “Can someone explain what the hell just happened?” Her eyes narrowed slightly as she studied the entities in front of her, as if trying to rip answers out of them through sheer will: “How exactly did Laura and I come back to life? And more importantly...” she paused briefly, her jaw tightening, “why is there a priest with anomalous powers running around who apparently worships you like you’re some kind of goddesses or something?”

Emily’s tone wasn’t just confused, it was sharp, cutting, laced with irritation she was no longer trying to hide. Her hand slowly dropped from her hair, though her fingers still trembled faintly, betraying the lingering discomfort.

Dying... and then just coming back as if nothing had happened, no, that was nowhere near a pleasant experience. Her expression hardened as the thought settled in, her brows furrowing while a faint chill seemed to run down her spine.

“Damn it...” she muttered, more to herself than to anyone else, her voice low but heavy with frustration: “Why do these weird, completely insane things keep happening one after another?”

The last sentence came out dry and exhausted. At first, Emily scanned the surroundings, carefully analyzing the expressions of the anomalies around her, searching for any clue that might answer the questions piling up in her mind. But deep down, she already knew it probably wouldn’t make a difference.

Most of the anomalies didn’t even seem fazed by what had just happened, maintaining an irritating indifference, as if it were nothing more than another trivial event in their distorted existences.

Out of all of them, only one stood out in a noticeable way: the one referred to as the “Angel” with her angelic-looking wings and a figure that, at first glance, might suggest purity, though in reality, there was absolutely nothing angelic about her. She was the only one to show even the slightest visible reaction, her eyes narrowing for a brief moment, her lips forming a faint line of displeasure.

Even so, she didn’t seem truly concerned. What showed on her face was something more restrained, colder, a faint irritation, or perhaps more accurately, a quiet annoyance, like someone bothered by something they deemed beneath their attention. Despite that, she wasn’t the one who broke the silence. In the end, the one who responded, or at least offered a fraction of the answers Emily was seeking, was another figure. The elegant anomaly.

Emily remembered her well. It was impossible not to. The same one who, just a few months earlier, had caused a massive stir within the organization simply by walking through the main gate, carrying herself with the arrogant calm of someone who considered herself above any rule, as if that place, its defenses, its protocols, and its authorities were nothing more than irrelevant formalities.

“Hmph...” the anomaly scoffed softly, lifting her chin ever so slightly. As always, her gaze was proud, cold, and evaluative, and her presence carried an unsettling sense of untouchable nobility, as if she stood above everything and everyone.

“What an inelegant human...” she murmured, her brow faintly furrowing, though her tone didn’t carry outright contempt, rather something closer to a refined judgment: “But I suppose I can’t really blame him”

She slowly shook her head, strands of her crystalline hair sliding smoothly as a delicate sigh escaped her parted lips, a gesture both elegant and composed.

“Even order demands a measure of imbalance” she continued, her voice calm, almost instructional: “His devotion was strong... too strong. So intense that it crossed the line” Her eyes narrowed slightly, as if revisiting something distant: “And when that happens, devotion stops being faith... and turns into madness” She paused briefly: “The more he understood... the more he saw... the less he could bear the meaning of being human”

“Hmph” She scoffed again, but this time there was a visible edge of irritation in her expression, subtle, yet sharp: “And the way he seized those concepts...” she went on, a hint of disdain in her voice: “was completely unnatural”

Her gaze drifted across the surroundings: “Human bodies. Human minds. This reality...” she made a small, almost dismissive gesture with her hand: “none of it was meant to withstand concepts in their pure form... without a filter”

Emily wasn’t sure she was truly capable of understanding what the anomaly was saying. The words were laden with strange ideas, as if they belonged to a logic entirely different from her own. Still, amidst that tangled web of complex and disjointed terms, one thing became painfully clear: the situation was far, far worse than she wanted to admit.

“Isn’t that dangerous?” her voice came out more tense than she intended, laced with urgency: “We can’t let him lose control like this... If this keeps up, the entire city could be devastated. After all... he turned me and Laura into... masses of flesh” The last words seemed to linger heavily in the air, dense and unpleasant. Laura’s reaction was immediate.

Her body trembled involuntarily, as if that single phrase had pierced her mind and struck a still-open wound. Her fingers curled slightly, and for a brief moment, her breathing faltered, turning uneven. Emily noticed it instantly. But she didn’t blame her. She couldn’t.

She herself could still remember, could still feel, the grotesque distortion of their own bodies, the loss of form, of identity... the sensation of being reduced to something unrecognizable. It was the kind of experience that didn’t fade easily, no matter how much you tried to ignore it. So when Emily looked at Laura, she said nothing.

This time, it was the angelic anomaly who answered. Unlike her usual light and playful tone, her voice now sounded distant and cold: “Dangerous? No... not toward our sister. She’s not exactly what we’re concerned about” There was a brief pause, as if she were carefully choosing her words: “To us, he’d be about as dangerous as a small puppy would be to you” The comparison, delivered so casually, felt strangely out of place.

Laura reacted instantly. Her face, already tense, hardened completely in a matter of seconds, and her voice came out lower, carrying a concern she couldn’t hide: “Are you sure about that? Because that crazy priest looked pretty damn dangerous to me...”

As she spoke, her body twitched slightly. Her shoulders tensed, and her fingers clenched involuntarily, as if something invisible were brushing against her skin. She frowned, uncomfortable, running a hand along her arm as though trying to brush something away that wasn’t there.

“I... I don’t know how to explain it...” she muttered, her voice faltering for a moment: “But something feels wrong. It’s like there’s... something stuck to me” She swallowed hard. “A weird... sticky feeling”

Truth be told, Emily was feeling exactly the same as Laura. Her skin tingled uncomfortably, as if dozens, maybe hundreds, of tiny invisible insects were crawling just beneath the surface, moving across every inch of her body. Even so, unlike Laura, Emily clung to logic: this was nothing more than a side effect.

After all, turning into a shapeless mass of flesh and then returning to her original state wasn’t something the body, or the mind, could simply accept without resistance. Her brain was still trying to reorganize its signals, as if recalibrating a machine after critical damage. Even so, she remained silent.

Emily didn’t respond to Laura’s words, nor did she show any immediate reaction. Her gaze drifted slightly, fixed on an undefined point, while her mind raced at full speed. She was analyzing everything the anomalies had said, searching for some kind of logic.

Anything that might trigger an alert in Emily. A red flag. And the more she connected those fragments, the more an unsettling feeling grew inside her. A quiet certainty was beginning to take shape in her thoughts. Maybe... things were about to go very, very wrong.