Whisperer.
Angel had once seen this term in a book. It referred to a group of believers who sacrificed their spirits to ancient gods and gained mysterious powers, able to drive people mad through whispers by their ears.
At the time, Angel had even mocked it. Weren't whispers by one's ear just nagging and rambling? Anyone would get irritated with someone endlessly droning beside them. If it was the brainwashing sort of religious droning, given enough time, it would probably drive a person insane.
So he had never believed that whispers were such a powerful force.
Until now.
Angel felt as though his head were about to explode. All kinds of eerie whispers poured into his ears, not only irritating him but also sending his mind reeling. Countless colors brimming with malice drifted before his eyes: the gray-white of brain matter, the black-red of dried blood, the greasy yellow of corpse fat, the blue-green of shattered organs... Accompanied by the whispers, these colors grew ever deeper, even taking on horrifying images that pressed down on him, endlessly flashing past his eyes.
Angel did not know whether the Whisperer was behind it, but these whispers truly made him want to go mad.
The reason for this was the statue in the center.
When Angel had raised his head earlier, he had happened to see the central statue slowly begin to move. After a series of cracking sounds, its wings gradually spread open.
As the statue moved, Angel heard those whispers.
The whispers seemed to come from a distant, decaying world. He could not hear them clearly, yet their mind-clouding, madness-inducing effect had not diminished in the slightest.
Angel did not know what the whispers meant, but this power that seemed to sweep straight through his sea of consciousness made him feel