Noor's presence was faint, just a distant,
Stable pulse in the chaos.
It wasn't trying to pull him out;
It was acting as an anchor to keep him from drifting away into nothingness.
Then,
Noor's voice whispered directly into his mind, clear and steady:
"Don't fight the darkness, but remember your true identity even in that darkness."
Hatim's fingers twitched against the cold floor of his own mind. Guided by that whisper,
A memory began to flicker—
Not a legendary battle,
But a quiet,
Unremarkable morning from his childhood.
He remembered the taste of dirt in his mouth after falling during training and the stubborn refusal to let anyone see him cry.
He remembered his father sitting beside him in the silence.
"When you stand up, the world will see your strength. And you will be praised for your work and wisdom,"his father had said, his voice calm and grounded.
"But your greatness will give you strength."
He had looked at Hatim with a gaze that saw right through the pain.
"One decision you make today will determine whether you emerge victorious tomorrow or remain a compromise. Choose for yourself!"".
That single,
Quiet memory hit
Hatim's consciousness like a sledgehammer,
Shattering the dark chains of the Soul Lock from the inside out.
His breathing went still—
Not out of fear, but out of a terrifying new clarity.
He wasn't just surviving the darkness anymore;
He was dismantling its very logic.
Jabar's voice suddenly shrieked through the void,
Sounding jagged and desperate for the first time in centuries:
"Don't even try to run away. I'm watching your every move; you won't be able to take a single step even if you want to !".
Hatim slowly lifted his head.
His eyes were no longer empty;
They were weighted with an unyielding certainty.
He placed his palm against the cold floor of the void,
Not to strike,
But to reclaim reality.
"You made one mistake,"
Hatim's voice echoed through the cracks of the collapsing dimension.
"You assumed that I am alive only because of the light, but you have forgotten that I myself am a light that has been present within me since I was born in this world..
The void began to fracture violently,
Splintering like a mirror under too much pressure.
Then,
Noor's voice rang out, no longer a faint pulse but a command that vibrated through his soul:
"Now... return".
With a sound like a thousand mirrors breaking at once,
The mental void shattered,
And the real world rushed back in with a vengeance.
The throne chamber materialized around Hatim again,
But the balance of power had flipped.
The crushing spiritual weight Jabar had used to pin him down was gone.
Hatim was standing perfectly still,
His body perfectly aligned.
He wasn't fighting the environment anymore;
He was simply existing within it,
Making the room itself bend to his presence.
Jabar remained on his obsidian throne,
But the mocking look had vanished,
Replaced by a surgical intensity.
He was looking at Hatim as if he were a glitch in a perfect machine.
"You broke my Soul Lock,how was that possible?"
Jabar whispered,
His voice a low, vibrating threat.
("How can it be possible,how can a small boy break the lock of my soul,how could the rituals of my years in the move be made by sacrificing countless souls,how. how could it be possible".)
Hatim looked down at Noor.
The light was no longer a jagged,
Angry flare;
It had become a steady,
Solid glow—
As constant and inevitable as a law of nature.
"I have been called here to break this evil system of yours.,"
Hatim said,
His voice calm and devoid of the desperation that had choked him before.
He took a single step forward.
The shadows didn't reach for him; they recoiled.
"Darkness can predict fear… but it can never predict a soul that has already chosen its purpose over its life".
Jabar snapped his fingers, and a dozen Shadow Spikes erupted from the floor in a crisscrossing web designed to impale Hatim from every possible angle.
It was a move with zero room for escape.
Hatim didn't dodge. He was simply... no longer there.
In the fraction of a second it took for the spikes to manifest,
Hatim occupied the only sliver of space Jabar hadn't realized he'd left.
Before Jabar could even blink,
The tip of Noor was inches from his throat.
For the first time in centuries,
The predator felt the cold breath of the prey on his neck.
"Now,"
Hatim said, his gaze unwavering,
"we start for real".
But as the golden light from Noor's edge clashed with Jabar's darkness,
The ground didn't just break—
It splintered like glass under a truth too heavy for reality to hold.
A "Fracture" tore through the very veil of time.
Suddenly, the cold chamber was gone.
Hatim's ears filled with the howling of a scorching desert wind from twenty-four years ago.
He saw sun-baked mud houses and felt the taste of dust and scorched earth.
In the distance,a younger, more visceral shadow of Jabar began its slow, predatory walk toward a quiet,unsuspecting village.
The fight in the chamber remained suspended—
A freeze-frame in time—
As the scene faded into the heavy, terrifying silence of the desert.
The silence that always precedes a massacre.
Chapter End