Malik was truly out of his depths here.

He was skilled with a sword, sure, and he was a Class Eleven now.

Stronger and faster than any normal human, but he was up against all of... this.

The endless waves of red, the suffocating Corruption, the strange rules of a land that seemed designed to kill anyone who set foot in it. All of it being described as simply ’this’ was accurate...

Or so he thought.

Still, despite all the odds being stacked against him, he did not let that stop him.

As the red waves receded back into the earth and the static dread settled back into the air, he stepped forward, beginning to lead the way toward the next tree.

To his surprise, both women accepted his leadership without a fight.

Safira, he expected. She seemed more trusting and more willing to follow. But not Huda, whose suspicion had been a constant companion since they first met, or, well, reunited.

Perhaps his quick reaction earlier—pushing them both to safety before the red wave could touch them—had changed her mind about him.

Or perhaps she was simply too shook up to argue.

Either way, off they went.

From tree to tree, trudging through the impossible landscape of sand, snow, and grass, reading the messages carved into each trunk as they passed.

[Expedition 29: ...it does not stop.]

[Expedition 51: Keep on the right here. Even if you think otherwise.]

[Expedition 81: Expedition 80 was... wrong. Back by the last tree, go left.]

Messages, which had grown more desperate and fragmented the deeper they went.

[Expedition 102: We are not sure which is the path forward... we can barely see.]

[Expedition 211: Left, left, left, left... the next one has to be on the right, no?]

[Expedition 321: Help us...]

The words were obviously scratched into the bark with trembling hands, some of them barely legible, as if the carvers had been on the verge of collapse when they wrote them.

Malik read each one with a growing sense of despair, but he did not let it show on his face. 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

He simply filed the information away and kept moving.

That was the role of a Sultan.

Yet those with him weren’t so strong-willed.

The sense of isolation and the oppressive atmosphere began to chip away at the women’s mental defenses.

It started small, a muttered phrase here, a misplaced step there, but, much like the messages, they only became worse.

Huda began to talk to herself in a low, constant stream of words that Malik could not quite make out.

Safira started humming the same three notes over and over, a tune that seemed to have no beginning or end.

They stopped looking at each other... no. They simply stopped acknowledging each other’s existence.

It made Malik realize with a cold certainty that they were starting to forget that they were in company.

There was no concept of day or night here.

After all, there was no Sun, no Moon, and no stars to guide them.

Only the same unchanging light that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.

The idea of hours and days evaporated into thin air until eventually time stopped existing in this cursed land.

Perhaps it never did.

They walked for what felt like minutes or hours or years, and the landscape never changed, the light never dimmed; the only markers were the endless trees with their desperate messages.

Safira stopped checking the carvings altogether after a while.

She would walk up to a trunk, stare at it blankly, and then turn away without reading a single word.

They all said the same thing, so why bother?

Meanwhile, Huda found a genius way to busy her mind.

A way expected of an ambassador.

She started to count her steps!

When she lost count—which happened often—she would stop in place, her face crumpling with frustration, and start over from one.

That alone was already bad enough, but, of course, the drain on their Rukh made it even worse.

A slow leak that left them feeling hollow and lightheaded.

Malik could see it in their faces, the way their eyes seemed to sink deeper into their skulls with every passing tree.

They were being consumed, their Souls slowly eaten away.

Eventually, and expectedly, the counting lady had stopped walking.

Her pink eyes were fixed on the Tree of Life in the distance that never seemed to get any closer.

"We’ve been walking for... for..."

She trailed off, unable to finish.

"How long? How long have we been walking?"

Malik did not have an answer.

Yet, knowing that he had to respond, he looked at the gargantuan tree, then at the next marker in the distance, and replied in the only way he could:

"We have to keep moving."

Huda stared at him for a long moment, only to then nod, her face entirely blank.

She started walking again with footsteps that were way too mechanical.

Safira followed without being told, her humming growing worse.

They had gone too deep.

But before the madness could fully take root in their minds, Malik decided to get them talking.

He wasn’t exactly in a good place himself.

Rather, he had it much worse than them, his body and Soul unable to remain whole.

Yet thanks to his Will, the Will of damned Sultan, he remained of a relatively sane mind.

And so, going against all of his instincts, namely self-preservation, he forced his mind to put some attention outside of his own survivability and onto them.

He needed them to stay focused, to stay human.

So he asked Safira a question that had been nagging at him since they started:

"Why do you trust me so much?"

It was a very loaded question that he was sure would stimulate her mind beyond this slow, Corrupting death.

Safira offered him a vague smile, her green eyes unfocused and distant.

She walked beside him in silence for a few moments before answering:

"You remind me of my Teacher."

An answer that stunned him a little.

Had he been caught a second time?