[Would you like a short break? Your life’s second volume, ‘For Whom The Bells Tolls,’ has concluded.]
A beat.
‘Yes.’
Ding!
That stupid, familiar sound repeated, reenacting his first ‘break.’
What followed was the Script, right in his mind’s eye, taking over everything.
{Felicitaciones. Gratulerer. Herzlichen Glückwunsch. Parabéns. Поздравляю. Gratulacje. Félicitations. 祝贺. おめでとうございます. Συγχαρητήρια. Chúc mừng. Tillykke. ¡Enhorabuena!. Mazal Tov. مبارك. Badhai Ho. Čestitamo. Gratulálok. Õnnitlused. Apsveicam. Tahniah… Congratulations.}
‘Sure, sure.’
With that, Malik was a soul again, floating high above his body.
Everything was the same, or so he thought at first.
He could feel it.
His soul was stronger.
It was like he was being rebuilt from scratch.
Before he started all this, he was mortal, no different than any other dreg you could find in the streets.
But after the ‘first volume?’
He had Ascended. Becoming a Magi.
Now, with the ‘second volume’ over, he was a Nadhir, an Al-Saif, just like the Malik of so long ago.
It seemed that the Divine Rank of his soul aligned with his memories, going up as it did.
He was nearing his goal of escape, and it wouldn’t take much longer.
Nine days of suffering in the real world and a couple of hundred years in the projection… not too much of a price for freedom, right?
Well, he’d actually say so.
Malik completely stood by that.
After all, to him, freedom was priceless.
The fact that it was achievable was enough to keep going.
In other times, he would’ve smiled at the news, knowing that he wasn’t being cheated.
Happy that his suffering wasn’t useless, that it wasn’t only for ‘Her’ entertainment.
And yet… right now he was as blank as a stone.
While he had become Malik and Malik had become him, this embodiment was still affecting him. Quite a lot at that.
Sure, though it wasn’t at the level of the previous Malik, he too began to see… things.
Illusions of the mind.
The crowd underneath him wasn’t just a crowd.
They’d glitch out, show themselves as things they were not.
Things that he had no words to describe.
It wasn’t all bad, however.
A massive creature near the front took most of his attention.
Oh, the owl. His soul-bound pet and lifelong companion.
He looked so bright, so beautiful… so fluffy.
It was technically the first time they met, but Malik had missed him so damn much.
Seeing him still alive almost brought tears to his eyes. Almost.
The owl’s company soured his mood, though.
Huda, that brat, not deserving even a feather on its body, was leaning on it!
‘Who the fuck does she think she is?!’
If he could, he’d get back in his body, break those chains, and start beating the shit out of her with them as weapons.
But, of course, even if he could, the other half of him that still loved her would stop him from doing so.
It was who he was now… a walking, breathing, living contradiction.
Shaking his head, he looked back at the crowd.
‘Most of them left… did they get bored or something?’
Shrugging, he turned towards the projection, no… rather, to his body.
‘And you… Why were the memories that you gave me incomplete?’
He wasn’t talking to himself but to the previous Malik.
‘Falling Into Depravity… Corruption… only now do I understand it.’
‘A-After Jasmine… her Fall.’
‘Still, not everything is clear. There are gaps; I can see them now.’
Malik could see it… as obvious as the twelve moons in the night sky.
All memories related to corruption were locked, as if time-gated.
He’d need to reach that point in his memories to fully remember them.
Why? There had to be a reason, right?
And, as anyone would expect, there was. A pretty obvious one.
Just as his Divine Rank increased the more he embodied, his knowledge did so as well.
That kept him alive.
Malik shouldn’t be directly exposed to anything too far beyond his Divine Rank—any knowledge, technique, or even event.
Mere words relating to such things would Corrupt his soul, never mind entire memories.
Of course, that wasn’t only applicable to him.
It applied to all of humankind.
Eventually, every mortal or low-ranking Magi on Devil’s Maw would end up Corrupted.
The planet would be overrun.
They will die.
Roya had doomed herself and everyone around her without even knowing it.
Or… his system might just skip those scenes, censor the knowledge.
The latter made a lot more sense when the system’s creator was considered.
Lady Of Time.
Would the death of all Blackeyes benefit her? He didn’t think so.
And there was no way she’d do anything “just because.”
Beings like ‘Her,’ who Ascended their way into Godhood, were too calculative for that.
Of course, there’d be outliers even within ‘Their’ fold but from what he saw of ‘Her’ so far, ‘She’ was not one of them.
“Shit is never simple, huh?…”
Letting out a non-existent sigh, he closed his eyes shut.
Whatever happened here was none of his business.
If they died by hands other than his own, maybe his soul wouldn’t force him to cry to death.
“Bassorāh.”
{Note: Going back now would mean you’d stay in the void for a little while, unable to listen or see the outside world. Is that acceptable?}
Raising a brow, he waved away the Script.
“…Why?”
It came back.
{The third volume is being prepared. It can’t resume until it reaches a perfect standard.}
He rolled his eyes, not caring for whatever hidden meaning was behind those words.
“I don’t care… just let me rest for a bit.”
{Understood.}
His world went dark.
***
Unknowing of his struggle, the hall remained quiet, stuck in position as if their time was as frozen as the projection.
Almost everyone had a guess or two about what was going to happen, believing themselves to be smart.
But this… it came out of left field.
So unexpected that half of the crowd’s jaws had hit the floor.
Sure, it ended in the same result, a misunderstanding. A lie that they were made to believe. One which technically resulted in their guess being a correct one, but the method of reaching that end differed completely.
Malik didn’t abandon her; he wasn’t too injured to move, and he didn’t get lost.
It was way simpler than that.
Way crueler.
It just… stunned them. One second they were celebrating his success… and the next?
This. Whatever this was.
Though, as was expected, not all the Magi felt the same.
A hardened group was more interested in the incredible feat they just witnessed, not his arrest.
“Did he just break some reco—?”
“Yeah, yeah, he did! That was what? Fifty worms?!”
“Fifty-two.”
Someone corrected, voice dripping with awe.
“He didn’t even slow down in the storm. Did you see that move? He flipped over one, stabbed the other mid-air, then rolled like it was nothing!”
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“And that blade—oh man, that dagger was singing. It was this close—this close!—to full fusion with his Scorched Grace or whatever he called it.”
“Close? Are you blind? The Sultan was practically there. He only needed someone to nudge him an inch in the right direction.”
“Yeah! The blade was crying out for a proper sync.”
“His stamina was surprising too! How is he even standing after all that? I swear, you can’t compare any other Saif with him.”
“Man’s built different. He’s powering up fast. Too fast. It’s insane.”
“But then the Faraja had to show up.”
A random interrupted their parade bitterly.
“Talk about timing. They didn’t even wait for him to catch his breath.”
“Yeah, what the fuck was that? He just saved her—Lady Safira—and now this?!”
“It’s straight-up bullshit, that’s what it is.”
“Who even snitched on him?!”
“Doesn’t matter, you heard those accusations. Murder? Ruin? Defying the Divine Order? He’ll be in the dungeon for long.”
“I mean… he didn’t do anything wrong. The slave trade wasn’t banned back then, but still, the way they went at it was unethical, to say the least… They had it coming.”
“Sorry guys, whether you like it or not, his actions were against the law.”
“Whatever man… He’s been through enough already. When’s he gonna catch a break?”
“When the world stops screwing him over, that’s when.”
“And… L-Lady Safira? What now that we’ve found out the truth?”
That brought a pause, their eyes glancing at the group up front.
They couldn’t see what was happening over there as Safira’s camp surrounded her like earlier, ensuring privacy, but they didn’t really need to.
Anyone could guess by now that her appearance was a miserable one.
“…Yeah. Knowing the truth after so long must hurt. Especially after throwing around those accusations.”
“Can you blame her?”
Another voice chimed in, quieter this time.
“She thought he abandoned her. Left her to die out there in that storm.”
“She didn’t see the worms! Or what he did for her!”
“How could she? She was too busy fighting for her life!”
“Exactly! He was protecting her the whole damn time. She just… didn’t know.”
“It’s just unfortunate. All her life she thought he was some backstabbing bastard when the truth couldn’t be further from that.”
“And now… when she knows, it’s already too late.”
“The Sultan is gone.”
While that group reached a silence that was too heavy to be broken, another grew interested in the title drop.
“Did you catch that? For Whom the Bell Tolls.”
“Yeah, what’s up with that? This Ten Commandment picked an easy one last time. I don’t get this one. It’s weird.”
“It’s not weird. It’s poetic.”
Another chimed in, arms crossed.
“There’s a deeper meaning to it.”
“Deeper meaning, huh? Like what? The Sultan cultivated, killed a monkey, cultivated again, let its family go, killed more monkeys, killed slavers, rescued slaves, taught, killed a Roc, lost a little sister who crushed on him, taught again, killed sandworms, saved Lady Safira, and then got arrested. What’s a bell got to do with any of that?”
“It’s not about the bell itself, genius. It’s a metaphor. You know, like how church bells ring when someone dies or when judgment’s coming.”
“Okay, but why call it that? He’s not dead—yet—and the Faraja showing up wasn’t exactly divine judgment.”
“I think it’s more straightforward… the bell tolls for everyone. Nobody escapes it.”
“Yeah, okay, I get that, but still, what’s this uh, a Ten Commandment trying to say?”
“Think about it.”
A middle-aged man replied, leaning forward while stroking his beard.
“The Sultan killed slavers, right? Scum who deserved it. But the law doesn’t care about who they were or what they did. It only cares about the act. Killing’s killing. The bell tolls for everyone. Even them.”
A murmur rippled through the group as the realization sank in.
“That’s… harsh.”
“Harsh, but true. The law doesn’t pick sides. Doesn’t matter if you’re a hero or a villain. When it’s your time to answer for what you’ve done, you answer.”
“Still feels wrong, though.”
A woman spoke softly.
“He saved slaves… Our Lady Safira! He did the right thing! And now he’s the one getting judged? Where’s the justice in that?”
The old man smiled.
“Maybe that’s the point… Justice isn’t perfect. It’s blind.”