Ahead, below, to his left, and to his right—everything had shifted.
The flat plains that once stretched endlessly were gone, replaced by a vast sea of dunes.
They rose and fell like frozen waves, towering high enough to block any distant landmark.
During and after that change, Malik’s feet had yet to pause.
He just kept walking as if detached from the world, weaving between the dunes.
His eyes, meanwhile, stayed fixed on the general direction of the lighthouse.
It was his only constant in this place—a pinprick of light promising salvation… Or maybe death.
He didn’t care which.
As long as it led him to them.
The bastards who ‘killed’ Sinbad.
“Ugh—!”
A bolt of pain echoed deep in his mind.
Thinking about Sinbad hurt too much.
‘…Damn it.’
The sound of his laughter, the way he’d trail behind like a cute little chick—always smiling, always talking about the dumbest of things.
Gone.
All of it.
Because of them.
‘Damn it all…’
With that thought, he clenched his fists and forced the memories down.
He couldn’t afford distractions, not here.
Especially not now.
The next day arrived and with it came the scorching heat.
Malik could handle the cold—he’d gotten used to it in the cave, and nighttime above wasn’t much different.
But this heat was something else entirely.
It had been bad enough on the streets of Zawaya, but out here, it was turned up tenfold.
And it didn’t let up—not once, not a flicker.
Time really felt like a joke down here, one that Malik wasn’t laughing at.
But then, as if to further reinforce his thoughts, it blinked, just like earlier.
Day turned to night in what seemed to be an instant, and with it came the dreaded moment.
“…Midnight’s here.”
Though Malik had no watch of any kind, he knew when it arrived.
He felt it in his bones—the creeping tension in the air that made his skin crawl.
Thud-thud-thud!
It hit, but not as smooth as last time.
The ground beneath him rumbled, the horizon shimmered, and the darkness beyond the sky rushed at him in an instant.
Or rather, he was rushing toward it.
Malik stumbled but quickly caught himself, his hand going to his shamshir on pure instinct.
Not that it would do much against whatever the Hell was happening right now.
When the shaking finally stopped, the world had completely changed.
The dunes were gone.
In their place, jagged mountains shot up like broken teeth, towering into the darkness.
“Damn—right on top of a mountain? Really?!”
He let go of the hilt and adjusted his belt, scanning the area for another route.
Unfortunately, there was nowhere to go but up.
Though, at least the lighthouse was visible now, peeking through the craggy peaks.
A weak consolation, but one nonetheless.
“Fuck it… I’ll play.”
The climb was brutal.
Every step felt like a battle, his boots slipping on loose rocks, his hands raw from grabbing at jagged edges.
The air grew colder the higher he went, thinner too, each breath barely worth the effort.
Hours—or maybe minutes, who could tell—passed, and Malik finally reached the top of a ridge.
He collapsed onto his back, arms spread out, chest heaving as he stared up at the black, starless sky.
And then, like a tease from the universe, the first lights of the Shams broke through.
Warm. Golden. Annoyingly hopeful.
“…Day ten.”
It didn’t hang around for long.
With a grunt, Malik rolled to his side and forced himself back up.
The light dipped behind him as if it knew better than to follow.
And then, just like that, the world shifted again.
The jagged mountains fell away in chunks, like someone smashing a fragile clay model.
In their place? A never-ending sea of snow, blinding white and stretching into forever.
Malik laughed dryly, the sound bitter.
“I’ll get there…”
His steps crunched against the frozen ground, his silhouette slowly swallowed by the frost.
“Somehow.”
That word marked the beginning of another distortion.
Time seemed to warp, moving at ten times its normal pace.
Every night brought a new landscape, a new obstacle to face.
Frozen tundras, dense forests, wet swamps.
He adapted, relying on his wits and whatever scraps of energy he could still muster.
His gourd was nearly empty, but even that didn’t seem to slow him down.
And yet… invulnerable was one thing that he was not.
One day, the shifts succeeded in messing with his head.
Malik began to see Sinbad—not just flashes from his memories, but full-blown illusions.
He’d walk ahead of him, laughing like they were just strolling through a park.
“Stop it… You’re not real.”
But of course, they didn’t stop.
Sometimes, the illusions felt like a mercy—a rare, fleeting gift of normalcy.
Sinbad’s laugh, the way he’d roll his eyes when Malik said something stupid, the warmth of his presence—it all felt so real.
Other times, they twisted, becoming cruel—distorted echoes of his final moments.
To keep himself from drowning in those nightmares, Malik had his nails dig into his palm.
Pain was his anchor, his tether to reality—a habit he was way too familiar with by now.
A ‘slight’ bit more than he’d like.
“Focus. They’re waiting for you at the end. Keep moving.”
Weeks passed—the endless shifts blurring together, an ever-changing landscape.
Morning, nights, how many times he’d nearly died.
He lost track of all that was.
It was all the same shade of dull.
Until suddenly… it wasn’t.
Hope.
Just there, right ahead of him.
A color so impossibly vibrant it nearly malfunctioned his brain.
In the middle of this Godforsaken frozen wasteland, surrounded by a sea of white…
“That’s…”
Was a patch of green.
It stood out more than the lighthouse itself.
“That’s it…”
His heart slammed in his chest.
“My way out.”
Malik ran, pushing himself harder than he’d ever thought possible.
He no longer felt the pain in his legs, the hunger gnawing at him, or the fog in his mind.
His body was screaming for him to stop: rest, eat, drink, collapse, die, die, die, anything.
Malik wasn’t listening.
Midnight loomed, the world holding its breath, waiting for the shift.
“…Almost there!”
With every desperate stride, the patch of green grew closer, but so did the tremors beneath him.
His vision started to tunnel, his muscles beyond shot, but he kept pushing, refusing to stop.
Step after step after step after step after step.
Tick after tick after tick after tick.
Breath after breath after breath.
“RAAAH!”
With one last, desperate burst of energy, he threw himself forward, no different than a lion.
Behind him, the world began to change, starting from the edge.
Clack!
The edge of his foot clipped something solid, a rising hill of green.
It spun him around, sending his back collapsing onto the soft grass.
His chest heaved from the impact, lungs scraping for air, every breath a battle.
While he neared death, the rest of the frozen wasteland did the opposite.
It melted away into something new, something alive.
And for the first time in what felt like forever…
“Haaaah…”
He didn’t care.
He wasn’t in survival mode.
Malik had made it.
He just lay there, eyes staring at the dark sky, a heavy weight lifted off his shoulders.
It felt like a dream, too surreal to be real.
“…Heh.”
And then, out of nowhere, he laughed.
“Hahahahaha.”
Not a laugh of joy—nothing that simple.
It wasn’t exactly pleasant.
A laugh of an injured victory.
A sound scraped from the bottom of his soul.
“Yeah…”
For the first time in so long, he could finally stop running.
“I’m still alive.”
Even if just for a moment.
***
{Outside The Projection}
The hall now had little activity within its chambers.
Those near the projection were entirely quiet, ‘each their own.’
Most of the crowd, meanwhile, was still reeling from what they’d just seen.
“…Man’s got more heart than most of us.”
A voice chimed in at the beautiful scene displayed before them.
“He didn’t stop. Not once. That’s wild, man. People don’t fight like that. Especially when they’re so damn tired. Gotta give respect.”
“I’d’ve died in that snow after the first shift. No way I’m dealing with that crazy shit.”
A laugh echoed from the back of the hall.
“Right? The Sultan’s like a rock, man. You break him, but most of him still stays together. Comes back even stronger.”
“I can’t even imagine what was going through his head back then.”
“Those hallucinations, eh…?”
“But hey, he still made it out.”
“Yeah, but for how long? At one point he’ll get help. There’s no way otherwise.”
A new voice piped up, almost concerned.
“That last laugh… It wasn’t the laugh of someone who won. It wasn’t relief, either.”
“He’s been through Hell and back multiple times…”
Some random replied confidently, acting like he had Malik all figured out.
“I don’t think he remembers what winning is.”
To his right, a woman shook her head.
“No… I think… I think it was just him realizing that surviving isn’t the same as winning.”
A few people nodded, some still unsure, others getting it, rejecting it.
It was like Malik opened some crazy door no one was ready to walk through yet.
The atmosphere in the hall shifted again, the crowd quieter now, reflective.
There was room for argument, yet no one spoke out of line.
That shit was real.
More real than anything they’ve seen in ages.
Something none of them could deny, no matter how dumb they might be.