***
{Inside The Projection}
Pain.
Nothing else existed. No sky. No ground. Just pain.
It ate through me, burned through me, melted me down to nothing but agony.
Every inch of my body was screaming, but I had no mouth to scream with. No voice to cry out. No air to breathe. Just undiluted torment that gnawed at my nerves like starving beasts.
I floated in a dim red darkness, an ocean, twisting and pulsing like a living thing.
It was everywhere. Inside me. Outside me. I tried to move—
I had no limbs.
I tried to breathe—
I had no lungs.
I existed, and yet I did not.
My view warped and distorted, shifting like I was trapped in an endless earthquake.
My senses cracked and shattered.
There was something crawling through me…
Something slithering inside this formless prison I had become.
A sensation so vile it made my nonexistent skin crawl.
It was like my very essence was dissolving into the dark.
Right… It wasn’t just pain.
It was something deeper, something worse.
I was unraveling, twisting apart thread by thread, burning away into nothing.
I could feel those pieces of myself being lost, and yet, I didn’t fear for my life.
Why?
Why was I so calm?
Even as I burned, even as my being was devoured, even as I lost the shape of who I was—I didn’t feel afraid.
I was conscious, but strangely disconnected, as if I were both here and not.
My thoughts were much the same.
Blurred, foggy, slipping through my fingers like sand.
They drifted in and out; I’d feel them scatter as soon as they appeared.
Images flashed, memories I couldn’t grasp.
A caravan. Laughter. A fight in a bazaar. Sinbad calling me ‘Big Brother.’ Layla smirking. Safira rolling her eyes. Jasmine’s sharp wit. Huda’s childish warmth.
Names.
Faces.
They swirled in the abyss, weightless, without form, vanishing the moment I reached for them.
Emotions flared with each passing vision—warmth, sorrow, anger, regret—but I could not hold onto them.
There was no saying otherwise…
I was going mad.
Am I some kind of demon?
Was I human once?
What did I used to do?
What’s my purpose?
The answers danced at the edges of my consciousness, taunting me, refusing to be caught.
The longer I drifted, the more I unraveled. The more I lost myself. But then—
Something stirred.
A spark at the core of my being, a whisper of warmth in the endless cold.
It fluttered, faint but persistent. An unyielding pulse.
My second heart.
I felt it, beating against the darkness, defying the nothingness trying to swallow me whole.
I latched onto it, clung to the rhythm, let it anchor me as the void howled in protest.
The moment I focused on that single, undeniable truth, I started coming back together.
I felt it—
Bones, hard, they wove themselves around my center, piece by piece, forming a frame that shielded my fragile core.
Ribs, spine, limbs—each one clicking into place like a puzzle rebuilding itself.
Then came the web of nerves, the tangled highways of sensation knitting themselves back into place.
A frame built from memory, from will, from sheer stubborn refusal to die.
Then organs, pulsing, throbbing, slotting into the cage of bone as if drawn by instinct.
Lungs, eager to fill. A stomach, hollow and waiting. Muscles coiling like serpents around the framework, layer by layer, knitting me back into something real.
The crawling sensation returned, racing over me like a thousand tiny ants.
Skin.
It wrapped around me, stretching, reshaping, sealing me back inside my own flesh.
I shuddered, the sudden weight of existence pressing down on me.
My senses slammed back into place, overwhelming, suffocating.
The silence was gone—
Thump… Thump… Thump…
I could hear my heartbeat, the rush of blood, the crackling of something unseen.
My lungs burned as I dragged in a breath, ragged. And that was when I felt it.
Thick. Heavy. It clung to my body, floating around me like ink in water.
A substance I didn’t quite understand, yet somehow… knew.
It flowed through me, through my veins, my muscles, my bones.
Something deeper than blood. Something primal. Something ancient.
Aether.
The word rang through my mind, setting my nerves alight.
I… remembered that now.
The core of my strength.
The power I’ve wielded.
The force that had carried me through every battle, every trial.
It was inside me.
It was me.
My essence.
Jahannam.
I inhaled, my chest rose, my body whole once more—but I was not the same.
I have stepped beyond something, neared a threshold I could not name.
The darkness still loomed around me, shifting, alive, waiting.
And for the first time, I wondered—
Was I supposed to come back?
Or did I claw my way out of something that was meant to keep me?
The air stirred… Was there air here? Did any of it matter?… No.
Before I could form a proper thought, a whisper slid through the void, curling around.
“COME.”
I gasped—my first true breath—and my eyes snapped open.
I was standing in a darkness, staring at the pitch-black distance.
Nothing seemed to have changed… but now at least I was more conscious of myself.
I could clearly recognize that I was whole.
Some parts were still missing, however.
My ‘memories.’
I had lost them. All of them.
‘Emotions’ were there, the edges of memories, but that was all.
The only thing I remembered was ‘running’—running towards this ‘darkness,’ towards salvation, as the ‘Shams’ tried to burn me alive.
I had reached the ‘shadows’ at the last possible moment, just before ‘death’ could sink its ‘claws’ into me.
And then…
Then what?
My ‘breath’ came in ragged gulps as I forced myself to remember.
I could not.
My ‘body’ felt foreign, like it wasn’t entirely my own.
My ‘hands’ trembled as I lifted them, inspecting my ‘fingers,’ my ‘palms.’
The ‘scars’ weren’t there… the ‘burns.’ The proof of my ‘pain’ was gone.
They robbed me of my ‘truth.’
‘I need to get it back.’
But before I could even think of a way to do so, whispers crept unbidden into my mind.
‘Where am I?’
‘This is scary.’
‘Is this it?’
‘Just darkness? Where’s the—’
Then, as if it were a script, every voice spoke the same thing at once.
‘Who am I?’
‘Who am I?’
‘Who am I?’
‘Who am I?’
I, for a reason unknown, ‘smiled’ excitedly at that.
‘…’
But then my face turned… plain?
It wasn’t the usual coldness I showed, but a simple face, devoid of anything.
As if I were a ‘newborn.’
‘Who am I?’