The email notification pinged on my phone, interrupting my truly monumental effort to procrastinate. I was supposed to be translating a 15th-century Ottoman decree about tax exemptions for goat farmers, but honestly, even the goats probably found it drier than their feed. I, Dr. Bilal Jones, esteemed (read: perpetually underpaid) anthropologist specializing in ancient cults, was treating my academic work like a root canal—necessary, but best deferred until the screaming started.
I glanced at the screen. Not the university, thank God. It was a video message from Omar, my artistic, slightly too-intense younger brother.
"Ugh, five minutes of Omar staring soulfully at a sunset and reciting Baudelaire again," I muttered, swiping it open. Omar had a habit of finding profound meaning in spilled milk, but he was my anchor. He was the reason I tolerated living in this cramped flat near the university ruins, which, ironically, were less crumbling than my student loan balance.
But the video wasn't a sunset. It was a dark, shaky shot of Omar's own cluttered studio apartment. The only light came from a single, bare bulb swinging overhead, casting nauseating shadows.
"Bilal" his voice was a raw whisper, completely unlike his usual melodious drone. "Bilal look. You need to see this."
My humor evaporated. His face, when the camera focused briefly, was pale and slick with sweat, his eyes wide and vacant. He looked less like Omar and more like a melted wax figure of Omar.
He didn't pan to a strange object or a drawing. He pointed the camera at a corner of the ceiling.
"It's the script, Bilal. It's writing itself."
I paused the video. Writing itself? Was he high? He'd been stressed lately, ever since he came back from that disastrous research trip to the ancient marketplace, clutching that moldy, untranslatable manuscript like it was the Holy Grail and he was Indiana Jones's slightly less coordinated younger cousin.
I hit play. The camera was steady now. And there, against the peeling plaster of the ceiling, was a line of black script. It wasn't painted; it looked scorched. As I watched, a new character seemed to seep out of the material itself, accompanied by a faint, dry hissing sound that I only registered because my volume was cranked up. The symbols weren't Arabic, but they felt aggressively familiar—a stylized, angular script I recognized from the most unsettling pages of his cursed goat manuscript.
"It's Jinn script, isn't it?" Omar whispered, his voice cracking. "The language of the smokeless fire."
"Omar, stop being dramatic. You probably used charcoal paint and forgot. You're stressed, bro. Go take a shower and drink some water," I replied automatically, the academic in me reflexively rejecting the supernatural explanation. My brain filed this under "Severe Stress-Induced Delusion," right next to "Taxonomy of Goat Farts."
Then, the camera dropped.
The sound that followed wasn't a thump; it was a noise designed to unhinge the listener. It was a wet, rasping choke, followed by a series of sharp, dry clicks—like chitinous legs scraping concrete.
Then, Omar started speaking. But it wasn't Omar.
The voice was deep, layered, and utterly devoid of human warmth. It sounded like gravel being scraped over a tombstone while three different men spoke simultaneously in different pitches.
"The scholar attempts to deny the data... but the air grows cold, Bilal Jones . Very cold."
It knew my name.
My hands flew to the volume control, but it was already maxed out. My heart, an organ usually content to beat at a reasonable, anthropological tempo, was now staging an aggressive, unscheduled EDM concert.
"Your brother welcomed the silence. He welcomed the fire," the voice continued, its tone shifting to a mocking, ancient glee.
I heard glass shatter. Then a loud, shuddering crash—the sound of his heavy wooden easel being thrown against a wall.
I screamed, "Omar! What the hell is that?"
The voice paused, and when it returned, it was closer to the mic, almost a distorted, wet whisper.
"I am the one he sought. I am... Al-Malik."
I didn't call the police. I didn't call an ambulance. I grabbed my keys, my pepper spray (because, you know, cultists), and the moldy goat manuscript—maybe the only artifact that made sense of this insane turn of events. I ran out the door, throwing myself into the nightmare traffic like I was auditioning for a role in a low-budget disaster movie.
Omar's building was only a few blocks away, but those blocks felt like crossing the Gobi Desert on a unicycle. By the time I reached his door, I was hyperventilating, sweat stinging my eyes.
The silence in the hallway was heavier than a stack of unprocessed research papers. I fumbled for my key, but the lock was already half-turned.
I pushed the door open.
The immediate smell was wrong—a sickening, coppery odor mixed with the dry, acrid scent of ozone and something rotten, like meat left baking in the desert sun.
His studio was destroyed. Paints were smeared across the walls in violent, unnatural patterns, and every piece of furniture was overturned. The bare bulb was indeed swinging, casting the entire room in chaotic, strobe-like flashes.
"Omar?" My voice was pathetic, a squeak of fear and denial.
He was standing in the center of the room, facing the wall.
He wasn't covered in blood, but the skin on his back looked tight, almost plasticky, stretched unnaturally over his spine. He was wearing the same hoodie he'd been in for three days.
"Omar, turn around. We need to go to the hospital." I tried to sound calm, adopting the tone I usually used to convince a dissertation committee that my theories weren't completely bonkers.
He didn't move. Then, he began to grow.
It wasn't a sudden hulk-out. It was subtle, horrifying growth—a few inches taller, his shoulders broadening, his neck thickening, making the hoodie stretch tautly across his back. His bones, my beautiful brother's fragile artist bones, were rearranging themselves with a sickening creak that sounded like old leather being stretched too far.
Then, he slowly turned.
His eyes were the horror. They weren't Omar's soft brown eyes; they were gold, luminous, and slitted, like a feline predator's, radiating cold contempt. A faint, almost imperceptible plume of vapor—like heat rising from asphalt—curled around his head.
"The anthropologist has arrived, Bilal Jones ," the gravel voice hissed. It was deafening in the enclosed space. "Such a small vessel for such a grand understanding."
He raised a hand. The fingers were too long, too skeletal, and they moved with a precise, jerking fluidity that defied human musculature.
"You cannot deny what you see," Al-Malik taunted, using Omar's lips.
I wanted to run. Every rational, academic fiber in my body screamed, "Exit the premises! Data acquisition is not worth spinal fluid loss!"
But he was my brother. Or whatever was wearing my brother.
I did the only thing a stressed-out academic with a can of novelty pepper spray could do: I pointed my weak little canister at the towering thing that used to be my brother.
"Look, Al-Malik or whatever your ancient, pompous name is," I managed, my voice shaking so hard it vibrated the air. "You have five seconds to vacate the premises and leave my brother intact, or I will introduce your thousand-year-old butt to the concept of capsaicin burn."
It didn't blink. Of course it didn't. It just smiled—a wide, impossibly slow smile that stretched Omar's face into a mask of pure malevolence.
"Foolish human," the Jinn roared, and the force of the sound threw me backward. I landed hard, the air knocked out of my lungs, my pepper spray clattering uselessly across the floor.
As I struggled to breathe, the Jinn took a step toward me. It lifted its unnaturally long hand, and with a lazy gesture, the door slammed shut and locked with a heavy thunk.
I was trapped. Not just with a delusional brother, but with a terrifying spiritual entity wearing my brother's skin like a cheap suit.
The Collapse had begun.I scrambled backward across the dusty floor, pushing myself up onto my elbows, my heart hammering a chaotic rhythm against my ribs. My initial fear was quickly morphing into a cold, paralyzing dread—the kind that grips you when the neat, sensible boundaries of your world spontaneously combust.
"Omar, listen to me," I gasped, ignoring the impossibly gold eyes staring me down. "This isn't helping. We need a doctor. A real one, not whatever medieval exorcist nonsense you've been reading." I was lying, of course. My gut was screaming "Jinn," but my academic training was forcing the words "schizophrenia" and "vascular incident" out of my mouth. It was a pathetic, last-ditch defense mechanism.
The thing that was Omar didn't move. It simply tilted its head, a predatory gesture that looked utterly wrong on my brother's frame. The air in the room, already stale, dropped several degrees. It wasn't the kind of cold that comes from an open window; it was the cold of absolute stillness, the kind that leeches warmth from the bone and leaves the air feeling thick and dead.
"A doctor?" the layered voice boomed, laced with ancient, contemptuous laughter that scraped at my ears. "The frail human healers cannot mend the spirit, Bilal Jones . They cannot touch me. They cannot even conceive of the architecture I inhabit."
The floor beneath its feet began to crack. Not with a loud snap,but a slow, continuous grinding sound, like teeth chewing rock. Fine fissures spiderwebbed out from Omar's shoes, the plaster groaning under an unseen, impossible weight.
"You're damaging his floor!" I cried, the protest absurdly mundane, yet the only non-terrifying thing I could focus on. "You'll owe the landlord weeks of rent, you demonic freeloader!"
The creature stopped laughing. The expression on Omar's face twisted into something that suggested immense effort, or perhaps immense irritation.
"Rent is a concept for the tethered," Al-Malik sneered. "I am not tethered.*"
I finally got my feet under me, stumbling behind the overturned, heavy wooden easel. It was useless as a shield, but it gave me something to hide behind. I noticed a small, singed patch of carpet near the wall—the point where the easel had been thrown. The destructive power was real, undeniable.
I reached out and frantically grabbed the pepper spray canister. My only hope was the shock of pure, localized chemical pain. If this thing inhabited a body, that body should react.
"I'm warning you! This stuff is certified to take down a raging bear, and trust me, you're starting to look like a poorly shaven one!" I aimed the nozzle at its chest, my hand trembling so violently the spray beam would probably hit the ceiling.
Al-Malik merely observed me, a shadow of amusement in its golden eyes. It didn't rush. It didn't fear the pain. It was studying me with the detached curiosity of an entomologist viewing a desperate insect.
It spoke again, but this time, the voice was quieter, more focused—a low, resonant hum that vibrated directly inside my skull. "You carry the taint of forbidden knowledge, Bilal. Your mind, so sharp, so resistant to the obvious truth. You dismissed the texts as mere folklore, yet you rush to grasp the weapon of a panicked beast."
Then, it struck.
It didn't use its hands. It didn't move its feet. It simply willed it.
A section of the wall behind me—a four-foot section of plaster and brick—exploded inward. The pressure wave hit me like a solid wall, sending me flying over the easel. Dust, debris, and sharp shards rained down. My ears popped painfully.
I hit the floor hard, landing awkwardly on my shoulder. The pain was immediate and blinding, but it was nothing compared to the shock. I blinked through the haze of dust, my head ringing.
The easel had been reduced to splinters. My pepper spray was gone, buried under debris.
Al-Malik slowly approached the massive, new hole in the wall. The gaping maw revealed the apartment next door—empty, judging by the lack of screaming neighbors (which was a small miracle, honestly. New Yorkans] are resilient, but spontaneous wall demolition is usually a hard limit).
The Jinn didn't seem interested in escaping. It lifted its hand and traced a long, skeletal finger across the exposed brick. As its finger moved, the black, scorched script began to appear on the raw brick surface, bubbling and hissing as the characters etched themselves into the material.
The sound of the writing—that dry, sharp scraping—was the true horror. It felt wrong, violating the very nature of matter.
"This is the language of the untethered. The grammar of the true realm," it murmured. "Your brother, in his foolish yearning for understanding, opened the door with his mind. And now, I walk through."
It finally took its eyes off the script and fixed them on me. I lay there, useless, bruised, and overwhelmed.
"Why?" I choked out, tasting dust and fear. "Why Omar? He's just an artist."
Al-Malik chuckled, a dry, horrific sound. "His soul is fertile, Bilal. He possesses the necessary Rūḥ—the spiritual energy—for my purpose. And you, the scholar who denies me, shall be the first to witness my return."
It raised its hand toward the ceiling, and the single swinging bulb suddenly shattered, plunging the room into absolute, suffocating darkness. The last sound I heard before the utter blackness consumed me was the chillingly familiar, multi-layered voice whispering directly into my mind:
"Tomorrow, the ritual begins."