Chapter 301: Complete End

Words : 1144 Updated : Oct 3rd, 2025

Chapter 301: Complete End *** {Outside the projection} "..." "..." "..." "..." "..." "..." "..." "..." "..." "..." "..." "..." ...Ah. Right. Second Shams. Second light. Second Sun. That was the end of the volume. That was the birth of the Second Sun. That was the birth of a legend bigger than any that came before it. If what he did wasn’t worthy of that title, then they didn’t know what was. Indeed, a world’s end was reached. It was cut. Yet it hadn’t paused. For the first time since the projection’s arrival, it just kept going. This volume, though complete, still had more to say. Its true ending hadn’t yet been seen. So the people of Fam Iblis... The crowd in the Holy Palace and its leaders... They did the only thing they could do. The only thing the world of the past could do. Watch. *** {Inside the projection} With Malik’s fall, the world remained silent. No cheers were heard, nor any wails of sadness. The flap of an owl’s wings did not come. Nothing did. The trap was still active. The dome was still draining, suffocating, and choking the sky above. And Malik lay there. Not moving. Not twitching. Not even breathing, it seemed. His body was wrecked—barely held together with willpower kind of wrecked. A trickle of blood seeped through the cracks on his skin and the wounds decorating his body, pooling beneath him. Chunks of him were just... gone. The burns and scars had gotten much worse. Many of his bones became mushy. Poison took over. Much of him was wrong. Dead. But was he, himself, dead? No one knew for sure. Why? There was only one reason. No one in the valley moved. Not a soul. There were still maybe forty, fifty soldiers scattered on the battlefield. Shimr’s last dogs. All of them were badly injured but undoubtedly alive. These were the lucky rats, the ones that managed to survive the aftermath of their attacks. Attacks that shook, tore, and pummeled the earth. Attacks that flooded the canyon and burned it. Attacks that cracked the sky. They could very much move, but none of them dared do so. Even when Malik showed every sign of death, the idea of going near him felt like a death sentence in and of itself. They’d watched it. Watched him butcher ten Jinn. TEN. Watched him weave between all types of attacks like he was purposely dancing with death and WINNING. Watched him take wounds that would’ve killed ten grown men a million times over and keep walking. Keep swinging. Keep killing. They watched a man burn out the last of his being to keep a metaphorical mantle. A mantle of faith. A pillar. So yeah... No one wanted to be the idiot who walked up and checked if the Golden-Eyed Devil was really down for the count. So the stragglers waited. They whispered. "You... you think he’s really out?" But no one answered, and still, Malik didn’t move. Time passed. Ten minutes. Then twenty. A full hour. Still, he lay there. Body broken. Face half-covered in falling snow, blood, and dirt. But something about the stillness... it wasn’t normal. It was like the whole battlefield was holding its breath. Even the wind didn’t want to disturb him. But then, all of a sudden, it finally did. The clouds above shifted. CRAAAAAAAACK! And the dome finally fractured. The rising Shams came through the clouds. It hit him. It hit Malik. Just a single ray. Right on his face. A color no different than his eyes. The world bearing witness realized it then. They saw the birth of a Second Sun. Reverence claimed them. Malik had truly held on to faith and Embodied it. But the world didn’t hold onto that realization for long. A black being took their attention, dropping as fast as it could from the sky. The being appeared to be an owl, a massive one. "ELDER BROTHER!" It was Sinbad. And he wasn’t alone. "MY LORD!" Kabir was there. "WE ARE COMING!" Rami was too. "PLEASE DON’T DIE!" As was Sarah. "THE PRIESTS! C’MON, GO!" And of course, Tarek. It wasn’t only those five. Samir, Faisal, Ayyub, Zayna, Jibril, Nashir, Faraz, Ghassan, Rafi, Sabir, Hassan, and Basim. All of the combatants, no matter their injuries, were here. The women, the children, the old men. The whole camp was here. They had won a great victory, yet looking at their faces, one might think their world would end tomorrow, which for them it seemed to have ended already. They could not dare cheer or clap when their Lord was on the ground. They just stood around him. Watched. And waited as the priests did their work. Sinbad, the terrifying dark, landed just beside them, many tears leaving his pink eyes. His large, fluffy body kept trembling, perhaps feeling the pain Malik had felt. No, there were no maybes about it. He was feeling the pain Malik felt, sharing it, lessening his burden. And that meant that yes, despite how he looked and how impossible it may seem, which wasn’t saying much at this point, he was still alive. This technique of his was how he had healed his Elder Brother last time. Besides his unknown ways in the soul, it appeared that he knew how to be something of a healer as well. But, unlike the priests, Aether wasn’t there to pause the aftermath. He felt everything that he healed, and it hurt. It hurt so bad. So incredibly bad that tears continued to leave his eyes. Tears that he still didn’t even notice. For all their sadness, the Banu Sasan hadn’t joined him in his crying. Something told them that this wasn’t the end. No way it’d end with Malik dying on his back. The man had barely any humanity left in him, but whatever was left? It wasn’t going to let him go down like this. Somewhere behind the crowd, behind the sorrow, a familiar little girl, her cheeks a bit more chubby, tugged at her mother’s robes. "Mama... that man... is he going to get back up?" Her mother didn’t answer right away. But eventually, she whispered: "...He never fell." A smiling man standing behind nodded his head. "It seems he’s found good company." Flinching slightly, the mother turned around. "...S-Sir?" But there was no one there. She looked left and right but saw no one. Shaking her head, she turned back and patted her daughter’s head. "You’ll thank him when he wakes, won’t you, dear?" "Mhm." Just as the little girl brought herself closer to her mother... Everything paused. The sound of their cold breaths vanished. Only the Sun remained. *** Or rather, it wasn’t that time itself had paused, but the projection did. Slowly, it faded to black, and a text obvious to all on the outside was displayed. {Will Resume Shortly...} {Complete End Of Volume Five: Second Sun}

Chapter 301: Complete End

Comments (0)