Yusuf began to cry in terror, and Fatima ordered him to close his eyes and not look.
Harun's skin darkened to a deep, unnatural green, and overlapping,
chambered scales pushed through from beneath.
The whites of his eyes went completely black—erased into nothingness—while his lenses glowed a piercing red.
His jaw unhinged,
stretching impossibly wide as rows of curved, sharp teeth pushed through his gums like something that had been waiting its entire life to come out.
His legs merged and his spine elongated as his human shape collapsed inward, rebuilding itself into a form that wore his face like a mask,
leaving nothing of what was underneath.
What stood in the village center was no long
er Sheikh Harun.
It was an enormous Viper Wraith,
chambered in black and green,
hissing with a voice that used to read prayers at dawn.
"He… he's not human anymore,"
Hashim whispered in sheer shock.
Total panic erupted as people ran for their lives.
Amina screamed for Ali to run, while Fatima gripped Yusuf's hand tightly.
The Viper Wraith moved. With a single claw strike, it cut someone's head off.
It melted another villager with venom that burned from the outside in, tearing through bodies like cloth.
The village became a nightmare of sounds that had no right to exist.
Omar screamed that it was killing everyone, and Zayd realized in horror that the monster wouldn't stop.
Amidst the chaos and screaming,
Ali, Yusuf, and their mothers ran, disappearing into the desert paths toward the forest,
with
Ali warning his mother not to look back.
Through the screams of the fleeing crowd,
one voice cut through and stopped Khalid in his tracks.
"BABA NO!!!" Farid was crying in the distance.
Khalid stopped. Salman stood right beside him.
"There's no point in running now," Khalid said, tightening his grip on his axe.
Salman nodded. "Either we fight here... or we die here".
Khalid's speed power flared to life.
He moved like lightning, aiming his heavy iron axe straight for the Viper Wraith's neck.
CLANG!
The impact was deafening,
but it felt like striking a solid mass of darkness, not flesh.
Khalid's arms violently shuddered from the recoil.
"How... is this possible...?!"
Salman flanked the monster,
his two blades a blur of continuous strikes.
SLASH! SLASH!
Sparks rained down, but the creature didn't even flinch.
"It's not even bleeding!" Salman yelled.
The Viper Wraith twisted. It moved so fast it practically vanished.
In the next fraction of a second, it was right in front of Salman.
"KHALID—!" That was all Salman managed to say.
The monster's jagged claw drove straight through his stomach.
Time seemed to freeze. Salman's weapons slipped from his hands,
hitting the dirt with a heavy,
hollow thud that echoed in the silent village.
"...Khalid..."
Salman's blood began to pool into the sand.
His breath was failing.
"...don't run..."
He collapsed to the ground. Gone.
The blood froze in Khalid's veins.
His friend lay dead before him.
"YOOOUUU!!!"
Khalid roared with absolute,
blinding fury and charged.
BAM!
BAM!
BAM!
He rained down blows, cracking the earth beneath them,
but the Viper Wraith ignored the onslaught as if Khalid's strength was a mere joke.
In one brutal motion,
the monster grabbed him mid-attack and hoisted him into the air.
"Let... me go...!" Khalid gasped, his limbs dangling uselessly.
Suddenly, the chaos of the village went dead silent.
The Viper Wraith froze like a statue.
Stepping through the shadows,
Jabar approached.
Dark chains erupted from the ground, binding Khalid tightly and locking him in place.
"Do you accept me as your God?"
Jabar's voice carried no rush.
Khalid's breathing was ragged.
He forced his head up.
"...No".
"Do you accept me as your God?"
"...No".
The third time, Jabar's voice turned entirely cold.
"Do you accept me as your God?"
Khalid's face was bruised and bloodied.
Death was staring him right in the face,
but there wasn't a single drop of fear in his eyes.
He looked straight ahead, and spat directly on Jabar's face.
Silence. A suffocating silence.
The cold calmness wiped clean from Jabar's face.
"Now you will see...
how your death unfolds.
I will turn you into my slave".
Jabar raised his wand. The red orb ignited like a raging inferno.
Soul Drain Ritual.
A crimson aura plunged straight into Khalid's body.
Not through his skin... straight into his soul.
Khalid's scream tore through the sky.
This wasn't fire.
This was the violent extraction of his very essence.
His memories began to rip away.
His son 's name... his wife's face... the stubborn defiance he clung to even at the end.
Every piece of his humanity was sucked into the pulsing purple locket resting on Jabar's chest.
The locket flared twice, then went quiet.
Khalid fell to his knees.
But he wasn't Khalid anymore.
His form had warped entirely into a crimson jinn IFREET.
"...My... lord..."
he whispered,
bowing his head before Jabar without a second of hesitation.
As if he had never learned to bow to anyone else in his entire life.
Jabar raised his hand, and shifting shadows swallowed the scene completely.
Khalid had become a red jinn, leaving no trace of humanity in his eyes.
He simply bowed to his new master.
"…My… lord…" the jinn murmured.
A short distance away, shrouded in the settling dust, Farid stood completely still.
He was alive, but he wasn't running or moving.
A terrifying emptiness filled his eyes—there were no tears, no screams, and no expression of fear.
He was just a boy standing inside a village that had ceased to exist.
"…Baba…" slipped from his lips, a broken, hollow whisper.
Jabar slowly turned, his dark gaze locking onto the boy.
"One more…
Who survived…"
Jabar noted calmly. He raised his hand, and suffocating Soul
Pressure began to build in the air around them.
But Jinn Khalid stepped forward.
"My lord… Spare him…" the creature pleaded in a slow, hollow voice.
Jabar paused, a flicker of cold curiosity in his eyes. "Why…?".
"He is already… dead from within…" the jinn replied. "There is no meaning in killing him…".
Farid just watched them.
His eyes were open, but entirely lifeless. He couldn't cry, and he couldn't smile.
A heavy silence hung over the ruins.
"…Fine," Jabar finally said, lowering his hand as the gathered darkness faded away.
"I must chase those… Who are running…".
He glanced at Jinn Khalid IFREET.
"You… go to my palace… With Sheikh Harun…".
"As you command, my lord," the jinn obeyed.
The space around them distorted, and both Jinn Khalid and the Viper Wraith dissolved into the darkness, completely disappearing.
Jabar didn't spare Farid another glance, acting as if the broken boy simply ceased to exist.
Farid stood there in the dust, completely silent and completely broken.
Jabar walked forward, his own body beginning to dissolve into shadows.
"Running… only delays death…"
he whispered into the void before vanishing.
Far away, near the edge of the ancient forest, the desperate survivors were running for their lives.
Amina dragged Ali forward, while Fatima tightly held onto Yusuf. Imran, Hashim, Zainab, and Zayd scrambled into the dense treeline,
trying to escape the desert nightmare.
But behind them, Jabar was coming.
He wasn't running.
He was simply walking.
It was the patient, terrifying walk of a man moving toward prey that could never truly escape him.
In the encroaching dark, the purple locket at his neck pulsed once.
Slow
low.
Patient.
Hungry.
Chapter End