Novel Full Chapter 460: Final Death
Those who were once under the hall’s banner had barely moved since their Sultan was… ‘freed.’
And they weren’t the only ones; it felt like the air itself had refused to shift, as if afraid any breeze might scatter what was left of him.
But there was nothing left of him.
Nothing… he was dead.
They saw him go before their very eyes.
His departure was seen by all of the Holy City.
A bright golden Aether soaring sky-high…
He had returned home, to where all Aether lived.
That was the moment the world knew.
Their Sultan, their savior, was gone.
Their pillar of faith had Fallen.
Till morning, they stood there, on the hill.
More and more people joined, yet they went unnoticed, all too lost in their own minds.
Not one of them could find the right story to make it make sense.
Martyr, monster, failure—none of the words could even begin to stitch the wound closed.
Many of them had never stopped crying; yes, there were times of just sobs, but those never stayed.
Many others simply stared, their eyes losing their ability to shed tears, leaving them with nothing.
…What were they to do now?
They didn’t know.
They couldn’t.
A piece of them was lost last night.
It would never return… never.
But it seemed that they had forgotten something.
Something that only Dunya, Sinbad, Scheherazade, and, just recently, Azeem knew.
Malik’s Silent Requiem.
It had yet to utter its ‘end.’
Like the two volumes before it, it was incomplete.
The Shams… the ‘end’ was waiting for the Shams to come.
For only when it rose high, forcing darkness to scurry away…
When it shone bright on the hill that once held the Holy Palace…
Thud. Thud. Thud.
A noise began.
Loud footsteps followed by something of a low murmur.
Below the hill, the streets were filling.
From the far mountains…
From the old trade roads…
From the green Western cities…
From the white Northern castles…
From the broken plains down South…
From the ruins of towns long since swallowed by sand…
From nearly every single corner of Fam Iblis…
Both mortals and Magi had marched towards the Holy City, and now, those very people had finally reached the land.
An unending river, many billions strong.
Amongst those incredible numbers were many thousands of platoons, every single one of them wearing the same pale cloth.
And each cluster of such platoons moved behind a figure in black.
Hooded figures, their faces hidden.
They moved as if they were leading pilgrims to their shrine, shepherds of souls just returned.
There were three hundred and thirteen of them.
A familiar number…
Yes, they were as many as Malik’s Shurtat Al-khamis.
There was no doubting it…
They were his people.
And, judging by their followers’ unusually pale appearance, they all came from somewhere deep underground.
Caves, perhaps.
Those pits where they’d dumped all the bodies of the burned.
…This, too, held no doubt.
The pale rivers of people were the same ones Malik had burned.
Even the ones he had burned ten days ago, during his “final act,” had somehow joined them.
Witnessing their arrival from atop the hill, the ever more stunned attackers fell to their knees once more.
They saw a scene repeat everywhere around them, the pale crying with happiness as they met their loved ones.
Daughters stared at the fathers they couldn’t bury.
Brothers froze at the sight of brothers they cried over.
A mother’s hand flew to her mouth as her son ran to her, breathing and warm.
Many more cried at the sight, gasps tearing through them.
“How?…”
“Weren’t they all killed?”
“T-They—how are they alive?!”
“What the Hell is happening?!”
Questions were roared.
Yet no one answered them.
Because those that could…
They were stuck in grief.
“YOU ARE ALIVE!”
The screaming began almost immediately.
It was a happiness so sharp as thousands of those below the hill ‘stepped’ up.
“How—? You died, I saw you die—!”
A woman clutched her husband’s face with both hands, sobbing into his neck, refusing to let go.
“I’m here, Father, I’m here.”
An old man collapsed outright, babbling prayers as his son knelt beside him.
“I-I’m sorry.”
A once low-ranking soldier fell to his knees as two figures pulled him close—one his brother, one his father.
He had lost them both, months apart, but here they were, laughing and crying alongside him.
The three clung to each other, their sobs echoing louder than any drum of war.
Brothers, friends, and fellow soldiers clasped each other’s forearms, trembling.
Many husbands lifted their wives into their arms. Many women weakly hit their loved ones’ chests with their soft fists. Many cries broke into laughter before falling into sobs again.
Among the arriving crowd, women, too—though fewer—ran into the arms of their kin.
Heads were pressed into shoulders, chests, and foreheads into others.
All held their loved ones tighter, never to let go… never.
The entire hill shook with their reunions, a tidal wave of grief and joy.
Ah… the dead had truly returned.
The Fallen had risen.
And it made complete sense.
Horribly, perfectly, cruelly…
It all made sense.
This had been explained to them many tens of times.
Malik’s Nār Al-Khals, his Fire of Purity…
It was the same as Corruption.
Two sides of the same devouring coin, and that meant…
That meant that if the source of both was destroyed… both would vanish.
Both the fire that burned in all of time, and Corruption that Fell in all of time.
So when he killed the Fallen’s Corruption, for their deaths to be undone, he…
He had to die too.
A-And that…
That meant that…
Whatever whisper of hope they had left…
The impossibility they believed he might perform.
Just the faintest glimmer of it…
That was gone.
“AAAHHH—AAHHH! …HAAAHHH!”
Huda was the first to join Dunya in her wailing.
“HUUUUS—HUUUSBAAAAND!”
Layla’s cry ripped out of her throat before she even realized she’d made a sound.
“T…teacher…”
Safira grabbed at her own chest like she could keep her heart from falling apart.
“…my… L-Lord…”
Azeem’s head hung low, both hands over his face, shoulders shaking.
“Hhhhnnhh…”
Sinbad’s quiet sobs came out strangled as he just stood there.
“…”
Scheherazade stared at nothing, quiet as ever.
Much like Zafar, Duban, and Faqir had dropped to their knees, crying onto the ground.
Many around them did the same, folding into themselves, foreheads pressing against the stone.
And Noor…
“I don’t believe this.”
Noor looked at where Malik once was and walked away.
Her face revealed obvious hurt, a bit too obvious for someone she was supposed to hate.
Because, yeah, the burned ones’ revival meant that Malik was truly dead.
He wasn’t hiding somewhere, waiting for the perfect moment to return.
His death here wasn’t a part of an even more gargantuan plan.
No, this was it… this was fucking it.
Malik had done what he planned.
He had become the Embodiment of everything the world feared.
A Villain, a Shaytan’s Sultan, a Devil Spawn, a Tyrant, a Butcher, an Unforgivable Existence—so that when he died, his fire died with him, as did their Corruption, and the world was finally saved, united under one “Heroic” banner.
That was the ultimate sacrifice.
This was the volume title.
Silent Requiem.
It was his funeral. His requiem.
This requiem wasn’t sung by mourners.
No, he never imagined those would even be there.
It was sung by the quiet… the one thing that followed him.
‘Silence.’
The thing his presence always brought.
A word forever repeated in his story, past or present.
Yet now, it was sung by the world he had saved at the cost of himself.
It hurt, even for those who held their returned loved ones in their arms.
This was no celebration but a gushing wound; he had sacrificed HIS life for THEM.
For the “unworthy.”
Most truly couldn’t take it anymore.
The hill became wet with the tears of those who knew they had been spared only because one man had carried their Fate alone on his incredibly broad shoulders… right to the ‘end.’
His final death…
{…}
{…}
{…Complete End Of Volume Ten: Silent Requiem}