Layla had left him.
Betrayed him in the one way that mattered.
She hadn’t even stayed long enough to see how much of himself he had burned away trying to keep her safe. How every step he took afterward was a slow march toward a death he would never be allowed to have.
Layla didn’t deserve to be called his wife.
She didn’t deserve to be called anything at all.
Her father was dead. Again. And she watched it, again.
She had been too late the first time. Blind.
Too cruel the second… too damn cruel.
And now, there was nothing left to do but stand here, knees shaking, stomach twisting, hands trembling like a coward.
“Haaaaaaaa—”
A sharp inhale.
She nearly collapsed.
A strong grip caught her.
Safira.
“…T-Thanks.”
Layla didn’t look at her, couldn’t. If she did, she would break.
Her body ached with the need to run, to crumble, to stop being, but she stood there, silent, watching the projection close its metaphorical curtains.
{Volume 4: I Saw a Dream}
The next volume began.
Unrelenting.
Merciless.
She bit down on her tongue, hard enough to taste iron.
At this point, after learning such an undeniable truth, Huda would have fought for him.
She’d have lost control and gone mad, even if she knew that death was just around the corner. She would’ve died to save him.
Layla?
She wouldn’t.
Because a part of her—the part that still wanted to be beside him—knew what no one else seemed to accept.
Malik deserved peace.
And if death was the only mercy left for him, then she wouldn’t be selfish enough to take that away.
Layla wouldn’t ask for forgiveness. Wouldn’t beg for another chance she hadn’t earned.
She would live. Carry this weight until it crushed her. And when her time finally came, she would find him—wherever he was up there.
Only then would she say what she should have said centuries ago.
‘I’m sorry.’
But even as she thought it, even as she resigned herself to it, something clawed at her chest. Something ugly. Something cruel.
Something selfish.
A thought. A whisper. A confession she had no right to voice.
‘Is it a crime if I… if I begin to love you all over again?’
Would it be wrong?
After everything?
After all the hatred, all the mistakes, all the years wasted on rage?
Would it be a sin to love him after she had abandoned him?
She shouldn’t. She knew that.
But God, she did.
She loved him in every way a person shouldn’t love someone they destroyed.
Loved him in the way that made her chest ache, made her legs weak, made her want to reach into that damn projection and pull him out, scream at him, shake him, beg him to look at her just once more.
But she wouldn’t.
She had lost the right.
So instead, she swallowed it down, choked on it, let it fester inside her like all the other regrets she would carry to her grave.
She wouldn’t say it.
Not yet.
Not until she could stand in front of him, not as the woman who had betrayed him, not as the wife who had abandoned him—
But as someone worthy of the love she had never deserved.
Zafar would’ve felt relief if he’d heard those thoughts.
If he knew Layla didn’t want revenge, didn’t want to fight, didn’t want to save her husband.
Maybe then he could’ve let go of some of that tension coiled up in his chest, the kind that had been suffocating him for longer than he cared to admit.
But he wasn’t there.
He hadn’t stayed to watch the introduction of the new volume.
Zafar had left the hall the moment Rehan was gone. Slipped out while everyone else was too stunned to move, too grief-stricken to say anything. He didn’t want to be there. Didn’t want to see how it ended. Didn’t want to look at Malik’s face.
He could feel their eyes on him as he walked.
The silent questions, the judgment.
But no one stopped him.
No one called out.
Good.
He didn’t have it in him to talk.
By the time he stepped outside, the Shams was crawling up the horizon, staining the sky with soft golds and burning reds.
Morning of the third day.
Zafar exhaled sharply and ran a hand down his face.
His fingers trembled when he pulled them away.
He clenched them into a fist, ignoring the way his nails dug into his palm.
Then, he looked up at that sky and muttered under his breath, voice laced with something tired, something bitter—
“Stop taking away all the reasons for me to hate you.”
Before him, Malik had learned.
First Volume: Guardianship and Responsibility.
That was where it started, wasn’t it?
Experience more on My Virtual Library Empire
Where Malik was still whole. Still himself.
Before everything cracked and bled and turned to dust.
Before Huda left… Before his little brother’s warmth left his Goddamn arms.
Before the weight of the world settled onto his shoulders, and he had no choice but to bear it.
Second Volume: Consequence.
The weight of his choices.
The lines drawn in blood, in regret.
The lesson that power came with a price, and that price was always paid.
Third Volume: Sacrifice. Acceptance.
Not of himself… but someone else. Someone he cared for.
A father.
It was the cost of survival.
Malik’s endless debts stacked higher and higher, never to be repaid.
And now… this new one.
{Volume 4: I Saw a Dream}
‘…’
Zafar stared at the title in the sky.
What the Hell did that even mean?
A dream? What kind of dream? Malik wasn’t the dreaming type. Malik was the kind of person who carried nightmares, not dreams. The kind who must’ve learned by now that dreams were fragile things. Easily broken. Easily lost.
And yet…
What would he learn this time?
Would it be another nail in the coffin? Another crack in what was left of him?
Or—
Zafar gritted his teeth, jaw tight, shoulders stiff.
Would it take something else away?
Would it strip away another reason to hate him?
Another reason to cling to all the bitterness, all the rage, all the things Zafar had carried for so long that he didn’t know how to live without them?
The thought unsettled him.
Because if he ran out of reasons, then what was left?
What the Hell was he supposed to do then?
***
{Inside The Projection}
For a while, Malik just sat there.
Listened to the sounds of the camp.
Listened to the sounds of the village.
The whispers. The looks. The flinches.
He wasn’t stupid—he knew how they looked at him now.
Layla… she was still knocked out. But he doubted she’d listen.
He doubted that she’d let him explain.
Because maybe she had every right to hate him for this.
As stupid as it might seem… maybe they all did.
Malik reached for his curved sword.
Just the feel of it in his grip sent a strange sense of calm washing over him.
The easiest thing to do would be to press it to his throat and be done with it.
Oh, how easy would that be? So damn easy. So simple. So straightforward his curse was.
But then, Ali Baba’s last words came crashing back into his head:
“Don’t… do… it.”
He took a sharp breath…
“Fuck.”
And closed his eyes.
No.
Not yet.
He let the sword fall from his fingers, let it hit the sand beside him.
One of them had to die.
Ali Baba or Layla.
And he had chosen.
There was no taking it back.
No changing it.
No fixing it.
Even if he went back—Hell, even if he tore himself apart and stitched himself back together ten million times over—it wouldn’t matter.
One of them would always die.
That was the truth.
The cold, merciless, unshakable truth.
It didn’t care how much he bled, how much he begged, how many times he clawed at fate with everything he had. It didn’t care how many times he screamed at the heavens, cursed God, broke himself trying to change it.
It was fate. And he…
He wasn’t strong enough to break fate.
No, he wasn’t powerful enough.
He wasn’t some grand, all-knowing being.
He wasn’t some divine force that could rewrite the laws of the universe.
He wasn’t an inevitability.
Malik was just… him.
Just a man who wasn’t enough.
That was why he didn’t go back.
That was why Ali Baba remained dead.
Certainly not because of some damn promise.
Not because of some dying words or an oath carved into his heart.
Damn the promise.
Damn his final memory.
Damn the way his voice still echoed in his head, the way his last smile still haunted him.
Damn it all.
“…Damn you.”
Malik exhaled.
“Damn you… damn you, damn you.”
His hands trembled. His chest ached.
“Damn you… oh, Rehan… damn you.”
His fingers curled into the sand beneath him. His grip tightened. His body shook.
“Damn you.”
A whisper. A plea. A curse.
“Damn you, damn you, damn you…”
His breathing turned ragged, uneven, like he was choking on the words, like they were clawing their way out of his throat.
“Damn you, damn you, damn you!”
His voice cracked. His head pounded. His vision blurred.
“Damn you, damn you, damn you, damn you, damn you—!”
A broken laugh, a sob, something twisted and ugly. He gasped for air, but there was none.
“Damn you, Rehan…”
His forehead hit the sand. His fists clenched. His nails scraped against the earth.
“Damn you.”
“Damn you.”
“Damn you.”
Again. And again. And again. Until the words lost meaning. Until all that was left was the hollow, empty sound of his own breath.
“…Ah. I’m so alone.”