Chapter 167: A Most Lonely Funeral

Malik was teleported into a graveyard.

A well-kept one, with the grass trimmed close, headstones standing straight, flowers placed with care at the base of several graves nearby. The air smelled of turned earth and old stone, and a thin wind moved between the markers without disturbing anything.

There were no guards here. No banners. No one at all, save for the two figures ahead.

But he didn’t notice that first.

What he first noticed were Huda and Safira.

They stood with their backs to him, neither one aware of his arrival, both staring down at a single grave before them.

On the tombstone, carved in simple, unadorned letters, was a single word.

Stranger.

"I..."

Huda’s voice broke the silence.

"I... I shouldn’t have... just why, every time I..."

She couldn’t finish the sentence.

She didn’t need to. Malik understood exactly what she was trying to say, the pattern she was circling without being able to land on it directly.

Every time she let someone in, every time she let herself care, they left. One way or another.

That was the shape of the thought, even if she couldn’t bring herself to say it whole.

Her hands trembled at her sides, curling and uncurling as though they had forgotten what to hold. Safira said nothing. She only stepped closer until their shoulders touched, a quiet presence offered without a single word.

Malik approached slowly, Dunya’s hand still in his, and let a soft smile settle onto his face.

"If someone like you is crying over him then I’m sure he was a great man."

Both women snapped their heads towards him at once.

Beyond stunned.

And then even more stunned, once their eyes actually processed what they were looking at.

It was common knowledge that those talented enough to Ascend young didn’t grow facial hair, didn’t age the way ordinary people did, their bodies locked into youth by the sheer strength of their Rukh.

But here Malik stood, looking older. Weathered in a way that shouldn’t have been possible for someone his age, someone of his apparent strength.

It was impossible; it literally couldn’t happen. There was no sudden aging for those of the Angel Class, and yet that wasn’t anything unexpected when considering Malik’s history.

Something major had happened to him.

But well...

They didn’t know what had happened to him while he’d been gone.

Nobody did.

Or at least nobody except Safira.

She had realized, at the very end, down in the depths, that Malik had been with her the entire time.

That the Stranger and her Sultan were one and the same.

She’d called him Teacher.

So why was she standing here, holding a funeral for him?

That made no sense. Unless...

Did she think he’d died?

No.

If she genuinely believed that, the whole palace would be here.

Family, nobles, guards, half the Sultanate mourning their missing ruler.

This was small. Private. Just the two of them and a quiet grave tucked into the corner of some graveyard nobody important would think to visit.

What had happened to her after the ring sent her away?

While Malik turned the question over in his mind, both women’s eyes drifted to Dunya standing beside him, and they let out a collective sigh, equal parts exasperation and fondness.

Of course it had been her who found him.

Who else would it have been?

Their thoughts were clearly racing now, spiraling through a dozen different explanations at once, trying to reconcile the Sultan standing in front of them with the mystery they’d just been grieving.

Malik noticed the tension building behind their eyes and stepped forward, taking a hand from each of them, holding on gently.

He stood before the grave.

His own grave.

It was strange, reading that word carved into stone by people who had loved the man behind it without ever learning his name. Strange, and heavier than he’d expected.

Safira, still barely recovering from her shock, gestured toward the headstone.

"This is the Stranger. I never asked his name. I wanted to respect his boundaries. He obviously didn’t want to reveal it, but... I should’ve asked him."

And with that single sentence, Malik understood.

Safira had forgotten.

Whatever realization she’d reached down in the depths, whatever truth she’d pieced together about who the Stranger actually was, it had been taken from her.

Scrambled, maybe, or erased outright.

The ring that had saved them, pulled them clear of a Fate that should have killed them all, had apparently come with a price.

Their last fragments of memory, sacrificed for survival.

By sheer luck—or maybe, more accurately, by Fate itself—his secret had been spared along with them.

Now that he understood, he finally spoke:

"We soldiers are a pitiful bunch."

The words came out steady, carrying weight despite how quietly he said them.

"We march for fields that we might never see. Towards sunrises that are not meant for us."

Huda’s breath caught.

"Though we find martyrdom an honor, death and Corruption will always be our ugly end."

He paused, letting the silence stretch just long enough to matter.

"But it’s not all bad."

His eyes stayed fixed on the headstone.

On his own name, written in a form nobody but him would ever recognize.

"The blessed of us are men like this."

"Those who let others carry on their torch."

"Their Will."

Malik’s grip on their hands tightened, just slightly.

"It all Falls upon me now."

A single tear slipped down Huda’s cheek, and she didn’t bother wiping it away. Safira’s fingers closed around his in return, firm and steady, as if she were the one trying to hold him up.

The truth sat on the tip of his tongue.

He swallowed it.

This was the Stranger’s goodbye.

A most lonely funeral, attended by the only two people who had ever truly known him in that form, both of them mourning a man who stood right beside them, holding their hands, unable to tell them the truth even now.