Chapter 334: Here I Am II

Words : 1555 Updated : Oct 7th, 2025

Chapter 334: Here I Am II *** {Inside The Projection} Malik moved on. He was met with chambers, empty rooms, and signs of evacuation. Good. He expected to see a few stragglers, which would’ve been somewhat of an annoyance to kick out of the Academy, but his people worked to impress, making his path smooth. He wouldn’t ever acknowledge it, but he was... lucky to have them. Yeah... lucky. Anyhow, he soon reached his destination. Noor’s chamber. The door was slightly ajar. He opened it and made his way in. Inside, it was quiet. There was no sign of violence or struggle. Absence was all there was. Her bed was made, her books stacked neatly. There was no doubt about it, she was prepared. Malik calmly walked over to her writing desk. A scroll sat folded on top. He unfurled it and began to read it. {You’ve ruined many of my plans, professor. I don’t understand why you did this, but... It matters not. While you burned the kingdom, I chose to run. Don’t follow.} Malik stared at it for a long moment. The parchment curled slightly in the heat now in the room. Then it suddenly turned to ash, flowing away from his grip. "A coward then..." He walked away. "You learned well." *** {Outside The Projection} That... didn’t quite feel like a compliment. The hall collectively tilted their heads. Even the ones who didn’t care at all for Noor had done the same. If that was meant to be praise, then God help whoever got his criticism. Still, luckily for Noor, her camp, and the entire hall, that was his personality. Why? Well, because Layla and Safira were this close to starting something again. If not for his personality, all their lives would’ve been under serious question right about now. It was a close brush with death, yet that wasn’t their, or the hall’s, focus. They believed they’d get all of the three’s secrets revealed in this volume, but apparently not. Perhaps Noor’s would be left for the next one, as she wasn’t at all focused on in this volume. She was thankful for that. Malik didn’t say more. He didn’t call her out. He didn’t reveal her system or whatever else she was hiding. ’YET.’ True, but that was enough to let her breathe. She knew it wouldn’t last. Knew that he’d figure her out soon enough. He mostly did already, and likely did completely, but was just waiting for the right moment to confirm... To break her like the others. But for now? Until the inevitable past caught up to the present? She had time. Time to move things around. Tie off loose ends. Burn a few bridges if she had to. Prepare for the backlash she was about to receive. She had seen what happened to Roya. She wasn’t going to end up like that. ...She couldn’t. Noor stood still, trying to look unbothered, unreadable. But her camp could see the twitch in her eye, the slight pulse in her jaw. She was thinking fast, running calculations in her head, like always. And for once, it wasn’t to beat him. She had already made peace with that. He was above her, way above. Above everyone, in almost every way her system could measure. Strength, presence, sheer Goddamn WILL—even though he was a... a... a bastard, a beggar. That she could not, ever, ever, deny any more. Still, just because he was untouchable didn’t mean she’d bow. Never that. She’d fight. Even if she had to claw at the air just to stay above water. Even if it killed her. *** {Inside The Projection} The halls of Nourzadah were on fire, and Malik moved through that fire like it wasn’t even there. Not fast or slow, or careful, simply calm as he always was, always will be. It was who he was forced to become. To be molded into. Someone detached from the world. Thick smoke coiled through the archways, dancing along the ceiling; screams echoed; soldiers and rebels, their sounds blurring together into a rising storm of chaos. Somewhere, a church maybe, a bell rang over and over. Death was here, and it’d stay for a while longer. Malik’s boots left no prints in blood or soot. He stepped past those with torches, setting the place on fire. He stepped past a rebel slicing through a soldier’s shoulder. The soldier collapsed. The rebel looked up—froze. Then stepped back. He didn’t run away. It was his leader. As terrified as he was of him, he couldn’t run. So he just stepped back, not wanting to be noticed. Malik never even bothered to glance in his direction. He kept going. No one stood in his way. At least, no one who was still breathing. He turned at the final corridor, toward the spiral stairs that led to the Chancellor’s chamber. Once, music had flowed through them—harp, oud, and whatnot—but now they had only silence. Actually, no, it was not silence but something worse. The stairs didn’t sing to him anymore. But they did sing to the walls. They began to move. Shhk-kk! Mirrors shot out, the same ones from fifteen years ago. They held no reflection, only memory, each one twisted into malformed shapes. Faces from the past, from family, voices of regret, guilt... Anything that might break his mind. Unbothered, Malik glanced at them. And the moment his golden eyes rose— CRACK. They shattered. One by one. Fracturing before even nearing him, turning to shards, then to glittering dust. He walked through them with no change in his expression. Eyes still forward. The steps loomed before him. Wide enough for five men to walk shoulder to shoulder. He took the first step. And the staircase woke up. Gears clicked. Runes ignited. Aether crackled. And then— Thoom! Stone split and rose, and from the very steps themselves came golems. Not the sloppy kind built by students, these were ancient. Each one massive, their arms like pillars. They charged, heavy, loud, and raging. Malik didn’t pause, and his eyes lifted again. CRSHHH. Their limbs twisted sideways, their joints locked, and their necks snapped backward. A moment later, sand trickled from their joints. Thud! Thud! Thud! They collapsed. Every single one. Puppets who’d had their strings cut. Malik kept climbing. Aether grew heavier, and at the top... Things changed. There were no more contraptions or traps. There were only Magi. All of them, Jinn. Their bodies shone with their Aether, each one ready to attack. And so, just as Malik stepped towards them, they attacked. Fire. Ice. Wind. Earth. Light. Dark. Six Paths of Aether, six different elements, each nearing full mastery, descended on Malik. The Academy rumbled to its foundations, nearly experiencing an earthquake. And inside that storm, directly before it... Malik stood... BOOM. Then moved. And they died. Their deaths weren’t loud. Their bodies simply crumpled, as did their attacks. All six were dead in under a second. Some of them, or rather all, might’ve been of the king’s blood, his sons and daughters, but Malik cared not for that, casually stepping over their corpses. He killed many of them on his way to the Academy... Noor likely didn’t have any siblings anymore. They were massacred. With that, the final stretch had arrived. Just one more hall before he reached the Chancellor’s Chamber. Of course, the Chancellor was long gone; only the King remained now. And of course, there was more. Standing guard at the chamber’s entrance was a single man, hooded, holding a tall black staff rooted into the floor. His aura was thick. A veil of death wrapped around him. The smell of rot. Of... memory and sorrow. Malik stopped three paces away. The man raised his staff, and the ground beneath them pulsed. Souls cried out. Hundreds. Thousands. He wasn’t just a Sahir. He was a Trumpeter of Death. And Malik knew this spell he wove. He realized what it was at first glance. It was the source of his sorrow. He’d seen Rehan use it... a million times. He’d studied it for longer than that. Souls, traded like currency. The dead were to be summoned to bargain with the living. This Trumpeter was offering everything—his own soul, the battlefield’s fallen—all for Malik’s life. A bad bet. Malik walked forward. There was no fear in his step. "There’s nothing for you to take." The Sahir hesitated. Malik passed him. "Besides..." He added, without looking back. "IT won’t allow you to take my soul." He kept walking. "You’ve only just killed yourself." The Sahir twitched. Then gasped. His staff dropped. His hands curled in pain. Hair turned white in an instant. His skin wrinkled and dried. He aged five decades in seconds. Then... he fell over, silent. Dead. Dust remained. Malik didn’t look back. The chamber doors loomed. The moment he stepped before the obsidian, its runes lit up. Ready to unleash every last shred of stored defense— Vip~! They died. All of them. Every rune turned grey. Every trap failed. The door creaked open. A certain someone finally fulfilled his end of the deal. Malik stepped inside. And there, seated alone on the Chancellor’s throne—crown half-lifted, robes bloodstained, eyes dull—sat the King of Noor. He stared as Malik stood before him. ...As Malik looked down on him. "Here I am."

Chapter 334: Here I Am II

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