After an unknown number of deaths...
He finally—finally—managed to find solid pause. He had obtained a single heartbeat of life. His soul had flared with Aether, and it ford the shape of a second.
'I can see.'
Those words weren't even thoughts.
They were realizations. Instinctual ones.
His right eye had fluttered open.
It hadn't popped.
Only the left... only that eye was gone.
Good. That was good. That was progress.
Sure, everything else was still wrecked.
His ears rang like broken bells. His throat felt like it had been scraped by blades. But the pain—the red, splitting, mind-shattering pain—was delayed.
His path was right.
Good.
Blink.
Or maybe not.
His Aether slipped.
His sight went red, and the cycle returned.
Painful, red, death. Painful, red, death. Painful, red, death. Painful, red, death. Painful, red, death. Painful, red, death. Painful, red, death. Painful, red, death. Painful, red, death. Painful, red, death. Painful, red, death. Painful, red, death.
A chorus of agony, of bone-deep despair.
A second repeated, a punishnt for disobeying fate.
This hadn't turned him static, however.
The insanity within him sharpened with every cycle. Every failure etched anger deeper into his lungs.
Malik… Malik endured.
He always had. Endurance made manifest.
One second.
Fifty slivers. Fractions. Flickers.
Fifty cracks in which to think, to breathe, to be—before the second reset, and he died again.
A man shouldn't survive this.
A man shouldn't even rember this.
But he was no longer a man. A Magi. A Jinn.
He was will in its rawest shape.
The Aether scread inside him, but he began to listen. He began to learn. Every repetition—every loop—built upon the path.
He mapped the mont. Felt the ripple. Found the trigger.
A soundless syllable, mouthed by Cyrus before the pop. A twitch in the Sultan's fingers. An invisible wave of air, born of Aether.
He couldn't dodge it. Couldn't block it. But maybe—maybe—he could bend it.
Bend it around himself, deflecting it.
One flicker of his Aether.
One twist of his soul.
Fraction 10.
He raised his flas.
Fraction 20.
He shifted the flow of his thoughts.
Fraction 30.
He forced the mont. Interrupted it.
Fraction 40.
The red did not co.
He was still there. Inside the loop and outside death. It was only for a little while, but now, finally, he had space.
There was still pain. Still pressure. The red static hung around him like a curtain, waiting to fall. But it didn't. Not yet.
He had pierced through the surface.
Madness trembled in his chest. A never-ending Hell of pain and helplessness that tried to break his heart over and over again.
But… after repeating this second of despair for a ti only he and God knew, he... had finally built it.
A path to walk on.
He rembered every death. Every useless mont where he couldn't even think—now he could. He could. The next fraction would co. It always did. That was ti; ti always continued.
But for once...
Malik would et it on his terms.
This 'ti,' it would not end with his death.
Fraction 41.
He inhaled. Tasted blood.
Fraction 42.
His head felt the bang.
There was no ti... but Malik had ti.
Of course, it was not in the way others did—linear, normal, sane—but in fractions, in flickers. In whatever this Hell-loop he now understood better than the back of his own bloodied hand could be called.
Cyrus mouthed the word, and pain imdiately fell upon him.
It always did. No matter his success, uncaring of the path he had cultivated.
Still, this ti, it had stopped at pain. His eye didn't burst. His core didn't crack. And the red world had yet to fall.
Fraction 45.
Malik had stood.
He showcased his essence, his fire... and fire, like him, had rembered. It indeed had rembered.
Before the blur of the first few fractions, with rage boiling in his heart, he had erupted, and so did his Aether.
It was a pulse. A surge of burning rage that had slipped out, unnoticed in his fury, until this one-second death trap had caught him in its grip.
His fire was everywhere around them.
In the air, in the stones, even in the marble beneath.
They were his. His flas. His WILL.
And now, he would use them.
Fraction 46.
Malik twitched his fingers.
Fraction 47.
He reached out.
Not with hands—those were bound in this mont—but with Aether.
He began to bend the space around the spell. Pushed it with the flas around it. The heat that awaited their eting.
Fraction 48.
A ripple passed through the air. Invisible to the naked eye—but not to him.
He wove his fire into it. Threaded his essence into its path. Carefully. Deliberately.
Indeed, he didn't dare block the spell.
He didn't fight it. He guided it.
Fraction 49.
A path of fire blood—subtle, narrow.
A curve. Then another. Then a twist. Then a small bump—just enough to jolt its speed.
Every turn slowed it. Every flicker dragged it. Every fla-touched arc whispered, "This way, not that."
Fraction 50.
The death that once ca for him now flowed like water into a maze. A maze of heat, and Malik stood in the eye of it.
Fraction 51.
A world of red never ca, and an explosion of his mind wasn't heard.
Fraction 777.
He watched—calmly, impossibly—as the spell missed him by less than a hair.
Fraction 1000.
It scread past his cheek, tearing the air, and slamd into the stone wall behind him.
BOOOOOOOOOOM!
There was no fire, not even smoke, just pressure, a lot of pressure. Enough to shake the palace in its entirety.
The wall had not shattered; rather, it imploded. Crushed in on itself, rubble spewing out. A million tiny pieces scattering, and the rest...
Like his head in previous blinks, it was gone.
Nothing but a crater of dust.
Malik stood still.
His eyes narrowed.
He had survived the second.
The spell hadn't just missed. He had rewritten its fate.
He looked at Cyrus now.
Cyrus looked back.
Gold locked with pink.
A hot pressure descended...
And the world held its breath.
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