Malik crouched, heaving three onto his shoulders, then tried the fourth…
Thud.
They fell.
Despite his Nadhir Saif strength, he couldn’t balance that many.
These mortals, for whatever reason, were ten times as heavy as one might expect.
Ignoring that for now, he charged back toward the exit.
The fire roared around him, greedy, stretching claws of heat licking at his skin, biting deep.
It hurt. It hurt bad. But he didn’t stop.
He dumped the bodies outside. Turned. Rushed back in.
The next weight crushed him and nearly buckled his knees.
It seemed their current… state made their weight incrementally increase.
Perhaps it was due to the Corruption becoming something tangible within them.
Malik didn’t know and he didn’t care… his mind was more interested in saving them.
He never faltered.
Even as his arm bled, barely obeying, as his lungs shrieked, and as his vision swam.
Didn’t matter.
Didn’t matter.
Didn’t—more bodies.
More weight.
More pain.
More CORRUPTION.
DEPRAVITY.
More falling…
Falling.
Malik staggered, flames wrapping around his legs now, searing deep, but he didn’t even feel it anymore.
Didn’t matter.
Didn’t matter.
As he stumbled out with another two bodies, gasping, blinded by heat, he finally heard them.
Layla. Ali Baba.
Standing at the village’s edge, eyes wide, horrified.
“STOP! MALIK, STOP!”
He barely registered it. Just kept moving.
He had to get back in.
There were more.
More to save.
Ali Baba stepped forward, reaching out for him.
“They’re already dead!”
No. No, they weren’t. She wasn’t.
Malik dodged past him, staggering, limbs unsteady, flames still clinging to his clothes.
He had to go back.
Had to—hands grabbed him.
Held him. Stopped him. Pulled on his shoulder.
“Let me go!”
Malik thrashed, snarling.
“There’s still—”
“THERE’S NO ONE LEFT, MALIK!”
Ali Baba’s bellow finally cracked through his haze.
“Just look at yourself!”
Layla’s scream followed.
Malik took a moment and then…
He froze.
Unnaturally.
Like a puppet whose strings had been yanked taut.
The world caught up to him all at once.
The pain. The exhaustion. The burns crawling up his arms, peeling flesh like candle wax, his skin slick with something dark and wrong. His hands… weren’t hands.
They were black. Too black. Not burned. Not charred.
Something else. Something worse.
Something wrong.
This ‘wrong’ spread up his arms like veins of ink, pulsing, writhing, soaking into him.
Layla was crying his name. Ali Baba was breathing hard, gripping Malik’s shoulders so tightly he could feel the shake in them.
And the bodies?
They were dead.
All of them.
Had been dead long before he even set foot in that village.
Malik swayed, his feet shifting, barely keeping him straight.
Why?
Why did he do this?
Why did he need to save them so badly?
Was it because Sinbad asked him to?
Was it because they reminded him of Jasmine?
He didn’t know.
All he knew was one thing:
In his eyes, each body looked like hers.
Jasmine.
Jasmine.
Jasmine.
…He failed again. He failed to save her.
“I’m sorry Jasmine… I’m sorry.”
Malik opened his eyes wide and finally faced his employers.
His golden eyes… they were gone. Replaced by sheer black. Empty as the abyss.
Deep black lines spread from them like cracks in porcelain, crawling across his skin.
“M-Malik, t-t-this!”
“Malik, snap out of it!”
Layla and Ali Baba shouldn’t have come.
Their being here served no purpose other than to become a traumatic memory.
Malik’s head twitched. Then jerked.
His neck twisted to the right.
Crack!
No doubt broken.
But… he was still alive.
Still staring at them.
His left hand followed next, fingers bending, twisting, breaking—bones snapping.
But again. Malik was still standing.
Somehow.
Some way.
Even after the black lines spread, pulsed under his skin, moved slow and creeping, like something alive.
Even after his bones twisted, after his body cracked in ways no human body should.
Even after he moved wrong.
Even after he breathed wrong.
He was still here.
And the worst part?
Malik could feel everything.
Every crack. Every twist. Every inch of his own body turning into something else.
Layla was directly in front of him, gripping his shoulders so hard her nails dug in.
She was crying, screaming his name, shaking him like he could just “snap out of it.”
He couldn’t hear a word she said.
And Ali Baba?
He stepped back and just stood there, staring.
Tears ran down his face like he’d already seen this before. Like he already knew how this ended.
The weight of it settled in Malik’s chest, choking him.
He wanted to tell them to run. That this wasn’t him anymore. That he was already gone.
But his mouth wouldn’t move.
No.
No, that wasn’t right. His mouth did move, just not how he wanted.
His lips stretched into something that wasn’t a smile. Too wide. Too sharp. His teeth felt wrong in his mouth like shards of broken bone.
Layla recoiled.
A tear fell at that sight.
“I told you…”
Behind her, Ali Baba’s broken words resounded as he cried like a child.
“I told you not to get close to her…”
Regret marred his face.
“But… but I didn’t even listen to my own words.”
Layla had no idea what was happening.
Her mind was racing, her panic spiking.
And so, she did the only thing she could.
Ask.
“What?! Told him what?!”
She turned to her father, but he didn’t answer.
Clicking her tongue, she turned back to Malik, shaking him.
“Malik! Malik, tell me, what do I do?!
She gripped his shoulders hard like she could shake the Corruption out of him.
“What can I do?!”
Her voice cracked repeatedly. Desperate. Pleading.
Malik’s body spasmsed in response.
His black veins pulsed.
Then finally, his lips moved.
A whisper.
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“Kill me.”
Layla’s whole body shook.
“…No.”
“Layla. Do it.”
“No!”
She shook her head violently, gripping his face, forcing him to look at her.
“No. No, you don’t get to ask me that.”
Ali Baba, hands tangled in his hair, let out a stuttering sigh.
“He’s gone… He’s gone, Layla, you have to—”
“Shut up!”
Layla screamed, her throat burning from the force of it.
“He is not gone!”
Malik’s jaw clenched, his body shaking violently.
His lips curled like he was about to snarl, but his voice came out soft.
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
Layla’s nails dug into his face.
“Then fight, you bastard.”
Malik twitched, veins pulsing under his skin.
“…Please.”
He smiled at her.
“Just… kill me.”
Oh… how fate twisted.