{Outside The Projection}
“It’s done.”
“…”
“…”
“…”
“…”
“…”
“…”
“…”
“…”
“…”
“…”
“…”
“…”
For a moment, there was nothing.
Just silence.
Then—
“WHAT THE HELL DID WE JUST FUCKING WITNESS?!”
The room detonated.
Voices crashed into each other, shouting, losing all sense of control.
Noor’s command for silence? Forgotten. Crushed beneath the sheer weight of what they had just seen. There was no holding back. There was no staying still. Every single person who had just witnessed that projection was losing their minds.
“Holy—HOLY SHIT!”
“HE PICKED UP A GATE!”
“A WHOLE FUCKING GATE!”
“A STEEL GATE! AS A JINN, AN AL-NAQI!”
“HE THREW IT LIKE IT WAS A DAMN PEBBLE!”
These young men screamed their lungs out, hands clutching at their heads like they were trying to keep their brains from exploding.
“FORGET THAT! NIGHT OF THE KITTEN? WHY DIDN’T WE HEAR ABOUT ANY OF THAT BEFORE?!”
“DID YOU SEE HOW HE FOUGHT? HE JUST—HE JUST—HE—”
Words were failing them.
“HE WAS FLIPPING A FUCKING ARMY!”
One man wheezed, gripping his robes.
“THIS WASN’T EVEN—this wasn’t even a damn battle.”
Another gasped, shaking hard.
“He began hunting Jinn as well.”
“A man who only just became one was fucking hunting them, just…”
“How?”
“This’s a story that shouldn’t be real.”
“Hah! And then he spoke to that bastard—”
“Told him his life’s work made God puke! Ahahahah!”
“Felt that shit in my soul.”
“And then he just—”
Someone else swallowed, breathless.
“Just—”
“Ended it.”
A woman murmured.
“Ended the war with one cut.”
That was it.
That was all it took.
Malik, covered in blood, had walked into that place, spoken words that could shatter steel, and ended it. Ended everything with one single, clean strike.
“His words…”
A man breathed.
“What he meant when he said—when he said—”
“Your God’s love is not unconditional.”
A ripple of silence spread.
That line.
That one line.
It had buried itself into their chests.
Into their skulls.
“‘He’ doesn’t love me.”
People swallowed. Shifted. The energy in the hall had changed.
It wasn’t just awe anymore. It was something heavier. Something depressing.
To anyone else, it might seem like just some cool line, which it was, but truly, it was way more than that.
Malik wanted a justification for all he had gone through.
A justification for all the tragedy, all his incredibly bad luck.
Something to ease his mind. Make him accept it. Feel better about it.
It was… it was too much.
People had gone from shouting to whispering, and now they just—
They didn’t know what to do with themselves.
For a while, no one spoke.
And then, a man’s voice resounded:
“What about the Battle of the Gate?”
That question came from the silver-bearded man.
He deemed it disrespectful not to name such a legendary battle. And everyone around him seemed to agree, as they all nodded their heads.
The hall slowly returned to life, buzzing with everything they had just witnessed.
But soon after, they froze once more.
Duban.
Safira.
The ones the crowd expected to be celebrating, at least, they…
Their faces showed pure terror.
Duban was trembling, his teeth biting into his bottom lip until blood stained his golden beard.
Safira was shaking, whispering “No” under her breath, over and over, her hands gripping her arms so tightly it looked like she might tear into her own skin.
“What—”
Layla started but wasn’t insensistive enough to ask.
Besides, she didn’t need to.
The answer was right in front of her.
It was right in front of them all.
Duban and Safira weren’t horrified by what was to come.
The “betrayal.”
No. Instead, they had realized something.
Something that was breaking them apart from the inside out.
Something that they hadn’t dared consider before now.
This ‘legend’ before them…
It wasn’t what they remembered.
This had never happened. At least not in the way that it was shown.
And, at that moment, they understood.
Malik had blinked.
***
{Inside The Projection}
The war was over.
It was won.
Malik stepped out of the mosque, his boots dragging blood across the floor.
The caliph’s head—his severed, mangled head—swung from the end of his sword, his eyes wide open, his face locked in a permanent expression of disbelief, frozen forever in the exact moment he realized he was finished.
There was no coming back from that.
Not for him. Not for anyone who stood in Malik’s way.
The city was theirs.
It would never be threatened again!
Soldiers began to crowd around their key to victory.
They were ready for their cry of triumph.
Ready to tear the sky open with their roars.
It was coming. Just a second longer, just a moment more.
But before that could happen, a figure appeared through the smoke and debris, barely visible at first but impossible to miss once he stepped into the light.
Nasir.
Their commander.
But he wasn’t his usual self.
His face was a mess of sand and sweat, his robes torn and singed.
Behind him was a ragged line of warriors, all of them barely standing.
They were a damn mess—Duban, matted with red; Safira, her eyes hollow.
Uncle Jafar limped forward, looking more like he’d just crawled out of Hell itself.
And then, the others.
Jamal, Farid, and Bahir—Jinn who’d fought their asses off, exhausted but proud.
But the real surprise, the one that nearly stopped Malik in his tracks, was Fariq.
The old man was covered head to toe in blood.
There was nothing heroic about his sight, but…
That was the kind of grit Malik respected.
That was the kind of warrior who earned his place.
The line of them didn’t say a word as they approached.
They didn’t need to. Their presence said it all.
Without a word, without any hesitation, they all dropped to their knees.
It wasn’t a show. It wasn’t some kind of ceremonial display. It was real, and it was earned.
A moment of respect.
Not just for Malik—the man who won them this war—but for everything they’d all gone through. All the blood, the pain, the loss.
“Here I am, O Stranger!”
A roar resounded.
“Here I am, O Stranger!”
A fist struck a chest.
“Here I am, O Stranger!”
Another followed.
“Here I am, O Stranger!”
Then another.
“Here I am, O Stranger!”
“Here I am, O Stranger!”
“Here I am, O Stranger!”
“Here I am, O Stranger!”
“Here I am, O Stranger!”
“Here I am, O Stranger!”
Hundreds of men, clad in dust and dried blood, pounded their second hearts, their voices rising into the sky.
“Here I am, O Stranger!”
Malik exhaled, feeling the weight of it all.
The blood on his hands, the corpses littering the streets, the smoke curling from burning buildings—it was done.
“…Here I am, O Stranger.”