***
{Inside The Projection}
The area between him and Nasir’s base was chaos on legs.
Sure, on the surface, it was your typical marketplace—jam-packed with vendors screaming over each other, kids darting between stalls like pickpockets-in-training, and old women squatting in the shade, selling clay pots of something that smelled like fermented regret and probably tasted worse.
But there was a difference. A big one.
Everyone here was a refugee.
No one had to tell Malik that.
It was obvious.
He saw it in the way people clung to their belongings, the way they flinched at sudden noises, eyes constantly darting toward the soldiers passing by.
He’d also heard it in the desperate edge of their voices.
“Finest Eastern carpets! Stolen fresh this morning!”
And the words themselves.
Malik didn’t even blink at that.
Because, first of all, no sane merchant would straight-up admit their stock was stolen.
That just wasn’t how the game was played.
So either this guy was a dumbass—or, far more likely, he knew that no one cared who he stole from. Which meant it was ‘rebel’ loot. Not local.
That was the unspoken rule here—no stealing from your own.
Anyone else? Fair game.
Dodging a rickety cart piled with rusty swords, Malik kept moving, weaving through the crowd.
The rug merchant shot him a quick glance, about to call out to him—maybe push a sale, but he paused.
Malik wasn’t about to stop.
He had somewhere to be.
The man respected that.
Yet, a hunched old woman did not.
“You! Stranger!”
A bony hand grabbed Malik’s arm.
“You look like a man who needs a blessing.”
She grinned up at him, her teeth black as coal.
“Protection from evil!”
She waved a string of dried scorpions in his face.
“Only two coppers!”
Malik raised an eyebrow.
“Evil’s the least of my problems, granny.”
She cackled.
“Not for long! The Al-Ayan dogs are coming! They’ll skin this camp alive! You’ll see!”
“I don’t want to see that.”
“Then buy my blessings!”
Malik barely had time to blink, let alone ask how the Hell that thing counted as a blessing, when a roar ripped through the marketplace.
“WHO ARE WE?”
It rang out strong, unshaken. A call, a declaration.
And almost instantly, hundreds of voices answered back, shaking the very air:
“NASER AL-SULTAN!”
Malik’s head snapped toward the end of the street, where a raised platform loomed beside a massive metal-gated compound—fortress, whatever it was, it spoke of power.
Atop it, a man stood, fist raised high.
He was tall. Commanding. Dressed in dark robes lined with gold.
His presence didn’t just demand attention—it seized it.
“WHO IS OUR KIN?”
The voices roared back without hesitation:
“SOLOMON, THE SUN!”
Malik exhaled slowly.
That name.
It echoed through history, through the veins of every Sultan, and through the battles fought over these lands.
“TO WHOM DOES OUR ALLEGIANCE LIE?”
“SOLOMON, THE SUN!”
It wasn’t just a chant.
It was a binding thread that wove through these warriors, through this army.
Loyalty. Devotion. The belief that they stood for something greater than themselves.
A belief so deeply rooted that it was carved into their very existence.
“AND TO WHOM DOES HIS DEVOTION LIE?”
“TO GOD!”
And then—like a storm breaking—
“GOD IS GREAT!”
“GOD IS GREAT!”
“GOD IS GREAT!”
It shook the ground. The air. The very bones in Malik’s body.
And as the final echoes of that chant faded, one thing was clear:
To them, this wasn’t just a war.
This was a crusade.
Something holy.
Something bigger than just land or power.
It was about legacy, bloodlines, destiny.
That kind of big-picture bullshit.
Malik had seen it before.
He knew the look in these people’s eyes.
The fervor, the fire.
It was the look of men who’d die smiling so long as they thought it meant something.
Malik hated those types of people… he didn’t doubt that they’d be annoying to fight.
Keeping his head low, he kept moving, trying to ignore the sheer wall of noise around him.
That was until an elbow jammed into his side.
“Again—?”
A teenager, dirt smeared across his cheeks, grinned up at him like they were best friends.
“You new?”
The kid asked, practically vibrating with energy.
“Gotta shout, man! Solomon’s watching from heaven!”
He pointed up like the sky was keeping score.
Malik deadpanned.
“Uh-huh.”
The kid snorted.
“Man, you got the spirit of a dead goat.”
Malik sighed, deciding to just cut to the chase.
“I’d like to meet your leader. Nasir.”
The kid froze mid-step, looking at Malik like he’d just announced he was going to eat sand for dinner.
“Our leader?”
“Yeah. The one in charge. He that guy on the podium?”
The kid scratched his head, then laughed.
“Oh man, you really are new, huh? You don’t just ‘meet’ him like that.”
“…”
Malik said nothing. He just stared.
The kid sighed, like he was personally suffering from secondhand embarrassment.
“Look, if you wanna talk to the biggest of big shots, you’d better be important, or real stupid. But, hey—if you’re dumb enough to try, you could always start with the Paladins.”
Malik tilted his head.
“Paladins?”
“Yeah, those freaks in the east barracks. Big tent, creepy eye flag—you can’t miss it. They’re the, uh, political shot-callers around here. Mess with ’em, and you’ll be seein’ colors that don’t even exist. Like, um, purple or something.”
“So they’re bastards?”
“Yeah, man.”
The kid kept going.
“They jacked General Safira’s Scrolls when she first came here—”
A casual mention.
A throwaway line.
Malik barely heard anything else.
His world had paused. Mind snagged on that name.
The name of his disciple.
“Who?”
The kid blinked.
“Uh, General Safira? She’s kinda a big deal. Thought you’d know—”
Malik grabbed him by the shoulder, not hard, but firm.
“Safira. She’s here?”
The kid squinted at him.
“Yeah, duh? Been here for a while. Why you—”
Malik let go, already moving.
“Hey—hey, wait up!”
The kid grabbed his sleeve.
“Yo, man, I wasn’t done! You can’t just roll up on the Paladins like some kinda dumbass! They’ve got Magi! They’ll fry your brain for fun.”
Malik tossed him a silver coin.
“Buy yourself a dagger.”
Then he walked away, his pulse suddenly a little too loud in his ears.