The bottle spun.

  Clinked.

  Slowed.

  Stopped.

  Pointing at me.

  For a second, no one spoke.

  Then the girls leaned in at once.

  "Name," Aroha said.

  "Tell us her name," Hiba added.

  "Don't act innocent," another voice laughed. "We know something's there."

  I frowned. "Whose name?"

  They smiled like hunters.

  "The songs you listen to," Aroha said. "We're not stupid."

  "There's someone," Hiba pressed. "Tell us."

  "There's nothing," I replied, steady. "You're imagining it."

  They didn't back off.

  "Tell us," Hiba whispered, "or we tell your parents."

  The room went cold.

  Fear crawled through me—not of monsters, not of fog, but of home.

  I exhaled.

  "Fine," I said. "One letter. Only one."

  They agreed instantly.

  "It starts with… S," I murmured.

  Silence.

  Aroha blinked. "None of us—"

  "Sana," I said. "From the market. She sells scarves."

  Hiba's eyes narrowed. "Which market?"

  "You already used your chance."

  Days passed.

  The wounded recovered. The house returned to fragile normal.

  Until the phone.

  I was searching my room when I froze.

  My father stood by the door, holding the phone—unlocked, screen glowing.

  "In a time when Dajjal walks," he said, voice calm and sharp as a drawn blade, "when people die daily just to survive… this is where your mind is?"

  I said nothing.

  "Instead of praying," he continued, "instead of asking Allah for strength—you chase a girl who doesn't even know you exist."

  My mother Sajida stepped in. "What happened?"

  He turned. "Your son pursues a girl while the world ends."

  "What?" she snapped, fury rising. "Aariz—what is this?"

  My vision blurred. My head felt light. My thoughts scattered like birds.

  The room filled—uncles, aunts, voices overlapping.

  Then—

  Crack.

  My head snapped sideways. I stumbled.

  "Come here," my father barked.

  Another impact. Harder.

  I barely stayed standing.

  Hands grabbed him. Voices shouted. Someone pulled me back, sent me stumbling to my room.

  The door closed.

  Locked.

  Outside, silence.

  Inside, the belt came down.

  Again.

  Again.

  I trembled, arms raised, breath broken. The leather snapped against my forearms, my shoulders, anywhere I couldn't shield.

  The belt swung wild—caught his own arm.

  That made it worse.

  A hanger replaced it. Metal. Faster. Harder.

  The door rattled as people tried to break in.

  Then—

  I smiled.

  Not joy. Not defiance. My throat had closed, eyes burning, and the smile came unbidden—trying to push the tears back, trying to stop them from seeing. They beat me for her. They don't know I stopped wanting her months ago. They don't know it's Mahir now. They beat me for nothing.

  He saw.

  The rage exploded. He grabbed a metal wiper—raised it high—

  I moved.

  I caught the hanger mid-swing. Blocked. Pushed.

  He slipped, fell hard.

  The door burst open.

  "Are you mad?!" someone shouted. "Sherbaz!"

  Uncles dragged him back, still thrashing. Aunts rushed me—hands shaking, checking my arms, my face, what broke.

  Later.

  Night.

  The house slept like a held breath.

  I stood.

  Two sets of clothes went into the bag. Then I moved to the storage room—my forge, hidden for six months. Brick-lined pit, hand-crank bellows, anvil bolted to concrete.

  I worked fast. Silent.

  First: the blade. Eighteen inches, leaf-shaped, single edge. I ground the unfinished blank on a whetstone until it caught the dim light. Wrapped the tang in leather cord, tight, sweat-slick.

  Second: the dagger. Shorter, for close work. Full tang, crossguard from a steel bracket, point needle-sharp.

  Third: six throwing spikes. Five inches each, quadrangular, balanced by feel alone.

  I sheathed the blade at my hip, dagger at my lower back, spikes inside my jacket. The armor came last—scrap metal, leather straps, my own modifications. I'd added a steel collar last week, after Shahzad's report. Protection for the neck. For the thing that smiled.

  Into the bag: food that wouldn't spoil, water, Flake's leash looped around my wrist.

  I pulled a black cloth from behind the door. Wore it.

  Quietly, I slipped into the sleeping city. Flake's nails clicked on stone beside me.

  I reached the old well near the Grand Mosque. No one watched. I drank—copper and stone on my tongue, permanent. Washed my blades in it. Soaked the black cloth. Filled my flask.

  Blessed, I thought. Or cursed. Or just water. Doesn't matter.

  At the edge of the fog, I paused.

  Breathed.

  Then stepped out.

  The city vanished behind me. Fog swallowed sound, distance, time itself.

  I walked without direction. Hours, maybe. The flashlight died. Flake's ears caught what my eyes could not—flat against his skull, facing the dark.

  I slipped on loose stone. Caught myself.

  Dirt under my boots.

  No road beneath.

  Too deep to turn back.

  At home, my mother Sajida screamed my name.

  They searched every room, the roof, the alley. Nothing.

  Then the basement.

  Empty weapon racks. Missing blades. Flake's empty corner.

  Her voice broke.

  Uncle Shahzad spoke quietly, already moving. "I'll contact the organization."

  "Your fault," someone told my father.

  He didn't argue. Just stood in the doorway of my empty room, the belt still on the floor, and wept without sound.

  Back in the fog, I rested beneath a dead tree. My bag served as pillow. Flake curled against my side, warm, alive.

  A roar split the silence.

  Not close. Not far. Directionless.

  I rose instantly. No hesitation. Daggers out.

  The mask came next—black steel, my own forging. No eyeholes. No mouth. Just blank surface, the world reduced to sound and memory.

  Branches cracked. Footsteps circled, heavy, wrong-paced.

  Flake hissed, facing the dark. Ears flat. Body low.

  Then—

  A lion leapt from nothing.

  Laugh, idiot, laugh.

  The command tore through my mind—protocol overriding instinct, training drowning fear. I laughed.

  The sound ripped out of me—harsh, broken, too loud in the fog. Finally. Something I can cut.

  I ran.

  Not from fear—from position. Instinct, not panic. I saw it mid-stride: the parasite fused to the lion's skull, black and pulsing.

  The head. It controls through the head.

  My longer katana lay ten meters behind me, against the tree.

  The lion lunged.

  I rolled, came up slashing—caught its foreleg, deep, to the bone.

  The beast stumbled. Confusion in its movement, the parasite fighting the wound, flesh trying to knit too fast.

  I threw my dagger.

  The lion batted it aside with a claw.

  But I was already moving—low, fast, grabbing the katana from the tree base, spinning back as the beast turned.

  Flake attacked.

  Small, futile, brave—he leapt at the lion's hind leg, bit, held on for one second. The beast twisted, threw him. Flake hit a tree, dropped, didn't move.

  No.

  The lion leapt again.

  I sidestepped, not enough—the claw raked my shoulder, fire and wetness—and drove the katana up, under the jaw.

  Missed. Glanced off teeth.

  The lion's weight carried past. I lost the blade, stuck in muscle.

  Only the short dagger remained.

  The lion turned, slower now, bleeding black where I'd cut. The parasite pulsed faster, angry.

  It charged.

  I didn't run.

  I dropped, slid on wet leaves, came up inside the charge—too close for claws—and drove the dagger into the neck, again, again, holding on as the beast thrashed, trying to throw me, to reach me, to end me.

  Stab.

  Stab.

  The world went red, then black, then—

  The parasite jumped.

  Detached from the dying lion, launched itself at my face—wet, cold, alive—

  Darkness swallowed me.

  Voices.

  Familiar.

  "Come back," my mother Sajida said, smiling, whole, unbroken.

  "Everything is fine now," my father said, hand extended, no belt, no rage.

  "She's been asking for you," a voice whispered—Aroha, or Hiba, or something wearing their shape. "Samiya. She finally remembered."

  I stood among them.

  Looked at each face.

  Smiled.

  "You don't know her name," I said.

  Then cut every throat without hesitation—mother, father, the shadow wearing Samiya's name.

  The illusion shattered like glass in water.

  The parasite fell from my face, twitching, dying.

  I knelt in real dirt, real blood, my own blood, too much of it. The lion was gone. Taken by the fog. Only the black stain on the leaves remained.

  I crawled to my bag.

  Zamzam.

  I drank—stone and copper, permanent. Splashed it on my wounds, watching skin tighten, slow, wrong, healing. Bandaged what I could with strips of my shirt.

  Darkness took me.

  When I woke, Flake lay on my chest, tail thumping, tongue licking my chin. His wound—some claw had caught him—had faded to pink scar.

  My wounds had closed to the same.

  A crack in the mountain waited nearby, narrow, dark, shelter.

  I stood. Ate dry bread. Drank.

  One drop of blood fell from my reopened shoulder.

  Flake licked it from the stone.

  I watched him.

  Then tightened the bandage, shouldered my bag, checked my blades.

  The fog was thick.

  Good.

  Harder to win.