Anomaly

Chapter 397 – Worship of the true gods [43]

The priest’s current state was simply deplorable. His body trembled unevenly, as if something inside him was constantly on the verge of snapping, and his breathing came in short, ragged bursts, harsh and painful to listen to. Even so, I couldn’t bring myself to feel any pity.

He hadn’t just tried to kill Emily and Laura, he had also turned his intent against me, resorting to a power that clearly didn’t belong to him, a power that should never rest in human hands. It was something far too vast, far too ancient... something that transcended any mortal understanding.

Even so, there was a certain irony to the situation as a whole. The priest himself seemed incapable of grasping just how unstable things had become. His eyes, once filled with conviction, now faltered, betraying a silent fear as he desperately tried to manipulate the concepts. But concepts aren’t tools. They don’t bend to brute force or to the arrogant will of whoever dares to invoke them.

Naturally, concepts answer to a single master: their respective origins. As far as I know, they wouldn’t even exist without my sisters. They were the ones who brought them into reality, who gave them form and purpose. From a human perspective, trying to contain or control them against their will isn’t just madness... it’s absolute blasphemy.

And at that moment, watching the priest on the brink of collapse, it became clear that the concepts themselves were beginning to reject him. Like a foreign organism being expelled by a living body, the power within him was struggling to escape, warping his flesh and presence in a grotesque way. He wasn’t in control. He never had been.

Sure enough, the side effects soon manifested across the priest’s body. His limbs twisted grotesquely, stretching beyond what any human structure could withstand, as though his bones had been melted down and forcibly reshaped.

His skin, once marked by time, now took on a pale, sickly hue, sagging like melted wax slowly dripping over a face that no longer seemed human. Every movement he made was unnatural, accompanied by dry, disjointed cracks, as if his own body rejected the transformation.

All of this was nothing more than the inevitable consequence of his own choices. There was no real reason to feel sorry for him, not after I had tried to warn him, not after he ignored every word as though he stood above any consequence. And certainly not now, after trying to kill me... and worse, after turning his intent toward Emily and Laura.

I can be merciful with humans. To some extent, I understand them, I used to be one, after all. I know how fear, desperation, and ambition can twist decisions. But there’s a limit. And he crossed it. I’m not merciful enough to extend a hand to someone who knowingly tried to harm those close to me. I’m not that naïve... and I don’t intend to become so.

My Alter Ego, who had remained by my side this entire time, showed no interest whatsoever in interfering with the priest’s fate. He simply crossed his arms, letting out a faint scoff of disdain, as if he had already foreseen the outcome and saw no reason to get involved. His red eyes, intense and burning, were clearly narrowed in the priest’s direction.

Deep down, that didn’t surprise me. After all, we were the same person. My Alter Ego rarely acted against what I wanted; most of the time, our wills flowed as one. The few instances I could recall where he acted even slightly against me always involved my sisters... and because of that, I could never truly be angry with him.

Thinking about it more carefully, perhaps it was the opposite. In all those situations, his actions had ultimately been for the best. So I didn’t mind his stance now. I had always felt that, in some way, my Alter Ego operated independently, not as an opposition, but as a colder, more strategic extension of myself. Someone who, even acting on his own, still sought my benefit in the end.

Finally, I brushed those thoughts aside like dust from my mind and turned my focus back to the priest. His body wouldn’t hold out much longer; each breath came shorter than the last. Between tearing the concepts out by force or allowing them to be guided out, the choice was obvious. The first option would be quick, yes... but also brutal, unstable, unpredictable. The second required control, and patience. I chose that one.

And so I did. Little by little, I began to feel the concepts emerging from the priest. It wasn’t clean or immediate. They still seemed trapped, like invisible chains refusing to give way completely. Even so, there was movement. It was like spending too long at the bottom of the ocean, pressure crushing you from all sides... and then, slowly rising... until, in an almost painful instant, fresh air finally fills your lungs.

I don’t know exactly why that analogy makes so much sense, but it’s the only way to describe what I felt in that moment. Still, something was wrong. The concepts... were agitated. Not in the sense of energy or vitality, but disorder. Unstable. Like cornered beasts on the verge of attacking. They vibrated irregularly, emitting an unsettling sensation. And that was definitely not a good sign.

My Alter Ego and I continued watching in silence, like two specters at the edge of the scene. For a brief moment, I believed this would be the end. From my perspective, the priest had already crossed every limit; his mind seemed shattered, drowned in a catatonic state that bordered on death.

His body remained still, save for occasional spasms, small and erratic, like the last remnants of something refusing to disappear completely. Naturally, as if fate were mocking me once again, my luck chose that exact moment to intervene.

In a sudden surge, the priest reacted. The light, if any remained, returned to his eyes in a sharp, unsettling flash, like a weak flame being fed by a violent gust of wind. His muscles, once rigid and lifeless, contracted violently.

“N-No! It can’t end like this!” The priest’s voice burst into the air, laden with desperation and hysteria.

The words came out dragged, viscous, as if each syllable struggled to escape his throat. It was a grotesque mixture: panic and sluggishness, fury and weakness, all distorted into a single sound. It scraped at the back of the ear... no, worse, as if that noise burrowed straight into the skull, scraping from the inside.

The priest’s body, now grotesquely swollen and twisted, no longer resembled the human form it once had. Bones seemed to shift beneath his stretched skin, forming jagged, unnatural protrusions. His voice, once steady and calm, had sunk into something monstrous and guttural, echoing like a profane whisper rising from the depths.

It was as if, with each uneven beat of his heart, something inside him gave way. The more his hidden desires surfaced, those he had spent a lifetime burying beneath layers of faith and devotion, the more his appearance deteriorated. But this wasn’t merely a physical transformation. It was a revelation.

A cruel unveiling of what had always been there, buried beneath discipline and pretense. His skin took on sickly hues, shifting between gray and purplish tones, while his eyes lost any trace of clarity, becoming dull, hungry... almost empty.

There was something deeply disturbing in the way his flesh rearranged itself, as if rejecting the very humanity that once defined him. He was no longer just a man changing... he was the living manifestation of his sins, taking shape before everyone’s eyes, a creature molded not by external forces, but by the darkness he had silently nurtured his entire life.

“My dream...! My ambition... I won’t let it go! I refuse!” Each word seemed to tear at his own sanity, as though he were clinging to the last fragments of himself.

The moment those words left the priest’s mouth, something unexpected, and deeply wrong, happened. A dark mist began to seep from his body, at first like a faint, almost imperceptible breath, but it quickly grew denser, more deliberate, spreading through the air like a silent predator.

It didn’t just move... it advanced, crawling through the air with hunger, as if seeking to devour everything around us, concepts themselves. The sight was deeply unsettling.

There was nothing welcoming about that mist, nothing even remotely familiar. Unlike the essence of my Alter Ego, whose presence, though strange, still carried a kind of natural balance, what emanated from the priest was... distorted. Deeper.

Heavier. Laden with an insatiable obsession, as though every particle of that darkness was infused with an ancient, cruel hunger, something bloodthirsty, something that should not exist on this plane. And then it became clear. Whatever he was trying to do... it was a terrible idea.

Concepts aren’t things you bind. They aren’t chains to be broken or beasts to be tamed. They exist beyond imposition, beyond brute will. They cannot be restrained, contained, or forced, and yet, the priest was doing exactly that. In that very instant, I felt everything collapse.

My plan... was falling apart right before my eyes, exactly as I had feared from the start. There was no room for error, and still, he had chosen the worst possible path. As expected, the concepts reacted. And this time... without hesitation.

The reality around us seemed to tighten, as if something invisible were being pulled to its limit, on the verge of snapping. There was no more caution, no restraint, only a raw, absolute response, indifferent to whatever means were necessary.

It was a pure counterattack, direct... inevitable. In the midst of that growing chaos, with the pressure becoming almost suffocating and the air itself growing impossibly heavy, a single thought formed in my mind, clearer than ever: There was no way this would end well.

***

(POV – Emily Parker)

Emily was absolutely certain she was going through one of the most stressful periods of her entire career. Containing strange anomalies? To her, that was trivial, routine, something she handled almost mechanically, day after day.

Stopping an anomalous object from wiping out an entire city? A predictable setback, the kind of crisis that came up at least twice a week, and one she dealt with as efficiently as someone who had seen far worse.

And preventing an anomalous entity from releasing a lethal virus capable of reducing humanity to a fraction of what it once was? Rare, no doubt, but still within expectations. A monthly problem. Dangerous, but manageable. Emily had dealt with scenarios like that before. She had seen entire civilizations nearly collapse, saved by a thread, and still walked away unscathed.

But nothing, absolutely nothing, compared to what she had been facing in recent months. Ever since the [Angel of Death] was discovered deep within the forest, something had changed. It wasn’t just the severity of the situation, or the level of threat involved.

It was different... deeper, more unsettling. As if some invisible force had begun to reshape the very flow of events. As if the world’s sadistic gears, once turning slowly and predictably, had finally awakened.