***
{Inside The Projection}
Malik stood on the edge of a crumbling rooftop, arms folded, expression cold.
He was watching them carry Rehan's coffin through the village.
The procession moved like a slow, aching wound.
Every breath was thick with something unspoken—grief, guilt, regret, maybe all three.
The air was biting, but the torches in the hands of the men at the front flickered defiantly against it, their flames casting long shadows on the dusty road.
Music followed them.
A Dhol. A Tasha. A Shenai.
Worn-out instruments, played by worn-out hands, squeezing out a song that had been played too many times that night... too many times.
It was a tune that had rung through these streets for hundreds of others.
For brothers.
For sons and fathers.
For men who had gone into the ground way before their time.
For women who cried for them, beat themselves for them... died for them.
