***
{Inside The Projection}
Malik sat on the cold dais of the Golden Throne.
Cross-legged, he had his eyes closed, his chest expanding and contracting.
The boring machinery of cultivation, a tethered mind that never once relented.
An effort not for power but for holding an internal wound closed with bare palms.
Yes, he shaped Aether around a single purpose: to resist the Corruption long enough for the day to come. Something that he'd done for all his time as Sultan, yet now was his sole focus.
He let the world compress to the sound of his body boiling, the Aether in him humming, and his Corruption ticking down, an hourglass ever fuller; his nightmare forcibly removed from his mind.
Time moved like coagulated blood.
In that blood, he found nothing but darkness.
Even Amal, his once pillar, couldn't light his Path.
Rather, she... no, her image was the one darkening it.
This was the one thing worse than his usual pain.
A long, grinding sorrow of death claiming his soul.
