📜 READER RULES
"A Realm Where Cowards Get Lost Twice"
1. This story uses a system structure.
Not a tax system, not a coding system— a choice-based survival system.
And every choice has consequences. (Yes, even the stupid ones.)
2. You must be as honorable as a grandmaster in desert chess.
Once your finger touches a pawn—no takebacks.
No crying. No "I didn't mean it."
Live with your decision.
3. Do NOT read all paths.
You're not an omniscient deity. Choose one route and stay loyal.
If you peek at the others, the jinn will judge your commitment issues.
The protagonist's fate is now in your hands.
If they die, that's between you and your conscience.
Do not DM the author at 2 a.m. to blame the plot twist.
Confused? Terrified? Regretting your choices?
Perfect.
That means the system works.
Proceed.
6. You may laugh, scream, or re-evaluate your life choices.
You may NOT go back and redo the chapter.
This is not a dating sim.
This is destiny—with lag.
***
The bird curled on the surface of the giant mushroom, its glass-thin wings trembling. The leg that Rafi's light-arrow had pierced was laced with fine cracks; greenish-blue light seeped out of them like a wounded breath.
The forest of Dhul-Wujūd still swallowed light whole. Somewhere beyond the canopy, VENA was surely still red-gold, ZURQ still pale-blue, SAFRA still climbing to crown the monsters' sky.
Down here—nothing came through. Only the blue moss gave off just enough glow to prove this darkness wasn't a dream.
Rafi's stomach growled, low but clear.
"GROOOOUUUK…"
He bit the inside of his cheek.
His tongue was dry.
His breaths were short; each inhale scraped his chest like sandpaper.
Sahim sat with his back against the mushroom stalk, knees hugged to his chest, staring at the bird for a long time.
"Bro…" his voice was hoarse.
"If we eat it, maybe we can run again. If we heal it… we stay hungry."
Rafi let out a tiny laugh. It sounded more like a cough.
"If we eat it, and it turns out… it was given a mandate to guard this place…" he drew in a shaking breath,
"…we'll get eaten in turn by something bigger."
Silence fell again.
Blue moss along the mushroom wall flickered softly—like it was waiting for a verdict.
Sahim fumbled inside his small bag and pulled out the bottle of river water. Light turned slowly inside it, a faint, steady spiral.
"This water… safe for us to drink, but we don't know about the bird," he muttered, staring at the liquid as if it were a life-and-death contract.
He narrowed his eyes at the bird.
"If we use it on him…"
He swallowed.
"…either he gets healed, or he turns into the next stage Boss."
Rafi looked closely at the cracked leg. Something in his expression was more than simple hunger—more like exhaustion with always choosing "sacrifice" as the default.
"Bro… try a little," he whispered at last.
"If he explodes… we stop. If he heals… at least… we didn't add more sin to the list."
Sahim exhaled—long, heavy.
"Bismillah…"
He tore a small strip from the hem of his clothes and poured a single DROP of water onto the fabric. Light in the water ran into the threads, circling slowly.
Sahim leaned in—slowly, nervously.
"Hold on, okay…" he whispered to the bird for no logical reason at all.
He touched the damp cloth to the bird's leg. Light seeped into the crack. The bird jolted, its wings flicking for a fraction of a second. Rafi's hand flew up, ready in case the bird suddenly turned into a bomb.
The glass fracture began to close.
The shards around the wound pulled back together, neat and precise, as if an invisible hand was sliding each piece back into place.
The bird made a faint sound, like two crystal goblets brushing.
"Hriip…"
Its layered eyes blinked twice.
Its wings fluttered once, then—
it stood.
Whole.
Sahim almost dropped where he sat. His eyes burned; his face was caught somewhere between relief and absolute terror.
"MasyaAllah…" his breath shook.
"Bro… it healed… it actually healed…"
The water's effect on him arrived a heartbeat late. His eyelids grew heavy for a moment, his breathing slowed. A strange edge of euphoria brushed his mind—the side effect of pure water laced with ZURQ's afterglow. He bit his lip, refusing to be dragged into sleep.
The bird stared at them.
Really stared.
Rafi put a hand over his chest.
"Bro… I've got a bad feeling…" he murmured, half joking, half bargaining with fate.
The little bird tilted its head back toward the dark canopy of Dhul-Wujūd. Its beak opened.
The sound that came out wasn't a chirp.
Not a screech.
But a long, thin tone rippling in all directions—high and low frequencies colliding, making the very air vibrate.
"Hriiiii—yaa—rrrriiii—"
Blue moss along the trunks shivered. The giant mushroom under them made a low groan—groooom—like the belly of the earth complaining. The air around them thickened, denser, heavier.
Rafi tensed.
"Bro…" his voice dropped half an octave.
"…that wasn't 'thank you.' That was 'share location.'"
Sahim's eyes bulged.
"Eh—eh—YA RABB… CANCEL! CANCEL!!"
But the sound had already gone up, punching through the canopy that hated the three suns. Silence fell briefly—a cold, listening silence.
FLLLUP—FLLLUP—FLLLUP—FLLLUP—
Wings. Many of them.
The false sky of Dhul-Wujūd began to move.
Not because of clouds.
Because of silhouettes.
Dozens of glass birds—shaped like the one in front of them but a little larger—spiraled among the black branches. Their transparent wings sliced the air without heavy noise, each beat catching what little ZURQ managed to slip into the forest.
At the center of the flock—higher, slower:
A giant bird. Three times the size of the small one. Layered glass-feathers, their tips sharp as broken bottle edges. Around its head, a thin halo of feather-rings hung like a shattered crown, each ring holding multiple tiny, unblinking eyes. Light veins in its chest pulsed—faint, but strong.
Sahim swallowed.
"Bro…" he whispered, almost inaudible.
"…is that Mom or Dad…?"
Rafi didn't answer.
Sahim remembered:
Those "living statues" by the river earlier—the glass deer frozen mid-step, the silver marten stuck with its mouth half-open, the little animals around the roots caught in impossible poses—they all had one thing in common:
A thin layer of frozen glass over parts of their bodies, especially around small wounds—bite marks.
"Bro…" Sahim's voice was raw.
"…they weren't sleeping. They… were frozen."
One adult bird on the left suddenly dove to a spot on the riverbank—toward a large glass-winged insect.
SNAP—
One peck.
A thin frost of glass spread over the insect's back, racing along its wings. Its movement slowed instantly.
"Full hit…" Rafi murmured.
The largest bird dropped lower. Its many tiny eye-rings swept across the mushroom where Rafi and Sahim sat.
The little bird they had healed lifted its wings, drifting up toward its parent. It made a brief sound:
"Hrrip."
A report.
The parent turned once toward the two humans.
The air turned cold.
Sahim hugged himself.
"Bro… my body's cold… the bad kind…" his breath came out as a faint mist, even though Dhul-Wujūd had no wind.
Layers of eyes along the parent's head shifted… focused. The flock around it moved as one. Half circled over the river. The other half descended, slowly, to ring the giant mushroom.
"Bro…" Sahim whispered,
"…if we run for the river, we're training dummies. If we stay here…" he glanced at the little bird they'd just healed,
"…we're the ones who hurt it and only then healed it."
Rafi took a long, painful breath.
The bow tattoo on his arm was still etched into his skin, but faint.
He tried to grip the air—no arrow, no light.
"Still on cooldown," he murmured.
He looked at Sahim.
"If they come… we defend first. Every stalk we can hold—grab it."
Sahim nodded quickly. He groped around until he found a cracked chunk of mushroom stalk. He yanked.
Crkk—TRAK.
The piece came free. Heavy enough to be a club.
"Bro…" he swallowed.
"…if I die… tell Amina… I wasn't a coward."
Rafi had just enough strength left to glare at him.
"Shut up."
The first strike came from the side—not from the parent, but from the flock.
Four glass birds of medium size dived at the mushroom, wings spread, feather tips like transparent blades. Their voices weren't shrieks but thin glassy tones:
TSING—TSING—TSING—TSING—
Rafi dragged himself backward toward a higher ridge on the mushroom. The wound in his leg throbbed—thunk—thunk—thunk—at every shift.
One bird swooped so close that the tip of its wing sliced the air in front of his nose. He ducked, nearly falling.
"RAFI!! LEFT!!" Sahim screamed.
He swung the mushroom club at the second bird.
BRAAK!
The club smashed into its chest. The bird pinwheeled, slammed into the canopy, and shattered into spinning shards of glass, catching blue moss light and the distant ghost of SAFRA's glow. The shards hung for a heartbeat, then fell like glass snow.
In the middle of that swirl, something emerged:
a small crystal, oval, half-transparent, with fine white-silver lines inside.
It rotated slowly… then hovered between them.
"YA RABB, THEY DROP ITEMS?!" Sahim was on the verge of tears.
A third bird dived from above, beak aimed at Rafi's shoulder. Instinct yanked him back; his arm came up on reflex.
"I'm dead—"
The beak only caught the edge of his bisht. The cloth hardened instantly, turning into a thin, heavy glass shell.
If that had been his skin…Sahim was half-freaking out, half analyzing.
"Bro, bro, BRO!! Don't let it peck you!!
That's not just a wound, that's non-CFC freezer mode!!"
The fourth bird tried a different angle. It dived, wings folding like a knife. Rafi had no options left. He stretched out his arm, trying for a "bow" posture—without any real faith.
"Qul… ma'aya!!" Sahim cried, desperate.
"QUL: Bismillah ya Qahhar!!"
(Say it with me!! SAY: In the Name of Allah, O Subduer of all injustice!)
He blurted it out, tears pooling at the corners of his eyes. Rafi clenched his jaw.
"Bismillah… ya Qahhar…"
The bow tattoo on his arm trembled. This time, slowly. A line of light began to glow, like an old lamp stuttering to life—flickering on and off.
The fourth bird closed in.
Its tiny eyes burned cold.
Its glass beak lined up perfectly with Rafi's throat.
"YA RABB!!" Rafi yanked the invisible bowstring back harder, almost tearing it.
At the last heartbeat—
CLICK.
The full bow of light snapped into existence, a milk-silver arrow flickering at his fingertips.
"ALLAHU AKBAR!!"
The arrow shot—
SWIP!—
straight through the bird's head. It shattered completely, its pieces dissolving into dust-light.
Sahim stared, wide-eyed.
"Bariik, ya Rabb!!BRO, AGAIN!!"
(Bless this,Ya Rabb!!)
SWIIP—!!
The second draw: the arrow speared another bird.
BRUUKK—!!
Draw—
Release.
SWIIP—!!
The third arrow caught a bird behind Sahim.
"FINISH THEM, BROOO!!" he yelled.
Draw—
Release.
SWIIP—!!
Fourth, fifth, sixth arrows hammered through the spinning flock, punching through glass bodies, leaving trails of light like fissures in ice.
On the seventh draw: nothing.
"BATTERY'S DEAD AGAIN?!" Rafi choked.
The remaining flock dove in once more, furious. Sahim swung his club, smashing another bird in the wing—this one shattered into a wider cloud of shards.
The air dropped a few degrees.
Blue moss around them dimmed.
The parent moved.
It descended, slowly—not frantic like its children.
Every beat of its wings knocked breath out of their lungs. The light veins in its chest grew brighter, radiating a concentrated white-blue like ZURQ squeezed into a single point.
Rafi gripped the mushroom.
"Don't come closer… don't come closer…" he muttered. It was a prayer, not a command.
The parent hovered right above them, close enough that they could see their reflections in its glass beak.
Then it moved.
Not with a dive. It parted its beak just a little—and blew. The first breath was like frozen fog.
WHOOOOSHH—
The mist hit the mushroom stalk to their left. At once, the surface iced over—its skin crystallized, its inner fibers freezing still.
A tiny creature in the crook of a root—sleeping or frozen, they had never been sure—took that breath on its back.
In a single inhale, its body went rigid.
Its eyes went round.
All motion stopped.
"Bro…" Sahim whispered, voice cracking.
"If that hits us… it's over."
The parent dipped lower. One of its larger central eyes rotated slowly, focusing on them. It made a low sound like glass grinding far down a well. The little healed bird floated beside it—not attacking, only watching.
The second attack came so fast their brains were late. The parent lunged—its beak spearing toward Sahim.
"HEADBUTT!!" Rafi screamed.
Sahim tried to leap sideways.
Not fast enough.
The beak kissed his shoulder—not full on, just a scrape.
The effect was instant.
Cold surged from his shoulder to his arm, to his chest.
His skin went pale, then glossy—the thin glass layer spreading like spilled ice-water.
Sahim staggered; half his body turned heavy.
"Bro…" his breath shortened.
"I… can't move… my right side…"
The parent banked for a third pass. This time, it wasn't just aiming to freeze. The light veins in its chest flared brighter. When it opened its beak, what came wasn't fog—it was pull.
The air around them seemed to be sucked inward.
Forest sounds shrank.
Blue moss around Sahim dimmed—as if its light were being drawn straight toward the parent. His body felt suddenly light—not pleasant. More like… emptied.
"YA RABB— it's sucking… energy…" his voice fractured.
The parent's eyes gleamed cold. It lined its beak directly with Sahim's chest, turning its maw into a funnel to drink from the heart.
Rafi knew: if that happened, Sahim wouldn't just be frozen. He'd be gone.
The bow tattoo on Rafi's arm was completely dead.
No arrows.
"Ya Allah… la ta'khudh nafsah…!" he rasped.
(Ya Rabb… do not take his soul…!)
He moved before he could decide if it was smart.
He threw himself off the mushroom shelf, grabbed a cracked crystal trunk below, and wrenched.
CRAAK!!
The trunk snapped into a crude spear.
"SAHIM, GET YOUR BODY DOWN!! AS LOW AS YOU CAN!!"
With half his body frozen, Sahim forced himself to slump, dragging his weight away as if tearing free from a magnet.
The parent dived.
Rafi ran—if that stumbling, limping dash could be called running—toward the edge of the mushroom and LEAPT, driving the spear into the bird's body.
"ALLAHU AKBAR!!"
The spear broke through the thin outer glass of its chest—not deep, but deep enough to shock it. The parent let out a shrill, piercing cry—a sound that shook blue moss from nearby trunks in tiny showers.
Rafi was flung sideways, but his grip on the spear held.
They both went airborne.
The world below turned into a spinning smear of black-green-blue. Rafi dangled along the creature's flank, one hand clamped on the spear, the other clawing for anything to hold.
The wind of Dhul-Wujūd tore at his face, cold and smelling of ancient, damp earth.
The parent writhed, trying to dislodge the parasite at its side.
Rafi pressed closer, hugging the glass body to keep from being flung off.
"BROOOOO!!" Sahim's voice, tiny with distance, tore through the air.
That sound hurt more than the wind.
Rafi ground his teeth. He crawled up the makeshift spear, inching closer to the pulsing glow in the bird's chest.
Every beat of its wings jarred his bones, but he climbed anyway.
Below, by the riverbank, the frozen animals watched:
The glass deer locked mid-step, the sideways silver marten—all of them still, reflecting the battle overhead.
The parent twisted toward a nearby giant tree, trying to scrape Rafi off against the trunk.
Rafi raised his left arm, groping for purchase—and his HEART POUNDED SO HARD IT HURT.
The bow tattoo flared.
Faint at first.
Then stronger—like adrenaline waking something ancient in his muscles.
"Now…? NOW?!" he almost laughed in bitter disbelief.
He pressed his chest closer to the giant bird, anchoring himself, then drew his right hand back—bow posture.
"Bismillah… ya Rabb…"
His lips cracked; his voice rasped.
The bowline blazed to full brightness, brighter than before. A milk-silver arrow shimmered at his fingertips. The parent banked to ram itself—and him—into the nearest trunk.
Rafi aimed, not at the head.
At the chest.
At the brightest point in the web of light.
"ALLAHU AKBAR!!"
SWIIIP—!!
The first arrow punched into its chest, straight through the core of the glow.
The bird's body spasmed.
Its flight faltered—but it didn't fall.
A second arrow formed—Rafi had no time to think about limits.
Draw. Release.
SWIIP—!!
The light point spread—cracks radiated outward, splintering the chest like breaking ice.
By the seventh arrow, it formed slower. The tattoo on his arm burned, pain digging into the bone.
"This… is the last one…" he whispered.
He drove it into the same point—with everything he had left.
SWIIP—!!
For a heartbeat, time held its breath.
CRAAAAAK—!!
The chest shattered from within.
Not with one huge explosion, but with a brutal unmaking—rings of glass, crystal feathers, frozen plating—everything burst into thousands of glowing shards that burned briefly, then dimmed.
The massive body disintegrated. The dark energy it had stolen from other creatures fanned out—back into the soil, the river, the frozen animals around.
The parent was gone.
From the rain of debris, something descended slowly:
A large crystal—three times the size of a small bird's.
Shaped like a flattened prism with rounded edges, its interior swirled with lines of light like a tiny trapped aurora. Its color was a blend of leftover ZURQ-green and the cold, white-blue of Dhul-Wujūd.
Rafi fell.
His grip on the spear vanished the moment the body broke apart.
Air screamed in his ears.
The wind slapped his skin.
"YA RABB—!!!"
Instinct made him reach for the only thing he could see:
The crystal.
His fingertips brushed it.
The crystal snapped to his palm as if magnetized.
A fraction of a heartbeat before he should have smashed into the ground, a thick carpet of glass-moss surged up beneath him—rising from the soil, a cushion that hadn't been there before, as if Dhul-Wujūd itself decided this fall should not be fatal.
DUUUMP—!!
All the air punched out of his lungs.
His bones howled, but didn't break.
He lay there on his back, watching shards of the giant bird drift down like glass snow. The big crystal still clung to his hand, humming faintly.
Above, a few remaining birds—survivors of the flock—called out in panic, then turned, fleeing from the river, slipping through the dark canopy in search of somewhere else.
Slowly, Dhul-Wujūd slid back into its suffocating quiet.
One small sound remained.
"Bro…"
Rafi forced his head to turn.
Sahim.
He was still on the giant mushroom, leaning against the stalk, half his body glowing pale. A thin shell of glass covered his right shoulder and spread across his chest—transparent, but solid.
His breath came heavy, steaming faintly.
His eyes were open again.
"Bro…" he gave a small, crooked smile, equally horrified by the wreckage around them,
"Wallah… if you'd fallen a little more to the left… they'd be serving you as fried chicken."
Rafi laughed—and immediately coughed.
"You…" his voice was raw,
"…still have jokes…"
He forced himself upright, biting down a cry as his leg wound protested. The mother-crystal in his hand pulsed softly—three strands of light circling slowly, like a clock in a language he didn't yet understand.
He looked around:
On the ground, among the fading shards, a few small crystals gleamed—remains of the lesser birds hit while they'd been shielding their parent. He gathered them all with shaking fingers.
Each crystal was cold, but not cruel.
Like ice taught to behave.
His breath came fast and shallow.
"Bro…" his voice broke as he looked back up at Sahim.
The glass creeping over Sahim's shoulder was inching downward, like frozen roots searching for his heart. The skin beneath had turned pale.
Sahim tried to wiggle his fingers—one, two, three.
His left hand still moved a little.
His right—stayed rigid.
"Looks like…" he gave a small, bitter laugh,
"…I'm turning into kebab, freezer edition…"
Rafi dragged himself closer, hauling his ruined leg, willing his body forward. Every hold he grabbed made his arm burn. He pressed the mother-crystal against his chest to keep it safe.
When he finally reached Sahim's side, he sank down—or something close to sinking with what was left of his strength.
Their eyes met.
On one side:
Sahim—half frozen, breathing hard, but still here.
On the other:
Rafi—limping, spent, hands full of crystals he had no idea how to use.
Dhul-Wujūd was silent again.
Rafi stared at the large crystal in his palm. The lines of light inside it moved slowly, as if waiting.
"Bro…" his voice cracked.
"…I don't even know… what this crystal can do…"
He looked at his friend's face.
"What I do know is we need a solution for our wounds. Fast."
His breath shook.
Sahim smiled faintly, his lips pale.
"We have to…"
He closed his eyes for a moment, then forced them open again.
"…or we'll end up as part of the quiet… just more 'living statues' standing by the river."
—To be Continued—