***
{Outside The Projection}
The moment the name dropped—
“That’s her!”
The momentary stillness shattered.
“I heard it, right, didn’t I?!”
“No way—”
“So that’s how they met again!”
Excitement erupted like a spark had been thrown into dry grass.
Conversations exploded in every corner of the hall, overlapping, voices rising, half in disbelief, half in pure, unfiltered hype.
“Took him long enough!”
“Finally! Like, damn—how long has it been since he’s seen one of… them?”
“Much longer than usual, that’s for sure.”
“Guess that shows just how, well… tough his Pilgrimage was.”
That statement landed heavier than expected.
And suddenly, people were leaning forward.
The buzzing didn’t stop—oh, Hell no.
But now?
Now there was something else.
Anticipation.
Eyes glinted in the glow of the projection. Postures shifted.
People edged closer, like they didn’t want to miss a single second.
The ones who had been lounging around, arms crossed, looking casually interested?
Gone.
Those same men were standing straight now, focus sharp.
The women?
They had never looked away to begin with.
Like the men, many of them were grinning.
This was where shit got good.
Drama.
They loved it.
That last part wasn’t applicable to all, however.
A solid number of them dreaded what was coming.
Safira was the leader of these people.
Her jaw was locked so tight it could snap.
Before this… before his dream, she had been composed.
Had been still, impassive, accepting.
Or at least she tried to be.
Not anymore.
She couldn’t stop herself.
Not now that the past was clawing its way back into the light.
Inside the projection, Malik walked like he didn’t have a single doubt in the world.
Straight toward the east barracks, toward the Paladins, toward whatever trouble Safira had been dragged into when she first got there.
And outside the projection—watching herself, now hundreds of years older, her fingers twitched at her side, feeling something that infuriated her more than anything else.
“You alright, my Lady?”
A voice slithered close to her ear.
One of the commanders in the militia that backed her.
“…”
Safira didn’t answer. Didn’t look at him.
She just kept her eyes fixed on the projection.
At the man she once called teacher.
The man who had given her the strength to carve her own place in the world.
She wished she could hate him more than she already did.
She wished she could tear the memory from the sky, rip it apart with her bare hands, and crush it into dust.
Safira felt like she was there again.
And worse—worse than that—she remembered how she acted when she first saw him.
Just a glimpse of it made her shiver.
Malik had no right.
No right to walk back into her life, even in something as intangible as a projection, forcing her to feel all of it again.
The betrayal, the loss, the searing, ugly hate that had festered for years.
But also the love. The obsessive love that she couldn’t deny.
She had told herself she was over it.
That she had moved past it.
Accepted it.
But now—
Now she knew that she had lied to herself.
Still, despite all the hate that she began to feel, she’d never join in killing him.
NEVER.
She owed him her life, her everything.
He had given her that everything.
It was his to take away.
That was his choice.
And hers…
Hers was to accept it.
Whatever feelings that came as a result of that acceptance were to be kept locked within.
She had every right in the world to hate him, but none to show it.
Beside her, Nasir hadn’t blinked since a certain voice echoed.
He barely seemed to breathe. His hands clenched into fists, and his shoulders stiffened.
This was done subconsciously, as if he was forcing himself not to reach forward—to try and touch what wasn’t real.
Because there he was.
His father.
The previous Nasir.
Alive. Strong. Fierce. Leading, demanding obedience. And the people answered. Like they always had. Like Nasir, or, well, Duban once had.
His chest ached.
It had been so long, so long since he’d heard that voice.
So long since he had seen the man who once carried him on his shoulders, who once told him stories about the Twelve Great Ones, the Sultans, the Great Wars, the honor in their blood as children of Solomon.
His father had been a pillar that had seemed unshakable.
And yet, that pillar had fallen.
But here, in the projection, he hadn’t yet.
Here, he was still the unbreakable mountain he knew his father as.
‘I’ve witnessed your revenge go fulfilled, Father.’
Duban swallowed, throat thick, hands trembling.
He couldn’t blink. He couldn’t afford to miss a single second.
This here was his only chance to touch the past one last time.
***
{Inside The Projection}
Malik stepped forward, passing through the gates without resistance.
His presence turned heads, but no one stopped him or even questioned his presence.
The base was a tangled mix of large tents and much larger sandstone buildings, stitched together by narrow alleyways.
Every few steps, he passed groups of men sharpening their swords, fixing their arrows, or just staring—too long, too hard—like they were trying to figure out if he was trouble.
The deeper he walked, the louder it got. Laughing, arguing, and the clank of metal.
Malik moved like a man who belonged, like he knew exactly where he was going.
That was the trick. One must never stop, never hesitate.
Hesitation meant weakness. Weakness meant you were prey.
He scanned for any signs of the so-called Paladins, following the general direction the kid had mentioned—east.
The ground sloped downward, leading him through a row of merchants selling war spoils.
Bloodstained cloaks, rusted helmets, half-broken spears—things ripped from dead men.
And then he saw it.
A red banner, catching the wind.
And on it—a cross, bold and white.
A tree slithered around it, and above them both, an eye.
White.
Watching.
The kid hadn’t been lying.
“Creepy eye.”
Yeah. That had to be it.
Malik adjusted his robes and walked towards it.