After an unknown number of deaths... He finally—finally—managed to find solid pause. He had obtained a single heartbeat of life. His soul had flared with Aether, and it formed the shape of a second. Those words weren't even thoughts. They were realizations. Instinctual ones. His right eye had fluttered open. Only the left... only that eye was gone. Good. That was good. That was progress. Sure, everything else was still wrecked. His ears rang like broken bells. His throat felt like it had been scraped by blades. But the pain—the red, splitting, mind-shattering pain—was delayed. His sight went red, and the cycle returned. Painful, red, death. Painful, red, death. Painful, red, death. Painful, red, death. Painful, red, death. Painful, red, death. Painful, red, death. Painful, red, death. Painful, red, death. Painful, red, death. Painful, red, death. Painful, red, death. A chorus of agony, of bone-deep despair. A second repeated, a punishment for disobeying fate. This hadn't turned him static, however. The insanity within him sharpened with every cycle. Every failure etched anger deeper into his lungs. Malik… Malik endured. He always had. Endurance made manifest. Fifty slivers. Fractions. Flickers. Fifty cracks in which to think, to breathe, to be—before the second reset, and he died again. A man shouldn't survive this. A man shouldn't even remember this. But he was no longer a man. A Magi. A Jinn. He was will in its rawest shape. The Aether screamed inside him, but he began to listen. He began to learn. Every repetition—every loop—built upon the path. He mapped the moment. Felt the ripple. Found the trigger. A soundless syllable, mouthed by Cyrus before the pop. A twitch in the Sultan's fingers. An invisible wave of air, born of Aether. He couldn't dodge it. Couldn't block it. But maybe—maybe—he could bend it. Bend it around himself, deflecting it. One flicker of his Aether. One twist of his soul. He raised his flames. He shifted the flow of his thoughts. He forced the moment. Interrupted it. The red did not come. He was still there. Inside the loop and outside death. It was only for a little while, but now, finally, he had space. There was still pain. Still pressure. The red static hung around him like a curtain, waiting to fall. But it didn't. Not yet. He had pierced through the surface. Madness trembled in his chest. A never-ending Hell of pain and helplessness that tried to break his heart over and over again. But… after repeating this second of despair for a time only he and God knew, he... had finally built it. He remembered every death. Every useless moment where he couldn't even think—now he could. He could. The next fraction would come. It always did. That was time; time always continued. Malik would meet it on his terms. This 'time,' it would not end with his death. He inhaled. Tasted blood. His head felt the bang. There was no time... but Malik had time. Of course, it was not in the way others did—linear, normal, sane—but in fractions, in flickers. In whatever this Hell-loop he now understood better than the back of his own bloodied hand could be called. Cyrus mouthed the word, and pain immediately fell upon him. It always did. No matter his success, uncaring of the path he had cultivated. Still, this time, it had stopped at pain. His eye didn't burst. His core didn't crack. And the red world had yet to fall. He showcased his essence, his fire... and fire, like him, had remembered. It indeed had remembered. Before the blur of the first few fractions, with rage boiling in his heart, he had erupted, and so did his Aether. It was a pulse. A surge of burning rage that had slipped out, unnoticed in his fury, until this one-second death trap had caught him in its grip. His fire was everywhere around them. In the air, in the stones, even in the marble beneath. They were his. His flames. His WILL. And now, he would use them. Malik twitched his fingers. Not with hands—those were bound in this moment—but with Aether. He began to bend the space around the spell. Pushed it with the flames around it. The heat that awaited their meeting. A ripple passed through the air. Invisible to the naked eye—but not to him. He wove his fire into it. Threaded his essence into its path. Carefully. Deliberately. Indeed, he didn't dare block the spell. He didn't fight it. He guided it. A path of fire bloomed—subtle, narrow. A curve. Then another. Then a twist. Then a small bump—just enough to jolt its speed. Every turn slowed it. Every flicker dragged it. Every flame-touched arc whispered, "This way, not that." The death that once came for him now flowed like water into a maze. A maze of heat, and Malik stood in the eye of it. A world of red never came, and an explosion of his mind wasn't heard. He watched—calmly, impossibly—as the spell missed him by less than a hair. It screamed past his cheek, tearing the air, and slammed into the stone wall behind him. There was no fire, not even smoke, just pressure, a lot of pressure. Enough to shake the palace in its entirety. The wall had not shattered; rather, it imploded. Crushed in on itself, rubble spewing out. A million tiny pieces scattering, and the rest... Like his head in previous blinks, it was gone. Nothing but a crater of dust. He had survived the second. The spell hadn't just missed. He had rewritten its fate. He looked at Cyrus now. Gold locked with pink. A hot pressure descended... And the world held its breath.