***
{Outside The Projection}
"BEHOLD AN UNIMAGINABLE PAST."
Those words repeated in their minds, over and over, even as the projection paused.
Rather, the hall—the entire world, froze alongside it.
What happened held all of them in its grip.
Because this...
It was more than his lives and his deaths.
It was more than just the usual reminder of what Malik had gone through... a reminder of how he beca the way he is.
No, this was a nightmare made real.
And for the first ti...
They could not hide from it.
Everyone was forced to see it.
See what very much could be a possibility.
A world where Malik was moved on from.
It was inconceivable to them now, but...
They could not completely deny it, no matter how much they wanted to.
Neither could Huda, who most wanted to deny this.
She was losing it again.
Her throat dried up and her fingers trembled.
She had heard her tiny self... scream.
Why did she scream?
It was obvious why, but... she didn’t want to...
She didn’t want to acknowledge what might have happened.
Neither did she want to acknowledge anything else.
Her crushed splattering.
Her being kidnapped... twice.
Huda now felt all types of emotions, making her unable to breathe.
Her hands clenched the folds of her dress until her knuckles turned pale.
The young her’s face—that small, terrified face—haunted her.
But the worst wasn’t her deaths... or her... yeah.
It was realizing how... normal it beca.
Seeing her small self devoured by the Roc, watching herself kidnapped by that rat Rafiq, watching her body dangling, near lifeless.
It was so very normal, quick, making life seem... aningless; too worthless to matter.
Her stomach churned, but no tears ca.
She didn’t have any more to give.
Sinbad.
A boy no longer, but a massive Crimson Owl.
He, like the others, was frozen, his fluff moving only due to Dunya’s soft caresses.
His claws sank into the marble without him noticing, his beak nearly clacking, his wings trembling.
Because... it was him.
His small self, devoured, kidnapped, killed, and abandoned.
But that wasn’t anything new.
Sinbad knew of it.
No, it was his owl self that made him tremble.
The scene where he bit Malik’s neck clean off.
Trying to force him back, trying to reset, blink, to undo the spiral, to push Malik and Layla together... to fix sothing that couldn’t be fixed.
He failed.
That mory hit him harder than any death ever could.
"I’m..."
He whispered under his breath.
"...I’m sorry."
No one heard it.
...Not even himself.
Safira felt much the sa.
Though less in regard to herself and more to Jasmine.
Yes, that scene just at the cave’s entrance was heartbreaking...
Their tiny selves shaking Malik’s blood-covered body...
Sobbing and screaming his na...
Hoping—begging—he would wake up...
...It was heartbreaking.
So very heartbreaking, playing in her mind over and over.
And yet, it didn’t even co close to Jasmine’s mont.
In a forest, alone with his dead body, crying.
Calling him a coward for leaving her.
Her implied kiss, even as she...
Even as Corruption took her.
That took what remained of Safira’s heart and tore it apart.
Safira had stopped embracing Huda, and while still kneeling beside her, she gripped her own shoulders, as if trying to hold herself together.
But it didn’t matter what she did.
She was still stuck.
Still trapped in that sa scream they never escaped.
Layla, kneeling to her and Huda’s right, wasn’t doing much better.
She, too, no longer embraced Huda, struggling to keep herself in one piece.
Though unlike them, she didn’t do or hold back anything.
Still as a statue, her eyes... her eyes were locked on the projection.
They were wide open, unblinking, watching, and repeating.
That day when Malik killed himself in their tent, that night that confird what her father secretly knew, and, of course, that accursed mont when her first love made her kill him.
Where Malik Fell, forever dooming himself, and broke her father.
Blood was on her hands, his body... hers... Rehans, all lying down after.
Side by side, in that cold, cursed field.
A night that broke her.
"I’M SORRY."
That was all Layla heard now.
But it didn’t stop there...
Oh, it never did.
She saw the aftermath.
Malik losing himself in saving them.
The first mont, both their corpses...
Lying next to each other after victory.
’Stop...’
Her lips moved, but no voice ca out.
’Please stop showing him this...’
The world agreed with her.
Even those who had the rcy of not being shown on there.
Zafar.
Roya.
Noor.
Azeem.
Dunya.
Even them, rembering that this man sitting before them was so very incredibly far from normal.
It was too cruel.
Showing him this was too cruel.
Duban and Faqir felt the sa, but they were stuck staring at the bodies in the wedding that Safira had seemingly almost forgotten about.
It was for good reason, of course, for they too had been swept up in her tragedy, at least until that scene finally arrived.
A so very lonely scene.
As was Malik’s lone mont in that canyon.
The one where his jaw had snapped off, his teeth hung loose, with one of his eyeballs ripped out by so damned bandit.
Yet it got worse, as he was slowly eaten alive, worms in his brain, ants in his lungs, and leeches drinking his blood, until finally, a bug laid eggs inside his eyes, blinding him.
’How could I?’
They could not forget those words.
His punishnt.
It was as grotesque as the first ti they saw it and yet...
This ti, there was no sobbing and vomiting, and it wasn’t because they were stronger, their stomaches tougher, though they were, but because they were numb.
Dead numb.
They had to be, because the worst... the absolute worst... was still there.
That last scene.
The one that hurt the most.
...The Hollow King.
A Malik, who’d failed.
Who’d Fallen into Corruption.
Sitting on that throne of Zaqqum.
Staring with his endless eyes...
And it was not at nothing.
It was at them.
At every single one of them.
Staring without blinking.
For so, so long... that ti itself blinked.
Existence itself had died before he did.
And every man, woman, child...
Every single soul...
Thought this one thing.
Or at least a variation of it.
It was all they could think of.
’Oh... what a life... huh?’
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