Malik dragged a hand down his face as his patience wore thinner than thread.
This had to be the thousandth try. Or at least close enough.
“What a fucking joke.”
Time had lost all meaning.
Days, weeks, months, years.
The cave became his prison, the Aether Core his merciless tormentor.
He tried everything: slowing his breathing, focusing his thoughts, whispering desperate prayers, cursing the True Sultan, and even some other gods he made up on the spot.
Nothing…
Just nothing worked.
Every time, the sequence was practically the same.
The whining hum. The burning heat. The implosion.
Another Blink. Another reset.
Back to nothing. Back to square one.
And yet, it wasn’t all bad amidst the endless loop.
It was ‘practically’ the same. Practically.
Because in truth, with every death, he learned a little more, gained another sliver of understanding.
The parameters, the point of no return, the ways to keep his damn core stable—Malik had pieced it all together like a crappy white-colored puzzle with missing edges.
At times, it held out a fraction longer.
Barely noticeable at first, but undeniable as the loops stacked.
The core’s pulsing had a rhythm, a pattern, tiny signals just before things went south.
When it was on the verge of rejection.
Usually, by the time he noticed, it was already game over.
But every now and then, if he reacted just right—focused his Aether at the tips of his fingers—he could delay the inevitable.
Delay. Not stop.
It wasn’t winning, not by a long shot. But it was progress.
Agonizingly slow, tear-your-hair-out kind of progress.
Eventually, the silence of the cave drove him nuts, so he started keeping track.
Not of the days—he’d lost sense of that ages ago.
He counted attempts.
By the time he hit four digits, he’d memorized every detail of the process: the hum of the core, the way the Aether flowed, the exact millisecond his Essence would rebel.
He adapted. Adjusted. Tweaked. Refined.
“Total attempt: three thousand, six hundred seventy-two.”
Malik sounded bored out of his mind, his golden eyes dull, lifeless.
“Increment increase: zero point zero zero six seconds. Local fail: one-oh-two.”
He sat cross-legged with the core balanced in his palms, throwing it from one to the other.
It was still as bright as ever, but its color had faded in his eyes—just like everything else around him.
The world felt drained like someone had cranked the saturation slider way down.
Though somehow, that wasn’t something that he noticed.
***
{Outside The Projection}
But that didn’t mean those watching the projection didn’t.
It was pretty hard to miss, and they weren’t about to stay quiet about it.
“Am I going blind, or does the world inside look… different now?”
“It’s not just you. The color’s fading.”
“Not just the color. It’s everything. The shadows, the textures, even the way the light moves.”
“It’s all… duller.”
A weird hush fell over the room as everyone considered the implications.
“The saturation’s tied to him…”
Someone finally said.
“To his soul. His… his will to live—”
“He’s still alive.”
Safira flinched, not realizing she was defending Malik until she heard her own words.
They were more for herself than anyone else.
It was what she most hoped to be true.
But Layla rejected her hope:
“No. He’s not. Not really.”
All eyes turned to her.
“Look at him.”
Her tone was way colder than before, knowing that what she was about to say was going to sting—twice as much for herself.
“His body moves, his heart beats, but everything else? It’s gone. He’s…”
She hesitated, struggling to find the right way to say it.
“…He’s a ghost. Alive in the most technical sense, but dead in every way that matters.”
“…”
“…”
“…Heh… ha hahaha!”
A nervous laugh broke the tension, surprisingly coming from Azeem.
“That’s a bit too dramatic, don’t you think? He’s still fighting, pushing. That’s not what a dead man does.”
“No.”
Layla’s sharp eyes never left the projection.
“That’s exactly what a dead man does. He fights because he has nothing left. No fear of loss, no sense of self-preservation—just… stubbornness. It’s all he has now.”
The projection flickered, showing Malik’s death, his body twisting, burning, imploding.
Then it reset, and he sat cross-legged in the cave like nothing had happened.
“He doesn’t even flinch anymore.”
Someone couldn’t help but murmur, interrupting Layla, but she didn’t mind.
Rather, she answered their unspoken question, using it to hit her point home:
“Because he’s numb… You saw how he looked at the core just now, like it was nothing. No hatred, no fear, not even frustration. Just… apathy.”
Noor, who had been quietly observing from her floating throne, nodded.
“It’s the grind. It wears you down, strips you bare. Until there’s nothing left but the motions.”
“But… why?”
Safira asked, trembling.
“Why keep going if he’s already… if he’s like that? Is avenging Huda really that important?”
“…”
“…”
“…”
“…”
“…”
“…”
The room went quiet.
No one seemed to want to answer, or maybe they just didn’t know how to.
Especially not Zafar, as he began to notice the jealousy in her tone.
“Because he doesn’t know how to stop.”
Though Layla was an exception.
It was she who knew him best.
“Stopping means giving up. And giving up… would mean admitting he’s already dead.”
As her words hung in the air, the mood shifted from simple horror and shock to something more complicated, making the hall feel heavier.
While the earlier spectacle of Malik’s suffering had churned stomachs, left some pale-faced, and others puking, the sheer grind of his efforts now inspired something akin to morbid awe.
Blink.
The projection flickered again, showing Malik cradling the core like he did Sinbad’s dead body.
His lips moved, muttering something under his breath, but his voice was too quiet to hear.
“Is he… is he talking to himself, or is it the same old?”
“Can’t say.”
“That’s survival. Or at least, what’s left of it.”
“Total attempt counts. Increment increases. Local fails. These are too.”
“Yeah, but for what, though? He’s not making any real progress.”
“Not true. Were you sleeping at attempt 6174? He held the core stable after its warning for almost a second longer.”
“A second? Sure, let’s hand him a trophy for that.”
“Stop hating, dumbass. You could never do this in a million years.”
“Sultan’s gone full-on mad scientist.”
“Mad something, that’s for sure. But can you blame him? I’d have snapped thousands before attempt number…”
The projection flickered.
“What is it now?”
“Seven thousand one hundred six.”
A scoff came from the back.
“Real inspirational. Except it’s obviously useless. Sultan’s mind went hollow.”
“Maybe… Maybe he is hollow. But a hollow man doesn’t keep going. He doesn’t grind himself to dust for a fraction of progress. He’d have quit after the first hundred resets. But the Sultan? He’s…”
The bearded man trailed off, struggling to find the words.
“Determined?”
Someone suggested, and he shook his head.
“No. That’s putting it lightly. This’s all just…”
***
{Inside The Projection}
Malik caught the core mid-toss, staring at it with a look that could only be described as jaded.
He pressed the core to his chest and took a deep breath, centering himself like some wannabe monk.
The whine started. Louder this time.
His core pushed back, fighting him with everything it had, but Malik didn’t flinch.
He just locked his focus in, forcing the Aether to flow evenly, ignoring the searing pain tearing through his body.
The pressure kept building and building, like a ticking bomb inside him.
Then—BOOM.
Death. Blink.
…
“Attempt… something something, ten, whatever.”
He muttered right after ‘waking up.’
Again.
His face was blank, his tone devoid of emotion.
It was just another number now.
Time?
Who knew how long it had been.
Years? Decade? Century?
No clue anymore.
He’d lost track of how many times he’d died.
Cared not about anything but the next damn try.
Same cave.
Same fucking routine.
Same cycle of life and death.
Just… Over… And over… And over.
But he never stopped.
It wasn’t in the cards for him.
Not then, not now, not ever.
Like his escape from the slavers…
His fall to Al-Fawra…
His fight for survival…
His broken crawl to the cave…
His acceptance of Sinbad’s death, the goodbye of Huda…
His begging, humiliation that defied anything he’d gone through…
His burying hands, tucking away what he couldn’t save…
His journey outside Althawul…
His hunt of the Qird…
Malik could NOT stop.
Not when he was this close.
And then… finally… FINALLY, after what he could guess to be another ten or so years of attempts—his soul-crushingly monotonous routine had a new addition.
“Attempt… something something something, twelve, whatever.”
Malik held the core to his chest, his hands trembling.
He was astronomically beyond exhaustion—no, that wasn’t even close.
His mind felt like it had been ground down to the atoms themselves.
Yet, somehow, some insane part of him kept going.
Because determination? That wasn’t enough.
It was just a cute little thing that didn’t mean squat when against this self-inflicted nightmare.
To make it this far? It wasn’t about willpower.
No.
This was something way more.
It was about pure, unhinged insanity.
The kind of madness that burned logic to ash and stomped all over reason
Or at least whatever ‘reason’ had remained—which, at this point, wasn’t much.
Thankfully, though, Malik still had just enough scraps of brainpower left to notice this ‘new addition.’
It wasn’t rocket science. It was stupidly simple. Only mechanically tough.
He started pulling Aether in tiny, timed increments—ten milliseconds at first, then twelve after every fourth pull.
And soon enough, the familiar whine began again, but this time…
‘Whoa.’
This time it was different.
It wasn’t as high-pitched, not as strained.
The pressure built, but it didn’t collapse like it always had.
It stabilized. Permanently.
The Aether flowed smoothly, filling his core. No resistance, no feedback.
It was like he was finally in sync with it.
Malik’s eyes widened in disbelief.
He could feel it—power surging through him, the heat of the Qird’s very essence merging with his own.
His body burned, but it wasn’t painful.
It was exhilarating.
This… this was something else.
“Holy…”
His voice was trembling.
“I did it.”
Finally, the core dissolved into his chest, its Aether settling within him like it belonged there all along.
Malik’s body shook—trembled from something new, something foreign.
Not pain. Not exhaustion.
For the first time in what felt like centuries, he was shaking from sheer, overwhelming relief.
He slumped back against the cave wall, feeling a weight being lifted off his shoulders.
After God knows how many deaths…
“I actually did it.”
Of a time he spent struggling…
“I really did.”
Of a time he spent grinding himself to dust…
He had finally done it.
Malik had succeeded.
“Finally…”
He let out a shaky breath, lifting his right arm.
His fist clenched tight, golden flames bursting out like they had a mind of their own.
Strength tore through him like a river breaking free.
And then, he let it all out.
Every ounce of rage, relief, frustration, and triumph he’d been bottling up.
“I FUCKING DID IT!”
The very earth beneath him began to shake.
For just one brief, fleeting second, Malik let himself feel it.
…Victory.
He let himself feel victory.