Misunderstood Hero: My Family Are All Villains

With that, Malik began to learn all about Devil’s Maw.

Noor, with her smoke pipe, had stayed for hours, answering his questions with the utmost precision expected out of someone who had spent years cataloging every corner of the sultanate.

She spoke of lords and cities, of trade routes and abandoned lands, of the delicate web of alliances that held his domain together.

Kings, he learned, were few and far between.

They were mainly situated in the South and the Center, their crowns passed down through bloodlines that stretched back centuries, their names carved into the history of Devil’s Maw.

But most of the sultanate was not ruled by kings.

It was ruled by lords—lords from Great Families.

Of course, that had not always been the case.

Once, before the current Epoch, the Age of the End, there had been many kingdoms and empires.

The map had been a patchwork of competing powers, each vying for dominance and further influence on Markaz and the cities surrounding the Abyss...

Each believed they would be the ones to survive.

But most had faded away since then.

The Demons took some. The invaders took others. The rest had crumbled from within, consumed by infighting and betrayal until nothing remained but ruins and ghosts.

Those who were left held the cities and strongholds, clinging to power with teeth and nails.

The North had been abandoned.

Naturally, no kingdom existed there, nor in the East, or so they commonly believed.

That left the West.

But the West was a different land entirely.

It was all under one flag, Parsa, the empire ruled by Scheherazade.

Every city, every village, and every settlement answered directly to her. There were no kings, lords, or competing powers.

Just the Empress and her Will.

Though that could be said about the sultanate as well, since the Sultan was above all, it came in a literal sense in the West.

In Malik’s domain, the Sultan was the ultimate authority, but beneath him, a web of lords, kings, and city councils managed their own affairs.

They paid taxes, provided soldiers, and swore fealty, but they retained a measure of independence.

The West had no such thing.

Scheherazade’s empire directly controlled everything there.

Malik found the comparison fascinating.

His sultanate and Scheherazade’s empire were both major forces, but they operated on entirely different principles.

He was a Sun surrounded by smaller planets that orbited him, each with its own light. She was a black hole that had consumed everything around her, leaving nothing but herself.

These systems had both advantages and disadvantages.

Scheherazade’s monopoly all but killed any traitor’s ability to do much harm.

There was no one to betray her because there was no one else. Every official served at her pleasure, and every soldier swore directly to her name.

Dissent could not fester because there was no place for it to hide.

But it also stifled any autonomy.

Cities could not make their own decisions. Governors could not raise their own armies. Everything flowed upward to the Empress, and nothing flowed back down.

Malik, meanwhile, had internal problems every other day.

Lords squabbled, kings plotted, and great families maneuvered against each other, jockeying for position, favor, and mostly a larger slice of the pie called the Abyss.

But he also had his entire land working at once, all for one goal.

When he called for soldiers, they came from every corner of the sultanate.

When he needed supplies, they flowed from a dozen different sources.

The autonomy he granted his lords meant that they could act without waiting for his permission, and that speed often meant the difference between victory and defeat.

Especially when up against the Demons.

The two systems achieved very different results, and Malik found himself wondering—not for the first time—if there was a way to take the best of both.

But that was a thought for another day.

What was even more interesting to learn about were the particulars of his own sultanate.

One had to understand that his sultanate was what stood north of the Abyss.

South of the Abyss was where the rest of his sultanate made home, and further South of that was no man’s land, a wasteland of glass peaks and gray sand where nothing lived.

Thus, technically speaking, the sultanate was on the Outskirts of the Abyss.

The locals called it Dawahi.

Meanwhile, Markaz—more commonly known as the Center or Inside—was where most of his people thrived.

Markaz was the area surrounding the Abyss, a ring of land that survived the Corruption seeping up from the depths. It had an entire ecosystem of its own, with wildlife found nowhere else in Devil’s Maw.

Namely, the town of Zawaya, also known as Corner.

Noor described it with a mixture of disdain and fascination.

Half of its buildings leaned into the Abyss, their foundations crumbling. Some had platforms built over the void itself, wooden decks that hung above the darkness, slowly dragged into its depths.

If the Last City was the heart of his sultanate, Zawaya would be the second.

Most of the less-than-legal coin flowed there. Smugglers, thieves, information brokers—all of them gathered in Zawaya, drawn by the promise of profit the Abyss provided.

Of course, it was a place both known and encouraged by his grand vizier, despite her dislike for the place.

Noor had been the one to suggest leaving it alone, to let the criminals police themselves so long as they did not spread beyond the town.

After all, a trickle of illegality was better than a flood.

Malik agreed with that completely. It was far better to have the poison contained in one vessel of his sultanate than to let it seep into every crack and crevice.

Anyhow, the town sounded very interesting to him.

He felt a great familiarity with the place despite not remembering it at all.

The name tugged at something deep in his chest, a thread connecting him to a past he could not quite grasp.

Perhaps it was where he grew up.

Rather, he was sure of it.

The description of his sword—the Spine Splitter—had directly mentioned Zawaya.

He had read those words before everything became a blur of battle, blood, and death.

’Hm, these descriptions have proven to be a treasure trove of information.’

Malik smiled at that thought as he finally stood up from his study.

He had been sitting for hours, surrounded by scrolls, maps, and Noor’s careful notes.

The Suns had shifted across the sky, their light filtering through the windows at ever-changing angles.

His body was stiff, his eyes tired, but his mind felt clearer than it had in days.

There were many more things he had learned, too intricate to mention, but just as important nevertheless.

The names of lords, the histories of great families, and the secret alliances and hidden rivalries that shaped the politics of his domain.

He would need to digest it all, to fit the pieces together until they formed a complete picture.

But for now, that could wait.

Malik was close to running out of Rukh, his reserves drained by hours of maintaining his golden appearance.

The throne would replenish him, as it always did; thus, he headed back towards the Sultan’s Hall.

Thankfully, nothing stopped—

"My son."

Malik stopped.

His father had come.

Hakim was standing in the hallway, right in front of the gates to the Sultan’s Hall.

He looked better than the last time they had spoken, but his face was lined with worry.

Stranger yet, he was dressed simply, in robes that had once been fine but were now worn at the edges.

’Of course... nothing stops. Nothing ever stops.’

Letting out a quiet sigh, invisible to anyone who was not looking for it, Malik stepped forward.

The shadows before him stirred, and the massive gates of the Sultan’s Hall swung open.

He walked through, climbed the steps, and sat down on the Golden Throne.

The throne welcomed him, its cold seeping into his bones, replenishing the Rukh he had spent.

He leaned back, resting his head against the surface, and looked down at his father, who entered with hesitant footsteps.

"What is it, Father?"

Hakim stopped at the base of the steps and looked up at his son; his golden eyes—so similar to Malik’s own—were searching for something.

"Just what did you do?"