***
{Outside The Projection}
The hall was dead silent, except for the sound of a few hundred younger guild members retching into their hands.
Those near the projection had it the worst.
For whatever God-forsaken reason, the Holy Relic transmitted not only his memories but his pain as well.
Before they could get to a safe distance, where the pain could no longer be felt, many of their minds had become scarred.
They just couldn’t handle it, even those way at the back.
Every single person in that hall had been there, with him, and they heard every ounce of his agony.
All of it.
Malik’s desperate screams, his furious self-loathing, the pathetic cracks in his voice when his body just wouldn’t move anymore, his desperate fight to get up—they had witnessed it all.
The rawness of it. The bitterness. The sheer, unfiltered hopelessness of a man clinging to life by his fingernails only to get kicked down, over and over again.
It was simply too much.
And then… everything came to an end.
Gradual, sure, but to them, it felt sudden.
Especially Zafar. He expected Malik to gain some sort of ‘fortuitous encounter,’ not… not whatever this was.
A broken boy, beaten to death in a filthy corner of nowhere, dying with nothing but despair and hatred to keep him company.
No grand sacrifice, no noble end—just another corpse nobody would care about.
They didn’t know how to react to that.
The big bad “Villain.” The monster they’d been planning to kill for hundreds of years had died choking on his own blood while thinking of saving kids he met earlier that day.
Some stared at the ground, refusing to look at the projection any longer.
A few had tears streaking their faces, ashamed to wipe them away in case someone noticed.
Others—those made of colder stuff—looked pale and uneasy, like they’d just witnessed something they shouldn’t have.
Maybe they had.
Even the hardened veterans looked shaken.
These people were among the strongest of those on Fam Iblis, ones who’d braved the sixth layer of Al-Fawra and seen friends gutted like fish—but this?
It hit different.
Just ugly. Messy. It was a dog’s death, a rat kicked into the gutter, and they’d all watched it unfold, unknowing of how to react.
“Well, shit…”
Azeem broke the silence first.
Of course he did.
“That’s one way to go.”
He tried to keep his same energy but couldn’t; he sounded… hollow.
Even he was shaken to the core by all that was on display.
Layla glared at him, her fists clenched so tightly that blood began to seep.
Her golden, cat-like eyes glimmered—anger, grief, likely both.
“Shut your damn mouth.”
Azeem glanced at her.
“Hm? Oh, I’m sorry. Was I supposed to clap? Or maybe cry a little? Like everyone else here?”
Huda snapped her gaze to him, furious.
She took a step forward, moments away from attacking him.
“You heartless bastard. You watched that and still have the nerve to—”
“Stop.”
Noor’s voice sliced through the tension like a blade, halting her words.
She didn’t shout, didn’t need to, especially not with Roya backing her up:
“Bickering won’t change what we just saw.”
Ever the calculating one, she moved closer to the front of the hall.
Her hands were clasped tightly in front of her, her usual composed demeanor cracking ever so slightly.
“What we just saw… is undoubtedly real. It was an ending. His ending. And yet…
She trailed off, her blue eyes darting to Malik—or whoever the hell was sitting there, trapped in chains.
“Yeah, and yet, here he is.”
Zafar Al-Nadir’s voice broke through, stealing her thunder.
“What the hell does that make you?”
He pointed a finger directly at Malik with all the subtlety of a hammer.
“You’re supposed to be dead. I saw you die. We all did.”
Malik—or not-Malik—remained on his throne, dying as he was.
“…”
If they believed that he could respond, then they were surely mistaken.
“Dammit!”
Huda’s fury spilled over as she played back her memories.
The ones of their reunion.
Tears brimmed in her eyes, though she refused to let them fall.
“Was it all a lie? Was everything a lie?!”
No one answered her murmur; they had nothing to give.
“You screamed for us… In your last moments, you screamed. Not for yourself, but for us. You cursed yourself. You begged yourself to get up. You—”
Her voice faltered for the first time, but she quickly steadied it.
“You weren’t lying then. You weren’t faking that.”
She looked directly at him, her expression nearly broken.
“So who the hell are you now?”
Her moment was interrupted by the sharp clink of Noor’s golden goblet as she tapped it against her armrest.
“Who indeed?”
She tilted her head, her veil fluttering slightly as she considered the implications.
“Was that truly Malik? Or is this some convoluted ploy of his? He always did have a taste for theatrics.”
Layla was trembling. Not with fear, but rage.
She took one step forward after another until she was standing before the projection, glaring at it as though it might bring Malik back to life.
“He wouldn’t… Husband wouldn’t just die like that… He’s the one who caused all of this! He can’t… he CAN’T!”
“Oh, but he did, Madam Layla~.”
The hall’s tension thickened as Azeem chuckled softly.
“A shame, really. I would’ve expected MY Sultan to put on a better show.”
“Azeem… please, not now.”
Roya turned to him, eyes threatening quite unsavory actions.
“If you have nothing of worth to contribute, silence yourself.”
“…Of worth?”
Azeem smirked, crossing his arms as he looked at the one he used to love.
“Everything the Sultan did, every scheme, every massacre—every drop of blood spilled—is why we’re all here now. His death is your ‘worth,’ Roya. Don’t act like you’re above it.”
Safira, who had remained quiet until now, finally spoke:
“You’re all fools… Incredible fools. You think this changes anything?”
She gestured toward the projection, her hand trembling slightly.
“You seem to forget… but almost all of you stand here as his executioners. This conversation serves no purpose.”
Noor laughed softly, the sound chilling.
“Spare us the morality play, dear disciple~. You speak as though you’re untainted by him. Weren’t you the one who stood by his side until you couldn’t bear the weight of his actions like Madam Layla over there?”
“I betrayed no one!”
“I didn’t betray him!”
They both snapped, their once kind voices rising with an intensity that silenced the hall.
“I…”
Layla looked at Safira and continued:
“We left because we had no choice. Unlike the rest of you, we didn’t take up arms against him. We didn’t conspire to kill him. And yet…”
She paused, taking a deep, shuddering breath.
“We still mourn him. What about you, Noor? Do you mourn anything at all?”
“…”
Layla turned to Huda.
“And you! You were there, weren’t you? You were with him back then. How could you let this happen?”
Huda didn’t bother replying, understanding that this was just an emotional outburst.
Layla wasn’t dumb; everyone knew she didn’t expect anything from a child that young, even if she were royalty.
“Hahahahahaa!”
Azeem laughed aloud, never not confrontational.
“What did you expect her to do, Madam Layla? Pull a miracle out of her ass? Even if she was awake and did try something, the Sultan wouldn’t allow it. He’s the stubbornest bastard alive—ah, dead. Doesn’t matter. If he decided he was gonna die saving someone, that was the end of it.”
Huda looked down.
“…I would’ve done something if I could.”
She defended herself even though she didn’t need to.
“Hah! Those words sound real funny coming from you.”
Azeem attacked her as well, targeting everyone around him, holding back nothing.
“Don’t act like you weren’t ready to stab him in the back a second ago.”
“You…”
The tension in the hall continued to rise, each word exchanged like a drawn weapon waiting to strike.
Zafar was lost throughout it all, not knowing where to ‘strike,’ as supporting one would lose him favor with the other.
So, instead of doing that, he focused on the present:
“This isn’t about assigning blame or justifying actions. The Villain’s… or rather Malik’s death is a reality we must face. What matters now is understanding what comes next.”
“What comes next?!”
Huda’s voice was sharp, her anger finding him the perfect target to lash out at.
Zafar had failed before he could even begin.
As he momentarily retreated behind his group of yes-men, Huda took center stage.
“What comes next is that we find out who dared to impersonate my brother and why!”
Noor giggled once more.
“Oh, darling, don’t get ahead of yourself. For all we know, that was your brother, at least a version of him. It wouldn’t make sense for the Holy Relic to show us those memories otherwise. The Sultan we know was always resourceful. What’s a little death to a man like him?”
Azeem sat on the ground in a lotus position, his usual smirk nowhere to be found.
“She’s right, but still, this is one hell of a head-scratcher. Either he’s the Sultan, or he’s not. If he is, we’ve got questions. If he’s not, we’ve got even more questions. So how ’bout we let the memories talk instead of yelling at him?”
The hall fell silent once more, the echoes of their words lingering.
Malik’s death—or the illusion of it—had struck a chord none of them wanted to admit.
Grief lingered at the loss of a truly kind soul, kinder than they ever gave him credit for.
Anger simmered toward those drunk bastards who’d ended him so cruelly.
Guilt crept in for the way they, of the ‘Heroic Coalition,’ treated people like him, beggars—the ones they’d always dismissed as less than nothing.
And then there was suspicion over all that was happening, brewing just beneath the surface, ready to boil over at any second.
But, above all of that, one thing was painfully certain.
Whether Malik had truly died or not, even now, his presence loomed over them all, a shadow they could never escape.
…If only they knew the truth.
They would’ve realized that all this farce was for naught.
