{Outside The Projection}
Again, again, again—the hall was stunned.
Always, they’d always be stunned.
Never would they not be stunned.
They had seen unfathomable monsters, curses, and entire Layers fall beneath Malik’s feet, but it seemed that finally...
Malik had met his match.
Whatever this was, it had them struggling to breathe.
What he did wasn’t win but survive.
He barely avoided temptation.
And, oh, was it not the cheap kind.
This thing—this Fallen Angel—it tried to claim Malik.
Tried to embrace him.
And even through the projection, it tried to do the same to them, devouring their Wills, warping them; perhaps it even saw them like the True Sultan did earlier.
The weaker ones in the crowd, in the entire world, their mortals, felt it first.
That whisper in their skulls.
Even now, after the projection had moved on, there were still people staring at nothing, sweating like they’d seen their own soul rot.
It prevented them from thinking objectively... from noticing the obvious.
After all, it had called Malik "child of Al-Assad," an ancient name.
One even older than Sulaymān, whose children they called Banū Sulaymān.
This was the very name one of those in the crowd mentioned as a joke when theorizing about Malik’s lineage not so long ago.
Malik was closer to the True Sultan in blood than nearly all of Fam Iblis, both in the past and in the future.
Yet they, who guessed this, didn’t know that.
They couldn’t, too swept up in what they had just seen.
Many wept uncontrollably, and not because of their broken minds, but because they were... sad.
Sad that they weren’t able to become one with the monument.
Some, who had more Will, had bitten down hard on their tongues, drawing blood just to stay present.
Others... had their heads bowed, locked in prayer, unable to speak.
Safira was the first of the strong to lower her gaze.
She didn’t dare look.
Duban had followed, eyes wide but unreadable.
Those two, as the leaders of Nasir Al-Sultan, had been through fire more times than they could count, seen miracles and madness in equal measure, yet were completely rattled.
Even Faqir, always the loudmouth, didn’t speak.
Those of Templar and the Twelvers...
This wasn’t just a powerful being.
It wasn’t just a Fallen Malāk.
This... was the False Messiah.
The Deciever. The one from the oldest warnings in their literature.
The one preachers screamed about every other day.
They were terrified...
Terrified of seeing him.
Terrified of hearing him.
They were only made further aware of just how insane Malik was to have resisted him while undoubtedly knowing who he was.
No, no, Malik didn’t only resist him.
They didn’t understand how.
They didn’t want to understand.
Because understanding would mean becoming like Malik, and that was terrifying.
That would mean staring back at a God-sized face made of bone and saying, "No."
How? How could anyone do that?
How much Will did it take to kneel at who you were deceived to think was heaven, feel his warmth, and then stand back up again?
They didn’t have answers.
But they did have fear and respect.
So much respect it hurt.
For the first time, some of them looked at the word Sultan and thought that it might not be enough anymore.
Because, well, the monument wasn’t always so big.
Over centuries, millennia, more.
Once, it was no bigger than the cathedrals down in the ribs, but upon Malik’s fall?
It was ten million miles tall.
A monument made of offerings.
It had fed on billions.
Trillions, many of them Mithqal.
They didn’t understand how anyone was supposed to conquer this Layer, and they couldn’t fathom just how many lost their lives to the monument, to him.
And Malik, out of all these people, was the only one who said no.
The only one who escaped.
The only one who made it bleed.
It didn’t matter to them that it still lived, still waited, and had likely absorbed many since then.
Only Malik was on their minds.
He wasn’t just their Sultan.
Maybe... just maybe...
He wasn’t far from being their God.
Soon, many might even start praying to him.
{Inside The Projection}
Malik, his skin already growing back, pierced through another threshold.
A veil of Aether that no longer slowed his fall.
He began to fall once more.
Fall in the Tenth Layer.
A Layer below all reason.
Below all sense and even madness.
It was entirely black.
Familiar but different.
This wasn’t a fake void.
Something of the mind.
A black that ate everything.
He floated in a place that was not a place.
And this place... it was surrounded by nothing but black holes.
Each one spun silently, hungrily, like watching Gods.
There was no ground beneath him.
Malik continued to fall.
His thoughts were still for a long time.
Longer than they should’ve been.
Perhaps still processing what happened earlier.
Until eventually, one of the black holes revealed itself to be on his path.
That snapped him out of his thoughts and forced him to focus on the now.
On the thing that pulled at his being, inviting him.
A perfect, round mouth of oblivion.
Malik could’ve angled himself away, but...
He shot directly down towards it.
The black hole pulled harder as he got closer.
And once he got into its event horizon, he was yanked in.
His body was given to the dark.
The moment he crossed the inner edge, it began.
Sound—not heard but felt—shook through his soul.
A howling of a trillion Old Tongues, as though every lost scream in the Abyss had been funneled here and warped to something only the Old Ones could understand.
The inside of the black hole was not empty.
It was... folded? He didn’t know exactly what he was seeing.
Winds that didn’t exist tore through him, and tears opened in his vision, flashing glimpses of other places, ones that he knew:
A building barely hanging over Al-Fawra.
A lone tombstone atop a hill, another near a lake, and another beneath a lone tree.
A crimson palace, a fortified palace, the Holy Palace.
Many things appeared before him.
Spine Splitter howled on his belt.
Its voice was muffled by the pressure of raw unbeing.
But it held on, as did its owner.
Eyes wide open, waiting.
Until finally, he emerged—