Novel Full Chapter 459: Silent Requiem III
‘I… I really am alive.’
This breath that I had…
It was a wonderful feeling, a gift that most people forget they had.
Ever since my arrival here, the Embodiment of myself, I was finally…
Finally, I was unchained.
‘Yes, I am free.’
So I moved.
A tilt first…
Small and careful.
Testing the seams of my skin, willing them not to tear.
My neck answered in a slow way.
My face, though cracked and ever paler, shifted properly.
Muscle was remembering muscle.
A twitch became an eyebrow; an eyebrow became a half-formed expression.
An expression that met many more.
It seemed that my killers never left.
I heard them all around me.
Thousands of breaths all held.
Their eyes found my movement, and they froze.
‘Were… were they trying to kill me?’
Every hand held a weapon.
A weapon aimed directly at me.
‘…So even after seeing the truth, they…’
Now? Now, when I could finally feel the ground under my feet without chains biting at my soul? Did their hate run that deep? Did they want me dead that badly?
But I… some part of me doubted that.
Because, well…
‘Why are they looking at me like that?’
Their faces weren’t what most would show their enemy.
Rather… it almost seemed like it was the opposite.
‘I can’t believe that. I…’
Yet just as that thought crossed my mind—
“BIG BROTHER!”
“ELDER BROTHER.”
“MY LORD!”
“TEACHER!”
“SULTAN!”
All their voices reached me at once.
Pleading voices… ones that named me before this land.
Before what seemed to be the Holy City, one stripped of its Holy Palace.
They named me, and in that naming, there was ridiculous warmth.
…huh.
They seemed really fond of me.
If not enemies now, then what were they?
What even were they to me?
‘I… don’t know.’
I tried to feel what I ought to feel.
Relief? Joy? Something like pride?
None of that. It couldn’t reach me.
My chest gave me only a long, hollow pause.
But, well, if they weren’t combative, then…
‘Let me see them.’
I stood slowly.
My feet found the dais the way a drowning man finds the surface.
Everything about me moved awkwardly… almost astonished.
Once I stabilized myself, I began to step down the stairs.
‘Alive.’
That was what their faces said.
Their Lord, their Sultan, was alive.
And he was walking toward them.
It was a strange thing to know so many could be so patient and nervous, to see them gather every small hope into their ribs and make it wait on my shoulders.
Each step down seemed to make their hearts thunder.
Their faces told stories I had not the patience to hear fully.
Layla, my wife, had a twisting line of her mouth like when she battled tears.
Huda, my little sister, had her pink eyes tremble, holding back the entire world.
Sweet Dunya, my closest confidante, smiled brightly at me, tears running freely down her cheeks.
Sinbad, my little brother, had his fluffy feathers shaking more than I’d ever seen before.
Safira, my only disciple, was barely conscious, staring at me in disbelief from the ground.
Azeem, my Right Hand Man, stood beyond stunned, breathing so very roughly, his face resisting what seemed to be remnants of Corruption.
Noor, my student, looked at me with something close to fulfilled expectation.
Zafar, my useless little soldier, was somehow crying for me more than most.
Duban, my first friend, though in shock, managed to look at me warmly.
Scheherazade, my last… friend, simply stared at me.
There was sadness in her eyes, incredible sadness.
But I didn’t focus on that.
Their names were like small anchors in my mind.
Each one pulled me back toward a shore I had not known I missed until I saw it.
I looked for one more face, a presence most sadistic.
Yet I found none; she was not here.
‘…Figures.’
I told myself that silently.
It felt expected, a predictable failure.
So my eyes returned to my own body…
To what brought Scheherazade such sadness.
The cracks… the light leaking from the seams…
A poor imitation of dawn that pooled around me.
From that light, something familiar rose.
My own Divine Kingdom, a projection.
It joined the one far above.
Words were formed.
Bright words that spoke of the ‘end.’
{End of Volume Ten: Silent Requiem}
I…
‘I did it.’
Smiled.
A small, polite sealing of a letter.
It surprised me, as small mercies usually did.
It surprised me that I could still want to form that shape even when everything inside me was unraveling.
Yes… ‘unraveling,’ for when I looked down, I…
I noticed that the cracks in my body were gradually widening.
Even more light pushed through, beautiful and terrible.
It spilled and flowed and made everything look divine.
I closed my eyes, feeling my body come apart petal by petal.
I let the pieces Fall, each one becoming a mote of Aether that flew.
They rose high, a hand of nothing drawing them upward.
The world drank what I was.
My being was dissipated…
Absorbed…
Unmade.
I think somewhere, someone might have said my name.
Perhaps Dunya… Layla, Sinbad. Maybe all of them.
A thousand small voices had folded into me.
I could not tell the sound apart from the echo of my own leaving.
But I could tell one thing with absolute certainty.
‘Ah…’
I had died.
‘It’s so quiet.’
Fam Iblis had succeeded.
***
Fam Iblis had failed.
The ‘end’ blinked before them.
Only then, when his final bright motes dissipated…
When their Sun had finally left them, returning them to the dark…
“””MYYYYYY LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORD!”””
Did his people finally surge, their hands reaching, their boots thundering loud.
Yet, before any of them, even Malik’s wife, little sister, or disciple, could reach…
“HEEE!”
Dunya was there.
“HEEEE—HEEE! …HEEEEEE!”
She clawed the rock where Malik stood, trying to wail his name, but only managing to let out incoherent sounds; even if she wasn’t mute, it wouldn’t matter, they had no language for grief of this scale.
Her nails dug deep, as if searching for a mote that might’ve been left behind.
A mote that she could use to wrench him back into solidity.
“HUUUUSBAAAND—HUSBAND!”
Layla lunged into the same spot with a cry that sounded like it came from a child.
She didn’t even know what to do, losing herself in her wailing.
“B-B-BIII—BIIIIG! …BR-BROOO—BROTH-THERRR!”
Much like them, Huda threw herself at the ground and knelt where he once was.
Her elbows pushed the rock down as she screamed, a voice that couldn’t have stuttered more even if it had tried.
Safira and Azeem, awakening from their shock late, pushed through the circle surrounding the tragedy, unable to even let out a single word.
Zafar didn’t even try to near his Lord, already on his knees, weeping openly.
Sinbad and Scheherazade stood side by side, blankly looking at the empty space where Malik had been—a space that now felt impossibly large and unfairly… ordinary.
Tears continued to leave their eyes as they watched their people keep reaching for the rock that was once beneath his feet, fingers closing on what they believed to be holy.
Far above them, the projection began to dim.
{End of Volume Ten: Silent Requiem…}
Indeed, the ‘Heaven’ of the projection had finally sealed shut.
There was no outside and inside projection anymore.
This was the final act, and it had come to an end.
{…?}
An incomplete ‘end.’