Misunderstood Villain: Heroines Mourn My Death

Chapter 385: Echoes Of The Damned

***

{Outside The Projection}

Again, it was…

It was… something else entirely.

They didn’t care for his prostration, though they were surprised he did it so unhesitatingly, considering he was a Goddamned Sultan, but it was Malik, something expected by now.

Nobody knew what to say, and nobody even knew how to think right now.

This… this wasn’t just Malik’s journey anymore.

It was a pilgrimage.

A cursed Path.

A passing of the torch.

A facet of their world they never knew existed and never ever expected.

One walked only by those desperate enough… selfless enough… mad enough… arrogant enough… to dive into Jahannam itself to save their people.

And now the world was sure.

Malik was far from the first.

Many fools tried to fight Corruption by facing Hell.

Many of them failed, but they tried; oh, they tried.

Just knowing that made them hold their Former Sultans in even more respect.

“…They all… tried…”

“…Yeah… they did…”

“They really did…”

Their voices could barely be heard.

“…And nobody… they… dammit.”

“…We… we never knew…”

“The world was always… always on the verge of ending, but…”

Huda blinked rapidly while looking at the projection.

“It was a… a chain, a legacy. Each one leaving a clearer path for the next… praying someone would succeed…”

She was sure now.

Sure that her uncle had somehow gone to Hell without any of them knowing.

Roya was pretty surprised by that, too, impressed at how secretive every Sultan managed to be. Not one of them made a mistake, keeping their expeditions, each likely bigger than the last, secret from the world, secret from her, who only minutes ago believed to know all about Hell.

It was poetic.

Disgustingly poetic…

Many of their Sultans were pilgrims and martyrs.

Sure, they waited till near the end of their lives to go deep, but the hall didn’t really expect them to be like Malik. Their Sultan was a different breed, even if he didn’t see it himself.

And now they saw their Sultan carry their collective legacy.

A legacy written in fire, blood, and damnation.

The cursed torch.

Did his hand deliver it to the finish line?

***

{Inside The Projection}

The first thing Malik noticed when the ground spat him out into the Second Gate, Al-Laza, was that this one burned.

Unlike the First Gate’s fire that he barely felt, or rather found quite comfortable, this something was something that peeled.

It clawed, stripped, and wormed beneath skin, beneath muscle, beneath soul.

It was the kind of heat that forced a man to remember every sin he ever committed…

Even Malik, the Hollow King, the one who no longer felt much of anything…

Yeah, even he squinted; even he winced.

His cloak smoldered, his skin cracked at the edges, releasing steam instead of blood.

It didn’t stop him, not even close, but… it was the first time in a long time that he actually noticed pain, delaying his landing by a fraction or two.

That spoke of Hell’s nature.

Al-Laza was a jagged land with no rivers, pits, or mountains of death.

It had one thing and one thing alone: endless blades of black rock poking from the ground like the teeth of some enormous beast.

The sky was much the same, only without that bridge.

Its residents were too, though this land seemed to have a new addition.

Fallen Angels.

Undescribable beings drowned in Corruption.

Things that had no name, having lost it in the Fall.

Again, some of them wept, others screamed, though a few were…

A few of them were staring at him.

Malik ignored them all.

He wasn’t here to waste his time on them.

His hands stayed behind his back as he searched.

It took hours, or maybe it took minutes.

Time here was weird.

But eventually…

’There.’

Another Sultan.

This one was burned halfway into the rock, his legs lost.

His face was half skull, half flesh, his teeth bared in a scream.

Right there, clutched in his carbonized fingers… a scroll.

Malik pried it free and opened it.

{If you’re reading this… you’re a fool.

Just like me.

Welcome to Al-Laza.}

He raised a brow and continued reading.

{The obstacle here is the flame veins east of here. Walk them, but misstep once, and bid goodbye to your legs. Your body will be peeled, your bones will melt, and your soul will scream for a thousand years.}

It sounded a little tough.

{I failed. My legs burst… I couldn’t…}

Malik stopped reading and oriented himself.

After figuring out which way was east, he stepped forward.

BOOM.

The flame veins.

Right, it didn’t take him long to spot them.

A crisscrossing spiral of blue-hot magma going through the ground, surrounded by a killing fire.

To anyone else, even the ’safer’ spiral would’ve led to death, torture, and endless agony.

But to Malik?

’Hm.’

He stepped onto the web, remaining entirely unfazed.

The veins of magma groaned under his feet, aware.

They knew him… they hated him.

As did the killing fire, surging up in greeting.

Malik didn’t greet back and walked the narrow Path.

The blue-hot magma hissed at his ankles with each step, burning away all remaining leather still stuck on his feet. His pants weren’t safe either, for the moment any part of them brushed the fire, they instantly turned into ash.

Steam rose from his legs in long trails, skin peeling slowly from bone, then sealing shut again before the white could show.

Malik didn’t flinch from the pain.

He didn’t speed up or slow down.

Nor did he look at his melting clothes.

The Path dominated his mind.

His Path down this spiral.

It continued.

Twisting deeper and deeper like the tongue of some coiled God.

Each step took him further from light and into stronger pulsing flames.

His cloak was nearly gone now, the fire clutching tighter and tighter around him.

He no longer heard suffering screams anymore, just the molten churn beneath and his bare footsteps thumping against fire that could reduce Mithqals to mere bones.

And indeed, mere bones, for Malik passed skulls in varying levels of melting.

Each one was stuck in the web, as if hammered into it.

Perhaps done by a fellow Sultan, wanting his own to have a more dignified resting place.

They had a choice between melting away or forever living in magma, so this Sultan, whoever he was, had done well, an act that Malik acknowledged.

He passed them all, and eventually…

Eventually, he reached the end of the spiral.

Without warning, magma surged up, like chains; it gripped his waist, chest, and head, yanking him down without sound, the fire swallowing him whole once more.

Malik had done it.

Thanks to the echoes of the damned, his time here might not be so bad after all.

Yeah… it wouldn’t be so bad.

Right?

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