Chapter 203: I Will Kill You

Malik paused.

It was a small pause.

The sword in his hand stopped moving, and the fire died down on his palm.

He looked up at the floating man with his golden eyes, and the tremor in his arm went still.

"Stop."

He said it quietly.

It fell from his lips with a weight heavier than the whole of the Abyss.

Enough so that the burning ground seemed to hold its breath.

"It does not matter what you say."

The man in the sky stared down at him.

"I am going to kill you."

His voice did not rise.

"When you return as whoever, I will kill you."

He took a step forward.

"No matter your form or identity, I will kill you."

Another step.

"I will kill you again. And again. And again."

His eyes did not blink.

"I will always kill you."

IT looked at him for a long time.

The man hanging above the hill had stopped smiling.

The white eyes stayed fixed on Malik’s face, and something moved behind them that Malik could not read.

It might have been an appraisal, the weighing of a thing that had turned out to be a little different from what had been ordered.

Perhaps IT had not gotten what it wanted.

Then the threads of Corruption snapped.

The man fell.

He dropped thirty feet and struck the earth, dead.

At the same moment, the cold pressure that had lain over the hill lifted all at once.

The air smelled of plain smoke again.

IT was gone.

Malik stood there with his sword raised.

Every instinct in him screamed to chase.

His whole body wanted it.

There was a place far to the East where that thing’s true shape sat, and perhaps he could have found it. He could have walked there with this one arm and burned through everything in between.

Yet he did not move.

He could not fight Corruption yet.

Malik knew that He was far too weak.

So he lowered the sword...

’Not yet.’

And turned his head towards the horizon instead.

The Order’s bastard army was no longer approaching.

He stared at it for some time before he understood what he was seeing.

The pale ranks that had rolled down the slope in perfect blocks were still there, but they were moving in the wrong direction. The front rows had turned, their banners swinging back towards the west.

The war-beasts had been dragged around by their chains, and the long dark ceiling of ships was rising, slowly, from the plain.

They were retreating.

This part of the army, at least.

The column that had come around the southern flank and burned the circles.

Malik counted the formations as they went, and not one white hair glowed among them.

Every Angel who had walked behind that army like a shepherd lay somewhere on this field with a hole in his chest.

They had no one left to tell them what to do.

So they left.

Malik watched them go.

Not once did he look away.

He stood on the crest of the hill with a sword in his left hand and watched every single rank file over the far ridge with eyes that were too intense.

The soldiers at the back of the column felt it.

Some of them glanced over their shoulders, and he saw them flinch and look away.

It was as if he was daring them.

Daring them to stop.

To turn around.

To march back down and try again.

Not one of them did.

When the last banner had dipped below the horizon and the last black hull had slid behind the clouds, Malik let out a long breath.

The strength went out of his legs.

He stood a moment longer, swaying.

Then he turned around.

Hakim lay where he had left him.

He lay on his back in the scorched dirt with one arm thrown wide.

The root still sprouted from his chest, like a flag in a field.

His eyes were now fully open, and they looked at the sky.

They were a beautiful gold.

Malik looked at him.

He had been dreading this.

He had been dreading it since the moment the light left those eyes.

He had run from it through IT, the Order’s armies, and a roaring in the sky.

And now it was in front of him, plain and very quiet, and he could not think of a single thing to do.

"Aha..."

The sound came out of him by itself.

"..."

"Hm..."

His left hand dropped.

The sword slid out of his fingers and fell in the dirt with a soft clatter.

"It really happened..."

Nobody answered.

"..."

He nodded.

"It actually happened."

"Yes... it did."

He heard his own voice answer his own question.

It sounded far too calm... a stranger’s response.

"It really did."

"Hmhm..."

Malik began to tremble.

His entire body was shaking.

He pressed his fingers against his thigh to stop, but it would not.

"But I should have already passed such a Fate, right?"

The wind moved over the field.

"...I did."

Malik had.

He had walked that road once, in another life, and he had come out the far side with a name and a crown and a promise to himself to never lose anyone again, to never sacrifice them.

He had been so certain it was behind him.

"Then was it due to my negligence?"

"It was."

"It Is."

"Yes."

He nodded, slowly, again and again.

"It is my fault."

The sentence had been waiting for him all along.

It settled over his shoulders and fit them perfectly.

"...I have—"

He stopped.

Air rose in his chest.

It led to an ugly sound.

He did not know what it was until it came out of his mouth.

"Ahahahahahaah!"

Malik was laughing.

He fell backward, and he lay there with his face turned up to the empty sky.

His right hand, the one he did not have, tried to cover his eyes, and found only air.

His left gripped the dirt in a fist so tight that the earth ran between his fingers.

"DAMMIT! DAMMIT—"

The laugh broke in the middle.

It turned over, and it was something else, and then it was only noise.

He hit the ground once with his fist, twice, a third time, and the dirt split under the blow.

"..."

Then it stopped.

"Hooouf..."

He let out a long, shaking breath.

After that, there was only the quiet.

He lay on the burned hill with the dead on every side of him and his father’s body ten paces away.

The Sultan breathed.

In.

Out.

In.

Out.

His chest rose and fell over the wound.

His head remained fixed, tilted back, staring at the sky.

He never once blinked.

The black ceiling had gone from the Heavens.

Far above, pale and a long way off, the first Sun had begun to show through a tear in the clouds.

It was only a faint yellow smudge.

It warmed nothing.

Malik watched it.

"I will kill you."

He couldn’t stop.