The air above the village darkened into an unnatural eclipse that formed without logic or reason—
not fully night, and not fully day.
The clouds didn't drift;
they aligned themselves,
opening all at once like thousands of invisible eyes.
A faint but suffocating pressure fell over the village—
not the heavy,
physical weight of a storm,
but the psychological weight of being noticed.
Ali looked up,
his voice trembling.
"Why…
why does the sky feel like it's looking down?".
Yusuf shuddered.
"Stop saying that…
it sounds cursed".
But Zayd whispered,
"It is looking".
Amina screamed for everyone to get inside their houses immediately.
Khalid urged them to lock the doors, sensing the deep wrongness in the air, while Salman stood bewildered,
saying his customers had just left mid-sentence, walking away as if in a trance.
Then, reality itself began to stutter.
A water pot fell from someone's hands, but it didn't break.
It simply froze halfway to the ground.
Even the dust stopped reacting to gravity for a moment before everything resumed, as if nothing had happened.
Farid stammered that it wasn't normal, and Omar whispered that it was like reality was forgetting how to behave.
Shadows began detaching from their owners.
Some villagers saw their shadows facing the wrong direction, while others appeared older than the people casting them.
Fatima panicked, crying out that her shadow wasn't copying her anymore.
Imran pointed out in horror that his shadow was standing behind the well while he was standing elsewhere.
Then Hashim screamed,
"MINE IS SMILING…".
A dead silence followed before Ali whispered,
"Shadows don't smile".
Nearby, a goat tied to a hut didn't run or die;
it simply lost its definition,
as if it had never been fully rendered into reality,
leaving only the rope behind.
Khalid shouted, asking where the goat went,
and Amina insisted it had just been there.
But Elder Rashid stared blankly, murmuring,
"No… it was never there".
Yusuf cried, telling his mother he didn't like the village anymore, and Amina pulled him behind her defensively.
Salman muttered that this wasn't a desert danger,
but something entirely different.
Sheikh Harun looked up with a profound sense of dread.
"It has started," he said.
When Zayd asked what had started, the old man replied,
"The counting".
The clouds finally split—
not physically,
but like a veil being pulled apart to reveal countless faint,
glowing points behind it.
They weren't stars or light;
they were something observing them.
"We are being…
measured,"
Ali realized.
"Like numbers,"
Farid added.
The clay walls of the huts subtly bent inward.
Sound itself began to arrive late, and words felt delayed and incomplete.
Fatima cried out, asking why she couldn't hear herself properly, and Imran realized that something was interfering with sound itself.
The detached shadows stopped acting individually and merged into unified,
silent groups near the walls and open spaces, simply watching.
Hashim screamed that they were all looking at them now.
A silence so deep fell over the village that even fear stopped reacting.
A new pressure spread across the area—
not killing,
not destroying,
but deciding.
Some people felt lighter,
some heavier,
and some felt as though they were fading from notice entirely.
Sheikh Harun spoke softly,
"It is not here to kill…
It is here to choose who is real".
Ali asked, trembling,
"Am I real…?"
and Yusuf cried that he didn't feel real anymore.
Amina ordered them to stay quiet and stay together.
Above the village, the sky pulsed once.
THUMP…
Like a massive heartbeat.
And then, everything froze.
Not in fear, but in waiting.
It was as if existence itself was waiting for permission to continue.
The sky above the village was no longer natural.
It wasn't bright, and it wasn't dark;
it was trapped in a horrifying state between existence and absence,
as if reality itself had stopped breathing .
The wind had completely disappeared,
the birds had fled,
and even the insects had forgotten how to make sound .
A singular, crushing realization settled over the entire village:
they were being observed by something that did not forgive existence.
Amina pulled Ali tightly to her chest,
her hands shaking uncontrollably.
"Ali…
don't look up at the sky…
Something is wrong…
very wrong,"
she pleaded.
Ali looked back with a terrifyingly blank expression.
"Ammi…
I am not even thinking properly anymore,"
he murmured.
"It feels like my thoughts are being watched before I think them…".
Nearby, Fatima ordered Yusuf to stay close and not move. Yusuf trembled, asking,
"Ammi…
why is everyone silent even when they are speaking?".
He felt a suffocating dread,
noting that it felt like their voices simply were not reaching outside.
The mental suppression began to tear at the adults.
Salman suddenly dropped his bag,
his coins scattering across the dirt, but he didn't even react .
"I… I was going somewhere,"
he whispered, staring at his empty hands.
"Where was I going?"
He tried to grasp the thought,
but the memory completely refused to stay in his mind .
Khalid gripped his axe tightly,
his knuckles white and his hands trembling with sheer rage.
"If something is here…
I will break it!
I don't fear unseen things!"
he declared.
His son, Farid, looked up at him with tearful eyes.
"Baba…
maybe it's not something you can hit…
Maybe it's something that hits you before you swing…".
Imran, the veteran hunter,
scanned the sky desperately, but his lifelong instincts utterly failed him .
"I have tracked living things by breath…
But this… This has no breath to track…".
When Hashim asked how they could possibly survive it,
Imran offered a chilling,
silent pause before replying,
"We might already not be surviving" .
Sheikh Harun stepped forward slowly, his voice carrying the weight of authority but breaking at the edges .
"! This is not a natural evListen to me carefully!ent! This is something beyond nature itself!" .
Confusion and panic erupted.
One villager complained of a strange pressure in his mind,
while Elder Rashid admitted that in all his long years of seeing war and death,
he had never seen something that arrives without moving .
Yusuf cried out to his mother that his mind was suddenly empty.
Khalid refused to yield to an invisible enemy, vowing to trust only in weapons and truth .
But Sheikh Harun suddenly screamed,
his voice raw with terror:
"KNEEL!!
EVERYONE KNEEL!!
Before you are erased without even being remembered!!".
The villagers hesitated, protesting, but deep down, a sickening feeling told them that the old man was right .
Then, the sky subtly distorted.
It wasn't visually obvious,
but the mental strain became unbearable.
Everyone instantly paused;
even their breathing felt controlled.
A voice entered everything.
It didn't travel through their ears or the air;
it vibrated through existence itself,
bending reality under its immense weight.
"So many fragments…"
Jabar's voice resonated.
"So many thoughts pretending to be life…".
The villagers screamed in sheer panic, clutching their heads, realizing the voice was echoing directly inside their skulls like a physical judgment .
Sheikh Harun collapsed to his knees, completely broken.
"I accept…
whatever you are…
Just don't erase us without meaning…"
he begged.
A long silence stretched across the frozen village.
And then came absolute finality.
"You are already part of the result…"
Jabar answered smoothly. "Fear is only your
confirmation…".
The air had stopped, and although the people were moving, the world itself felt completely frozen.
In the very center stood Jabar.
He remained at the village entrance exactly as he always stood—
as if the road had always been leading to him and the village had simply taken this long to arrive.
He was tall and broad, with long black hair loose across his shoulders and a dark beard falling across his chest.
He wore a black, sleeveless robe torn at the edges, and in his right hand, he held his twisted black iron wand.
The red orb at its tip pulsed slowly, casting a dark light,
while the purple locket at his chest glowed steady and alive,
like a second heartbeat.
Suddenly, Sheikh Harun fell down in complete devotion.
"My lord, please take me into your refuge…
I will serve you with all my being,"
the old man begged, declaring Jabar the true ruler of the world.
Panic rippled through the villagers.
Whispers broke out, accusing their leader of going mad and his mind failing with age.
Ali felt a mix of fear and anger,
telling his mother that this was wrong and that this presence could not be God.
Yusuf trembled, vowing not to bow to anyone,
while their mothers desperately tried to pull them back and keep them safe.
Hashim was confused and angry, demanding to know why they weren't fighting,
while Zayd realized this presence was entirely inhuman.
Refusing to submit, the main villagers started running in every direction,
clay dust rising around their feet as if the earth itself was trying to help them escape.
"How long will you run…?"
Jabar asked, his voice calm yet absolutely terrifying.
"Wherever you go…
you will die…
What a shame…
In the entire village…
only one person recognized the true God".
He looked down at the kneeling elder.
"I want to reward you…".
Sheikh Harun eagerly awaited his reward, promising to obey his new lord.
Amina and Fatima watched in shock, realizing the leader was completely giving himself away.
Jabar raised his hand.
Darkness gathered around his palm,
compressing and tightening until it formed a small,
dark pill of concentrated corruption with shadow energy crackling around it.
Zayd realized instantly that this was not normal magic.
"Consume it," Jabar commanded.
The villagers stared in absolute shock as Sheikh Harun took the pill without hesitation and without a single glance back at the people he had led for thirty years.
He ate it.
For a moment, there was silence.
Then—
CRACK
His body started shaking violently.
His spine bent backward with the sickening sound of something that was never meant to bend that way.
Harun let out a bloodcurdling scream.
Chapter End