***
{Outside The Projection}
The projection flickered. It froze.
And then, as was usual, the voices erupted:
“I… God, that was—”
“Impossible.”
“No, no, no—did you see?!”
“That number in the bottom of the projection?!”
“A dekil—A decillion! How many zeroes even is that?”
“When the Hell did we have words for numbers past a trillion?”
“Who even counts that far?!”
“I don’t think it was him… The Sultan himself didn’t know; the Ten Commandment was the one doing the counting. That was why it kept contradicting itself.”
“More importantly—he crawled? For that long? Just—crawled? HOW?”
“Forget the crawling! Did you hear the whispers?”
“The Sultan heard them all! Every last one! And they didn’t break him!”
“How long did you last?”
A voice suddenly cut through the commotion.
Silence fell, and for a moment, no one wanted to answer.
“Ehh…”
One man scratched his head, avoiding eye contact.
“Five hundred years. Maybe six. I don’t remember much after the first hundred.”
“Hah! Six hundred? I barely made it to four hundred!”
“Tch, amateurs. I lasted eight hundred.”
That last one held a proud smirk.
“Eight hundred? By God—! I barely made it past two hundred!”
“I thought I was doing well at three hundred, but now…”
One of them sucked his teeth.
“Heavens, this is humiliating.”
“Humiliating?! Are you mad?!”
A man nearly screamed, gesturing wildly at the empty projection.
“He lasted a DECILLION years! That Sultan is no man!”
“…Decillion.”
Someone whispered, the word tasting foreign on their tongue.
“What even is a decillion?”
“It’s a one with… how many zeros?”
“I don’t know, but it’s at least thirty.”
“No, I think it’s—”
“Too many! That’s the point!”
“God, he should’ve returned to dust. No. He should’ve returned beyond dust. He should have forgotten his own name again. But he—he still remembered! Just what is he made of?!”
“Gold, probably. His eyes would’ve looked like coins if not for the burning bits.”
“Gold doesn’t last that long, idiot.”
“Fine, then—fire, whatever. The man isn’t normal!”
“I think we’ve established that long before now.”
“Jinn Al-Naqi…”
An elder murmured.
“The Pure Demon.”
A shiver passed through the crowd.
Most of them had gained such a title already.
But… to them, it seemed that only he was deserving of such a title.
They all felt entirely inadequate in comparison.
“Hah! Pure Demon, my ass!”
A loud, familiar, and thoroughly exasperated voice cut through the tension.
“You’re all missing the point!”
It was him.
The dumbass.
The one man still stubbornly waging a war against Malik’s legend.
A war that even the “hero” had abandoned, fearing a rebellion.
“Oh, for the love of—what now?”
Someone groaned.
“What now?! What now?! Are you all blind? Stupid? Or both?”
“Here we go again…”
“You’re all sitting here in awe, acting like you just witnessed the birth of some divine warrior—but let’s not forget one tiny, insignificant, minuscule detail—”
The boy took a dramatic pause.
“He, again, didn’t prepare a single damn thing! It’s not fucking inspiring; it’s just STUPID!”
Silence. Blinking.
“Are you serious?”
“Am I serious? Of course, I’m serious! I thought he might’ve bought something in the time IT skipped but no! He didn’t prepare anything! He just walked in! No plans, no strategies, no mental safeguards, nothing!”
“…And?”
“And?! You fucking—that’s not inspiring, that’s just stupid! Stupid-stupid-stupid! Do you all not realize how close he was to breaking?! He screamed at himself to die! He lost his body! His mind! And somehow, somehow he crawled through sheer dumb luck! You don’t call that impressive—you call that reckless!”
“And yet…”
The same elder hummed.
“He succeeded.”
The dumbass sputtered.
“That’s not the point! The point is—it shouldn’t have worked! None of this should have worked! We all trained for this! We all studied! We all built safeguards for our minds! And yet he, of all people, walks in blind, does everything wrong, and somehow—somehow—does better than all of us?!”
“…”
“…”
“…”
Silence.
Then someone snorted. Then another.
Then—laughter. Loud, wheezing, doubled-over laughter.
“God, he’s really mad about it!”
“Of course, he is!”
“He’s so mad, he’s foaming at the mouth!”
“I mean, he has a point! It was dumb! But it worked! And that’s what makes it even funnier!”
“A decillion years! Can you imagine? A DECILLION! My brain hurts just thinking about it!”
The dumbass threw his hands in the air.
“You’re all insufferable!”
“And you’re just salty!”
“Salty?! SALTY?! I’LL DROWN YOU IN THE TEN SEAS IF YOU DARE CALL ME SALTY!”
“Yes! God, you are the SALTIEST! The Sultan went in there, got cooked for a decillion years, and still came out fresh! And now you’re mad he didn’t burn!”
The dumbass turned red.
“He should have burned!”
More laughter came in response. More jeering.
“It doesn’t matter…”
The scarred women finally intervened, silencing them all with a single look.
“What matters is that the Sultan had conquered once more… our image continues to fall short before his.”
The laughter faded. Because suddenly, it didn’t seem so funny anymore.
Malik was no longer just a Sultan that presumably gained many a “Lucky Encounter” throughout his life.
No.
He, under their watch, became something more.
Something vast. Something unstoppable. Something far worse.
Far better.
And they had no idea what that meant for them.
At least not exactly. Even the dumbest ones could take a guess and land close enough.
But the ones at the front? Yeah, they knew. Knew exactly how this was going to go down.
They’d seen it before. That slow, ugly shift when a crowd stops cheering and starts questioning. When regular folk start whispering, then shouting, then pointing fingers at the very people meant to protect them.
Lords, Ladies—didn’t matter. The moment doubt crept in, the people turned, calling them blind, weak, useless. Not knowing—or caring—about the bigger picture. Whatever that even was.
Huda, leaning against her big birdy, let out a slow breath.
She was the first to speak, breaking the quiet they’d been holding onto since… well, since Ali Baba’s goodbye.
Goodbye. Yeah, that was a nice way of putting it.
They hadn’t talked about it. Not since it happened.
There was a reason for that. An obvious one.
Didn’t matter who they were, what they believed, or how many times they’d seen death up close.
Ali Baba was gone. And no matter their differences, no matter their pride, their disposition—
They mourned the loss of a great man.
“I did… Three hundred and twenty million.”
She rubbed the back of her neck like the thought physically pained her.
“That’s not too bad~.”
Azeem let out a low whistle, shaking his head.
“Is it?”
Huda scoffed, folding her arms.
“Seems like a joke now.”
She looked over at Malik, still sitting there, on the throne, a place seemingly made for him.
“I thought I was losing my mind in there. Turns out, I was just a toddler crawling through the dust.”
Layla, still sniffling from earlier, wiped at her eyes furiously.
“Three hundred million… I only reached two hundred.”
None of the group judged her for that relatively low number. None scoffed.
If anything, some looked almost envious that she’d only had to endure that much.
Then Roya spoke, her voice steady as always:
“A billion.”
Heads turned.
Safira blinked.
“What?”
“I lasted a billion years. Barely remember anything.”
The hall shifted, some looking at her with quiet respect, others with horror.
Throughout their history, a billion years was a mountain few could climb.
“Not bad…”
Azeem, cross-legged still, looked at her with interest and a lazy grin.
“I expected more, though.”
Noor leaned her floating throne forward.
“Ten billion.”
“…”
“…”
“…”
Silence.
A deep, heavy pause.
Azeem let out a laugh.
“You’re serious?”
Noor met his gaze without flinching.
“Dead serious.”
He chuckled, shaking his head.
“Impressive.”
Then his grin widened, something smug curling at the edges of his mouth.
“Twelve billion.”
A murmur rippled through the hall, a mix of disbelief and admiration… mainly disbelief.
Safira scoffed, rolling her eyes.
“You just had to one-up her, huh, boy?”
Azeem shrugged.
“If the shoe fits.”
But before anyone could dwell too much on that, another voice rang out from the back:
“I reached a trillion.”
Many breaths were caught in the hall.
All due to the words of one man.
Zafar.
He stood there, arms crossed, leaning on a pillar.
Most only now realized that he’d returned to the hall.
The “hero” was silent up until now, watching, listening.
“…A trillion.”
Azeem’s smirk faltered, just a little.
Roya exhaled through her nose.
Noor sat up straighter.
Layla forgot to sniffle.
Huda didn’t give a single shit.
“I don’t…”
Safira’s voice trailed off.
“How?”
Zafar gave her a knowing look.
“Same way you did. One step at a time… and, well, a lot of luck. A lot.”
Azeem clicked his tongue, running a hand through his hair.
“Alright, I’ll admit it. You win.”
Zafar let out a dry chuckle.
“Of course I do… I’m the damn hero! None of you are a match for me!”
Their gazes came back empty—blank. Whatever admiration they had? Gone.
The bastard just had to brag. Couldn’t help himself.
Well, at least his men had shut up. After that whole explosive mess, they weren’t so loud anymore. Probably still rattled. Or maybe just too drunk to keep running their mouths.
They huddled together like a lost herd of animals, stumbling around, mumbling nonsense, not a damn thought behind their eyes.
Before anyone else could react further, their gazes all drifted—inevitably, uncontrollably—back to their Sultan.
A trillion was a number so large it shattered minds.
And yet…
Malik had gone beyond it.
Way beyond it.
Beyond comprehension. Beyond belief.
“How?…”
Safira gulped.
“How do you even begin to measure something like that?”
Layla shook her head.
“You don’t.”
Zafar, ignoring all that was around him, looked at the projection, eyes downcast.
“You walked past eternity, Villain… What did you find?”