***
{Outside The Projection}
Every time they thought things couldn’t possibly get worse…
They were proven wrong, again and again and again.
One could’ve heard a breath.
One could hear people blink.
That was how dead quiet it was.
The massive hall felt like a graveyard.
Thousands just stood there, mouths open. Eyes wide. Breaths held.
And it wasn’t only them.
Fam Iblis, too, was a graveyard.
Their eyes couldn’t leave their Sultan’s face.
His smile.
It haunted them all.
Never in their lives had they seen such an expression.
An alien unfamiliar with anything human could’ve mimicked a smile and pulled off a more believable one.
This… it was just strange. An expression that didn’t know what it wanted to be.
Somewhere and everywhere in the world, men and women of all religions kneeled.
They whispered one thing in unison:
“…God have mercy.”
The hall, unfortunately, was given none.
They were expecting more horror to pour out of the projection.
As if that thing might reach through the veil and drag them in too.
But IT didn’t. It didn’t.
It just remained paused, glowing faintly with Malik’s last words.
“Your Fall has ended… Sleep.”
Many gasped loudly, like they’d only just remembered how to breathe.
Women fell to her knees, sobbing. Young ones clung to their robes, shaking up a storm.
This was a nightmare.
This was a nightmare.
This was a nightmare.
“…What the fuck.”
That broke the tension.
Voices rose. Not loud. Just murmurs. Confused. Shaken as all Hell.
“Wait—how?”
“No, seriously, how are Lady Safira and Duban even alive?!”
“I thought—wasn’t Corruption… permanent?”
“It is. Everyone knows that. The Sultan c-confirmed it.”
“Time doesn’t matter. Not with that filth.”
“Right. You can blink all you want—it doesn’t undo Depravity.”
Heads turned. Whispers grew louder. Eyes narrowed.
“So if they were Corrupted, and a Blink can’t fix that…”
Safira and Duban.
They stood like stone statues.
No expression. No words. No movement.
Not blinking.
Not breathing.
“…How are they still alive?”
A shudder passed through the crowd like a ripple in a poisoned well.
But then, something else took their attention, relieving them from this dilemma, if only for a moment.
The second wave of looks had come.
They turned—almost as one.
To Noor.
The Light Empress.
One of the ones who had insisted on watching this… show.
The one who pushed for the unveiling of Malik’s memory to begin with.
The one who kept quiet as everyone gasped, wept, vomited, and whispered prayers to God.
Now? Like the other two, she was stock-still, chin up, but her jaw was clenched so tight it looked like she’d broken a few teeth.
Everyone with half a brain in that hall knew the truth.
She was cornered, stuck between the Devil and the Deep, just like Malik was back then.
Because if she said she didn’t know what Al-Ayan, HER OWN FAMILY, was planning?
That she had no idea about such an elaborate assassination attempt?
Then, she was absolutely and utterly incompetent.
And if she said she did know?
Then, she was complicit in the greatest crime of any age.
She’d completely oust herself as evil to the general public and make an enemy out of Devil Maw’s Fairy and the Twelvers in their entirety.
Either way… this would hurt her massively.
“She knew…”
Someone hissed.
“The bitch knew what Al-Ayan was planning.”
“She was part of it.”
Another spat.
“Let them all rot just to kill one man.”
“No—no, wait. Maybe she didn’t—maybe she couldn’t—”
“Oh, shut up. She’s Al-Ayan’s! She knows everything that happens in her dominion. If she didn’t act, that means she didn’t want to.”
“She let them die.”
“She let Malik face that thing.”
The murmurs rose, fast and angry, swelling up.
“Traitor!”
“Monster!”
“Blood-draped liar!”
Someone threw a sandal.
It didn’t even make it halfway to her.
Just plinked against some sort of invisible dome shielding her with a pathetic thud.
But that was the last straw.
Noor’s lips moved.
Once.
“Quiet.”
It wasn’t a shout. Wasn’t even loud.
But the word echoed across the hall like thunder.
Pressure dropped, a mountain across the crowd’s shoulders.
Dozens. Hundreds collapsed to their knees on instinct, snapping on contact.
Spines bent. Heads bowed. And their world buckled.
Some tried to resist.
Their legs shook. Their mouths opened. But no words came out.
Every throat dried in an instant. Every scream died before it could be born.
They fell like wheat beneath the scythe, groaning, gasping, clutching their chests while blood trickled from their noses.
That was Noor’s kind of power.
No flame. No sword. Just gravity made manifest.
She stared down at them all. Her honeyed voice wrapped around razors:
“I have allowed your grief.”
She paused.
“But I will not allow your foolishness.”
Her dark eyes burned through her veil.
“Speak again, and I will see if your tongues still work without the rest of you.”
Not a sound.
“You think the Sultan had choices?”
Not even a breath.
“You think I did?”
Noor looked at them for a moment longer, and then…
“When you are given two evils, you don’t pick the lesser. You become the third.”
She turned back toward the projection.
Back to where Malik stood, alone in that hall of ghosts.
She said nothing else.
Did nothing else.
Just stared.
And maybe—maybe—if you looked close enough, you’d see her hand trembling just a little.
Like a coin caught mid-flip, suspended in air.
Between what she was…
And what she might become.
Those smart in the crowd realized a bit of what she had meant.
They still didn’t know the truth; perhaps they never would, but they knew one thing…
Al-Ayan decided that this tragedy was better than the alternative.
But what could be worse than a mass killing at a wedding?
Well… it was war.
They decided that war was worse.
And it left a foul taste in their mouth.
Not because it was unjust—but because it was true.
A few in the crowd, trying to hang on to their sanity, reset their minds.
It was such a disgusting thought they had reached; they couldn’t handle it.
They wiped the chalkboard clean. Blinked the blood from their eyes. Pretended it never was.
All of this was just too damn tragic.
But then…
It hit them.
And not like a slow realization.
No. This one came in like a slap to the face.
No, even worse.
They’d been blind.
But now their eyes wouldn’t stop making them see what was right in front of them.
An obvious truth that could not be denied.
“…D-Did the Sultan actually win?”