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{Inside The Projection}
Pain.
Nothing else existed. No sky. No ground. Just pain.
It ate through , burned through , lted down to nothing but agony.
Every inch of my body was screaming, but I had no mouth to scream with. No voice to cry out. No air to breathe. Just undiluted tornt that gnawed at my nerves like starving beasts.
I floated in a dim red darkness, an ocean, twisting and pulsing like a living thing.
It was everywhere. Inside . Outside . I tried to move—
I had no limbs.
I tried to breathe—
I had no lungs.
I existed, and yet I did not.
My view warped and distorted, shifting like I was trapped in an endless earthquake.
My senses cracked and shattered.
There was sothing crawling through ...
Sothing slithering inside this formless prison I had beco.
A sensation so vile it made my nonexistent skin crawl.
It was like my very essence was dissolving into the dark.
Right... It wasn't just pain.
It was sothing deeper, sothing worse.
I was unraveling, twisting apart thread by thread, burning away into nothing.
I could feel those pieces of myself being lost, and yet, I didn't fear for my life.
Why?
Why was I so calm?
Even as I burned, even as my being was devoured, even as I lost the shape of who I was—I didn't feel afraid.
I was conscious, but strangely disconnected, as if I were both here and not.
My thoughts were much the sa.
Blurred, foggy, slipping through my fingers like sand.
They drifted in and out; I'd feel them scatter as soon as they appeared.
Images flashed, mories I couldn't grasp.
A caravan. Laughter. A fight in a bazaar. Sinbad calling 'Big Brother.' Layla smirking. Safira rolling her eyes. Jasmine's sharp wit. Huda's childish warmth.
Nas.
Faces.
They swirled in the abyss, weightless, without form, vanishing the mont I reached for them.
Emotions flared with each passing vision—warmth, sorrow, anger, regret—but I could not hold onto them.
There was no saying otherwise...
I was going mad.
Am I so kind of demon?
Was I human once?
What did I used to do?
What's my purpose?
The answers danced at the edges of my consciousness, taunting , refusing to be caught.
The longer I drifted, the more I unraveled. The more I lost myself. But then—
Sothing stirred.
A spark at the core of my being, a whisper of warmth in the endless cold.
It fluttered, faint but persistent. An unyielding pulse.
My second heart.
I felt it, beating against the darkness, defying the nothingness trying to swallow whole.
I latched onto it, clung to the rhythm, let it anchor as the void howled in protest.
The mont I focused on that single, undeniable truth, I started coming back together.
I felt it—
Bones, hard, they wove themselves around my center, piece by piece, forming a fra that shielded my fragile core.
Ribs, spine, limbs—each one clicking into place like a puzzle rebuilding itself.
Then ca the web of nerves, the tangled highways of sensation knitting themselves back into place.
A fra built from mory, from will, from sheer stubborn refusal to die.
Then organs, pulsing, throbbing, slotting into the cage of bone as if drawn by instinct.
Lungs, eager to fill. A stomach, hollow and waiting. Muscles coiling like serpents around the frawork, layer by layer, knitting back into sothing real.
The crawling sensation returned, racing over like a thousand tiny ants.
Skin.
It wrapped around , stretching, reshaping, sealing back inside my own flesh.
I shuddered, the sudden weight of existence pressing down on .
My senses slamd back into place, overwhelming, suffocating.
The silence was gone—
Thump... Thump... Thump...
I could hear my heartbeat, the rush of blood, the crackling of sothing unseen.
My lungs burned as I dragged in a breath, ragged. And that was when I felt it.
Thick. Heavy. It clung to my body, floating around like ink in water.
A substance I didn't quite understand, yet sohow… knew.
It flowed through , through my veins, my muscles, my bones.
Sothing deeper than blood. Sothing primal. Sothing ancient.
Aether.
The word rang through my mind, setting my nerves alight.
I... rembered that now.
The core of my strength.
The power I've wielded.
The force that had carried through every battle, every trial.
It was inside .
It was .
My essence.
Jahannam.
I inhaled, my chest rose, my body whole once more—but I was not the sa.
I have stepped beyond sothing, neared a threshold I could not na.
The darkness still lood around , shifting, alive, waiting.
And for the first ti, I wondered—
Was I supposed to co back?
Or did I claw my way out of sothing that was ant to keep ?
The air stirred... Was there air here? Did any of it matter?... No.
Before I could form a proper thought, a whisper slid through the void, curling around.
"CO."
I gasped—my first true breath—and my eyes snapped open.
I was standing in a darkness, staring at the pitch-black distance.
Nothing seed to have changed... but now at least I was more conscious of myself.
I could clearly recognize that I was whole.
So parts were still missing, however.
My 'mories.'
I had lost them. All of them.
'Emotions' were there, the edges of mories, but that was all.
The only thing I rembered was 'running'—running towards this 'darkness,' towards salvation, as the 'Shams' tried to burn alive.
I had reached the 'shadows' at the last possible mont, just before 'death' could sink its 'claws' into .
And then…
Then what?
My 'breath' ca in ragged gulps as I forced myself to rember.
I could not.
My 'body' felt foreign, like it wasn't entirely my own.
My 'hands' trembled as I lifted them, inspecting my 'fingers,' my 'palms.'
The 'scars' weren't there... the 'burns.' The proof of my 'pain' was gone.
They robbed of my 'truth.'
'I need to get it back.'
But before I could even think of a way to do so, whispers crept unbidden into my mind.
'Where am I?'
'This is scary.'
'Is this it?'
'Just darkness? Where's the—'
Then, as if it were a script, every voice spoke the sa thing at once.
'Who am I?'
'Who am I?'
'Who am I?'
'Who am I?'
I, for a reason unknown, 'smiled' excitedly at that.
'…'
But then my face turned... plain?
It wasn't the usual coldness I showed, but a simple face, devoid of anything.
As if I were a 'newborn.'
'Who am I?'
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