Malik will only see himself in the reflecfion a second, but that was long enough.
...
'Where... am I?'
Heavy pressure was the first thing Malik felt. A cold weight that crushed the air right out of his ribs.
His eyes snapped open, but instead of the dim light he expected, there was only a murky, suffocating blue.
He gasped, a reflexive instinct for survival, but no air met his throat.
Instead, a rush of liquid surged into his lungs, followed by an immediate burning sensation.
Malik was far from a survival expert, but he understood that this was what drowning felt like!
'Move!'
His mouth quickly clamped shut, and though his limbs felt like they had never been heavier, he fought against the water, swimming faster than ever towards the distorted light above.
Every second felt like an agonizing minute, where he was constantly in and out of consciousness. Yet, he didn't dare stop, kicking hard with his boots, until finally...
"Haaa!"
His head broke the surface.
Malik surged upward, gasping while scrambling towards the nearest solid ground. He threw his trembling body onto the shore as fast as he could and roughly fell on his stomach.
He hacked up a storm, water spraying from his throat until his lungs finally took in a shaky, whistling breath of air.
Flipping onto his back, he wiped the last of the moisture from his eyes and lay there for a moment, stabilizing his breathing.
Malik would've lain there all day if he could; his body felt that exhausted, but he knew that he had to move.
Otherwise, the two Suns in the clear sky above would've cooked him alive.
The wetness in his body was already beginning to dry; it was just that hot.
And yes, 'two Suns...' not one. But that wasn't the only strange thing present.
Around him seemed to be an endless gray desert spotted with jagged spires of glass.
It looked like the world had been painted over and then left to bake.
'Where the Hell am I?'
Again, he asked the same question.
He didn't have the mental space to process the impossibility of this all, too busy trying to process what had just happened to him.
Eventually, Malik looked down at his hands.
They appeared... larger than usual.
Thick and scarred. The rest of his body was much the same. He had become a towering man, his frame packed with dense muscle that stretched a fancy tunic to its limits.
This 'tunic' was also new. Rather, his attire was entirely different from what he was just wearing. Royal in design and black in color.
Thankfully, since his clothes were being stretched by his new frame, the incredibly hot air that might've otherwise done him over was allowed to escape, creating something of a chimney effect that cooled him a little.
Pushing himself up with what little strength that returned, he crawled over to the lake, wanting to quell his thirst.
Yet once he was upon the lake, he suddenly paused, his golden eyes stuck staring at the reflection in the water.
'Who is this guy?'
The reflection staring back wasn't the Malik he remembered. Yes, they shared similar features, but it was all taken up to a ten.
Especially his hair. It was a bright, aggressive gold, tied back into a long rat tail that flicked over his shoulder.
Keeping the other changes in mind, in essence, he looked like a man who had been chewed up by Hellish wars and spat back out because he tasted too much like iron and blood.
He raised a brow. The reflection did the same, looking significantly more intimidating than he expected.
'It's really me...'
After a few long moments, Malik shrugged. It was a better look than his old one, so he certainly wasn't about to complain.
Once more, he was about to take a sip—
"No, it wasn't that many."
Only for him to suddenly snap his head to the side.
'Someone else is here?'
A voice seemed to have drifted over the crest of a nearby dune, not too far away.
Malik's hearing must have become unnaturally sharp for him to pick up on that, but he didn't seem to have noticed the change, too interested in the voice to care.
He stood up, the sand crunching under his boots, and hiked up the dune to see what the fuss was about.
At the bottom of the slope stood a young man with long blue hair, looking stressed out.
"What?"
Opposite him, perched on a rock, was a crimson owl. It didn't seem like a normal bird. Its pink eyes looked way too intelligent, and its posture was as royal as Malik's new clothes.
"You didn't get seven hundred thousand of them yesterday. Six at maximum."
The blue-haired young man threw his hands up at the talking owl, acting like this was a normal and pretty usual scene.
"Either way, for a day's work? I must say that it is good enough!"
"I didn't say that it isn't."
The crimson owl nodded.
"I'm only asking you to calm down; you unnecessarily risked your life for that number."
The blue-haired young man sighed.
"But you outshine me too much. I'm supposed to be the commander here, you know."
The owl let out a dry, clicking chuckle, offering no rebuttal. Meanwhile, Malik kept watching them with a flat expression.
'Six hundred thousand? What are they killing? Ants?'
He was utterly confused as to what was happening.
Unaware of Malik's inner turmoil, the blue-haired young man turned away from the owl, his face slowly shifting from annoyed teenager to grim leader in a heartbeat.
He looked out over the flat expanse beyond the dunes. Malik followed his gaze and realized that they weren't alone.
Thousands—no, tens of thousands—of people were gathered there. Though he could only see a part of that number, he was sure of it. They were all draped in thick, dark cloaks, their faces mostly obscured, standing in a rigid formation.
A forest of shadows against the gray sand.
"O people of Devil's Maw!"
The blue-haired young man walked up a small rise, facing the army... the 'army' he apparently commanded.
"You heard Master Sinbad! I, Aladdin, alone, had killed six hundred thousand of them just yesterday! What about you?! You must be stronger! You are the front line! The Last Stronghold pushing back Corruption from reaching all of our families!"
The army roared in response. A guttural sound that made Malik's ears ring.
'Last Stronghold? Pushing back Corruption?... Devil's Maw?'
He scratched his chin.
'I've definitely been transported to a new world of sorts... transmigrated into a body that's similar to mine. Does that mean I've essentially... died back on Earth? How? Actually, no, that's not important right now.'
He had too many questions, but he was calm enough to focus on the present, knowing better than to dive into that rabbithole out here.
"Be not afraid!"
The young man—Aladdin, apparently—roared and clutched his chest.
"If Fate has you written dead today, then speak only of his name. Remember his Titles! Remember the Second Sun! Our savior!"
He looked like he was about to explode with fervor.
"Tell Fate that he commands you to stand up!"
The soldiers went wild, slamming their blades against their shields and pressing them against the ground. A rhythmic thunder that shook the dune under Malik's feet, despite him being a fair distance away.
"We are here, O Sultan!"
"We are here, O Sultan!"
"We are here, O Sultan!"
While their roars rumbled, Malik watched Aladdin's eyes. There was no doubting it, the young man looked like he was worshipping the Suns just by looking at them!
'Fanatics...?'
Malik took a step back.
'Hm, no. I'm out of here.'
He wanted no part of this. He didn't know who the Sultan was, he didn't care about the Second Sun, and he definitely didn't want to be on the front line of whatever "Corruption" was.
As Malik walked away, Aladdin turned eastward. His gaze went past the army, toward the horizon where the gray sand seemed to stretch into infinity.
"By your grace, my Sultan. I, Aladdin, shall lead these people to victory once more."
The moment the words left his lips, the world changed.
Blink.
High in the sky, miles away, a single black dot appeared. It looked like a drop of ink on a beautiful canvas.
It split.
One became two.
Two became four.
Four became eight...
"The Fallen have come!"
In heartbeats, the sky wasn't plum-colored anymore. A literal ocean of black specks was blotting it out—millions of them.
They moved with a horrific, jerky speed, swarming forward like a locust plague from Hell.
The Suns tried to fight back, their light burning through the gaps, but the sheer volume of the 'dots' was winning.
The gray desert beneath them turned pitch black as their shadows swallowed the land.
Malik had, of course, stopped the moment he noticed them. And as they got closer, his eyes adjusted, recognizing their shapes.
These high above weren't birds. No, he and most in his position would've certainly wished that they were.
Upon them were nightmares. Humanoid-ish, yes, but everything else was incredibly wrong. Their skin was an oily black, covered in thumping, purple veins that looked ready to burst.
Some had ten eyes scattered across their faces; others had four right arms and no left ones. Indeed, they were twisted amalgams of flesh, their limbs elongated into claws.
Their true forms were long lost.
They had "Fallen" too deep.
"Are you ready, Disciple?"
The owl, Sinbad, didn't appear fazed by this terror in the least. Rather, he seemed more worried for his "disciple."
"Unfortunately, our losses will be higher than usual today. The Fallen seem to be much greater in number... that is to say, whatever happens is no fault of yours. While a good strategy certainly helps, at the end of it all, this is a war of numbers. And in that, we are lacking."
Aladdin stood frozen for a second, his confidence wavering as he stared at the approaching wall of death.
"Thank you for saying that. Still, Master Sinbad, while I... while I do understand, I can't help it. I want to be as calm as you—I need to be. Yet I can't deny that I'm nervous. In truth, I am never otherwise."
Sinbad hooted, a sound that might have been a laugh.
"That's the opposite of bad. It only means that you're not too far gone like we are."
Aladdin swallowed hard, a weak smile returning to his face.
"If I die today, will you tell Amal that I love her?"
"Tell her yourself!"
Sinbad snapped at that cliché, his pink eyes narrowing into slits.
"Besides, if your wish is to die by Elder Brother's hands when he returns, then go ahead. I won't stop you. But I won't allow you to drag me into it."
Aladdin laughed softly and drew a glowing staff from thin air.
"At least I tried... Thank you, Master."
"That's my duty, boy. Now..."
The owl's feathers ruffled, his gaze locking onto the coming storm.
"My only wish is that Elder Brother returns while there's something to return to."
With that, Malik tuned them out. At present, he couldn't bring himself to care about Amal, or Elder Brother, or the emotional baggage of a blue-haired kid and his bird master, no matter how curious they had seemed.
He was looking up at the blackened sky.
The Suns were gone; their entire region had turned dark.
There was only a ceiling of claws and teeth screaming toward them.
"Oh, Gods have mercy..."
Malik wasn't much of a believer; his life wasn't exactly sunshine and rainbows. But before such death, he found nothing else to say.
He had no one else to turn to. This was a sight that would've brought the bravest of men to their knees; it simply was too terrifying.
Ding!
Yet, it seemed like the Gods had listened.
A glowing, somewhat translucent Script flickered into existence in his vision, hovering before the wall.
{Would you like to have a second chance at life?}
Malik's breath hitched.
{Would you like to make it past this accursed day?}
'...I would.'
{Would you like strength unlike any other?}
'I would!'
{If so, repeat after me...}
Malik braced his feet in the gray sand. He felt something shifting in his chest, many a glowing marble rolling around in his Soul, suddenly pulling toward a center point.
{Divine Kin—!}
"Divine Kingdom, Archive Of Fate!"
He didn't even wait for the Script to finish. The words felt like they had been carved into his throat, exploding out of him with a force that drowned out the screams of the approaching Horde.
[FEAR SYSTEM ACTIVATED!]
A pillar of white light erupted from his body, turning the gray dune into a crater of glass.
[REVEAL YOUR STRENGTH!]