***
{Inside The Projection}
The Shams was a Goddamn monster.
It hung in the sky like a burning eye, staring down at Malik with nothing but hatred.
The wind howled low, and the heat shimmered in waves, twisting the air until even the sky looked like it was melting.
There were no words to describe just how hot it was… well, except one.
Jahannam.
Absolute and unrelenting Hellfire.
Malik sat beneath a rock’s shadow, wrapped in a massive white cloth that draped over him like a cocoon.
The fabric billowed with every gust, keeping the killing Shams off his skin.
It was too damn big, honestly, dragging a little when he walked, but out here? It was the only thing keeping him from getting roasted alive.
Only his face peeked out, and even that was wrapped in cloth.
It was a green scarf that left just his twin coins exposed.
The closer he got to the Edge, the more attention they drew.
It wasn’t that the people here found gold strange… no, well, at least not entirely.
But it was more about the fact that his eyes burned brighter, their gold intensifying into flickering flames.
There was no need to question why or how.
This indescribable heat touched something deeper—his soul.
His path of Fire and Blood.
Malik had gotten the cloth from the last village he passed, one of the few things they insisted he take.
“Going alone is suicide.”
“You’re not prepared for what’s to come.”
“The Edge is no place for a man without a caravan.”
“Even if you pass the trial, you’re not ready for the heat.”
“I see not a single Holy Relic on you, boy. Return after you’re prepared.”
He told them he’d be fine and just shrugged.
After that, he refilled his waterskin, thanked them for the supplies, and left.
He’d heard it all before; their words went through one ear and out the other.
Warnings didn’t mean shit if you didn’t have a choice.
Though now… standing at the world’s edge, watching the desert ahead warp into something unreal, he started to think maybe they had a point.
…Maybe.
The dunes used to stretch forever.
Endless waves of sand, rolling like the ocean, shifting with the wind.
A place where time didn’t matter, where footsteps were swallowed whole, leaving no trace, no proof you were ever there.
But here?
The ground ahead was breaking apart.
It wasn’t erosion, it wasn’t a storm—no, this was wrong.
The land had been torn open, ripped into floating shards, each one hovering midair like the pieces had given up on being part of the earth.
Some were small, no bigger than a man’s foot. Others? They were massive, the size of entire houses, floating in place, swaying slightly like they were caught in an invisible tide.
Gravity? Yeah, gravity didn’t live here anymore. At least not to the land.
He saw a stretch of sand rising and falling.
He saw a boulder, thrice the size of a mountain lion, just hanging in the air.
He saw chunks of old ruins still standing in the sky, defying every law that made sense.
And unfortunately, that wasn’t all.
The air itself was heavy.
It pressed down, thick with something unseen.
Not wind. Not heat. Definitely not gravity…
Aether.
The elders back in the village had whispered about this place.
“The Shattered Dunes.”
A Graveyard of Laws.
A place where reason broke apart, where the rules that held the world together didn’t quite work the same anymore.
Some said it was the battleground of the Malāk.
Magi of such ranks were so powerful that when they clashed, reality itself fractured beneath their feet.
Their fights left scars that never healed and left the world in pieces.
Others, however, believed something else.
“It is a trial.”
“A test from the True Sultan.”
A place that stood between men and their ambitions.
A place only the worthy could pass.
A place that had swallowed countless souls who weren’t.
Whether that was true or just old stories, he didn’t know. Didn’t care.
He just needed to get through it.
Malik took a long, slow drink from his waterskin, eyes fixed straight ahead, mapping out a path.
“Alright then…”
He tightened his grip on the cloth, adjusted the scarf over his face, and stepped forward.
Arba’in. His pilgrimage to Godhood… It had only just begun.
A cruel man flexed his fingers.
“Scorched Grace.”
Heat flared under his skin, simmering in his bones, coiling in his hands.
Fire materialized below his palm, swirling, twisting, tightening, a vortex of golden flames compressed down into something sharp and dense.
He held it there, wound it tighter, tighter, tighter—until it was a pressure he could barely contain.
Then—
Boom!
He let it loose.
The flames burst from his palms and launched him forward faster than ever before.
What was just below him didn’t just shift—it erupted.
Sand exploded in every direction, a miniature storm that kicked up in his wake.
He had his arms tucked in, body loose, moving with the momentum instead of against it.
The wind screamed through him, dry and hot, clawing at his clothes, whipping at the fabric.
Just as he neared the peak, gravity caught him.
Tried to drag him back down.
He denied it.
Boom!
Another blast.
More fire erupted from his palms, propelling him forward just before he started to fall.
Malik didn’t stop there.
His boots slammed onto the edge of a floating chunk of sand, uneven from the way it had been torn loose from the world.
He barely paused before he kicked off again, using his fire to push himself off it.
Malik ensured his momentum remained as he reached another chunk.
Then another.
And another.
Each one was different.
A challenge in and of itself.
Malik landed on a floating dune, his boots sinking slightly before he moved again.
Fire shot from his hands, sending him up, forward—onto a floating staircase of sand.
Right. Staircase. Fine grains, packed just enough to hold form, but not enough to be real.
The steps floated in the air, twisting upward, scattered like some Malāk had decided to build a stairway mid-stride and then just… left it hanging there.
Malik didn’t stop to wonder. Didn’t hesitate.
He stepped, jumped, soared.
One, two, three, four—
Each time, the sand shifted beneath him, unstable, ready to collapse.
He moved faster.
His fire continued to roar.
He blasted through the broken world, tearing across floating ruins, shifting dunes, stepping on places that shouldn’t exist.
It was working pretty well…
At least until the whispers started.
‘Life, Depravty, Death, such a saccharine fragrance!’