Mecca did not awaken to the crowing of roosters that morning—it stirred to the roar of the earth itself, splitting open in a new migration. Less violent than the last, yet far more ominous. The air grew dense, metallic with copper and the endless stench of burning, while the sky that once sheltered the faithful turned to the sickly hue of diseased liver.
News reached the Fortress of the Elite like jagged blades; the surrounding villages were not destroyed by collapse alone, but by a strange plague that turned flesh to stone while the souls within decayed alive.
Sultan stood in the courtyard, his white hair gleaming through the morning dust like a beacon in the fog, his piercing blue eyes scanning the victims carried on trembling shoulders. He saw a small child whose skin was cracking into gray scales, and the ancestral runes etched into Sultan's flesh pulsed with empathic pain, as if the water in his veins longed to cleanse the plague while the fire within him fought to purify it.
Layla whispered beside him, her silver hair tightly bound, ready to move: "This is no ordinary sickness. It is the corruption of the covenant. When the earth dies, it poisons the bodies born from its soil." Her amber eyes glimmered with tactical cunning, the veil covering half her face doing nothing to hide the sharp intelligence behind them; she knew the coming battle would not be won by swords alone.
Beside them, Khalid remained silent, his hand gripping the reins of his black steed, veins like tiny serpents. He did not look at the victims, only at the ground beneath him, as if listening to whispers no one else could hear.
"The shadows are calling them, Sultan," Khalid murmured, his voice only audible to his brother. "The dead do not leave. They linger in the cracks."
Sultan's voice cut through the morning fog with stern authority, hiding the fear gnawing at him. "Enough madness, Khalid. Let us move. Saqr and Sheikh Abdulrahman have tasked us with aiding Al-Kadiyah… our birthplace."
The small group moved forward, Sultan leading with his white hair billowing like a flying shroud, Layla beside him dispersing the poisoned dust with her winds, and Khalid following as an inseparable shadow. The path to Al-Kadiyah was desolate; trees had become black skeletal forms, and wells that once quenched thirst now held only boiling mud.
At the village entrance, Sultan froze. The clay houses where his first screams once rang out were collapsing, and the people his father Saqr had known crawled across the ground, their bodies encased in hard gray crusts. A cry shattered the silence—a summons from the small mosque at the village's heart.
Sultan charged, smashing the door with his armored shoulder. Inside, a group of "Stone Aberrations"—humans who had lost their minds, their limbs twisted into jagged rock shards—surrounded the women and children. Sultan did not hesitate; he drew his heavy sword and, in a fluid motion, ignited it with the fire of his seal. The blade sliced through the air, severing the head of the first aberration, reducing its stony body to black ash before it touched the ground.
Layla leapt onto the pulpit, tracing circles in the air. The wind obeyed her command, transforming into razor-sharp blades that cut through the wretched creatures trying to flank Sultan. Khalid stationed himself at the mihrab; his shadow expanded across the floor, so thick that any abomination stepping upon it sank as if into molten tar, their screams swallowed by the void.
The battle ended, yet Sultan remained towering, staring at his hands smeared with the dust of humans turned monsters. A single tear fell from his blue eye—not a tear of weakness, but of divine wrath. He turned to Layla and Khalid, his voice rising from the depths of his soul:
"The prophecy is no longer mere words in a book, Layla. It is a vow of vengeance for this land."
At that moment, a distant roar shook the hills beyond Mecca—a colossal, unseen force, as if the earth itself welcomed its new champions with the promise of more blood. Sultan turned toward the horizon, his white hair glowing with a terrifying light beneath the storm-laden sky.