The 6th century…
The world was no longer alive in the way it was meant to be.
It did not feel like history anymore, but like a punishment that never ended.
The sky had turned into a wound of black clouds that did not move and did not break.
They simply existed above everything, like a sealed ceiling of silence.
The sun had not reached the ground in generations,
Not because it was weak,
But because something above reality had denied it permission to return.
The land below was not merely dark; it was corrupted.
Everything had begun to decay in meaning, where places no longer felt stable and time no longer felt reliable.
Even existence itself seemed unsafe, as if reality was slowly breaking its own rules.
Where life once should have been,
There was only an uneasy silence,
And where truth once existed,
There was only distortion.
The world no longer felt like a creation,
But like something abandoned in the middle of collapse.
And at the center of this corruption, there was only one presence.
A name that did not bring fear of death, but fear of erasure itself:
J.A.B.A.R.
He was a dark sorcerer whose existence did not belong to nature, time, or logic, but to something far worse—something that consumed meaning before it could exist.
Wherever he went, the fear of death would awaken in people's hearts instantly.
Even before his presence was fully revealed, terror would spread through the air, as if their souls already understood what was coming.
He looked at humans as if they were nothing more than insects—small, meaningless beings moving without awareness of how easily they could be erased.
To him, they were not lives, they were resources.
Wherever he went,
He studied them silently,
Observing their souls,
Their fear,
Their breaking point,
And their final moments, absorbing their essence to strengthen his own dark power.
With every soul he witnessed,
His corrupted energy grew deeper, darker, and more unnatural.
He appeared to be around 45 years of age, but age meant nothing on him.
Long black hair flowed past his shoulders—
Loose, wild, like storm clouds that had never been tamed.
His beard was dark as coal, thick and long, falling across his chest beneath a jaw that had never softened.
He wore a black, sleeveless robe, torn at the edges like something that had survived too many deaths to care about appearance anymore.
His arms were bare and muscular, with dark cloth wrapped around his forearms—
Not for protection,
But like a fighter who had already decided he would not need it.
In his right hand,
He held a wand made of black iron with jagged edges, twisted at the top like broken bone.
At its tip sat a deep red orb, glowing and pulsing slowly like the heartbeat of something trapped inside it for a very long time.
His eyes were terrifying.
The whites of them were not white; they were the white of something completely drained—
Pale, and bleached of every warmth.
Where pupils should have been, there was only dark red—
The red of something burning from a place too far inside to ever reach.
When those eyes moved,
It did not feel like being looked at; it felt like being read.
Every fear, every memory, and every small decision that had led you to this moment was already known and filed away.
Around his neck hung a purple locket.
It did not possess the glow of jewelry, but the glow of something alive, pulsing with its own rhythm and casting faint purple light across his collar and the ground beneath his feet.
It pulsed like it was breathing, like something inside it was pressing against the walls, trying to get out.
No villager could look at it directly for long—not because it blinded them,
But because something about it made the mind want to look away,
As if the eyes understood before the person did that some things are not meant to be seen.
Jabar did not touch it or look at it, as if he had long ago forgotten it was there,
Or perhaps he simply did not need to be reminded of what it held.
Deep inside a forgotten desert basin,
Where the endless sand met the edge of an ancient forest,
A small village still existed.
It wasn't because the village was heavily guarded or naturally safe;
It had survived simply because it had not yet been noticed.
Or, more accurately, it had not yet been judged.
Life here was deceptively simple, exuding a peace that felt far too fragile for the corrupted world surrounding it.
Children ran freely through the narrow sand paths between the clay huts,
Kicking up soft dust that made the earth look as though it were breathing in slow motion.
"I told you! I'm the fastest in the whole village!" Ali shouted, his voice full of boyish pride.
Yusuf rolled his eyes, laughing.
"Fast?
Are you kidding me?
You tripped yesterday in front of everyone!".
Hashim quickly chimed in, eager to outdo them both.
"Both of you are nothing!
"I can run from the well to the mosque in one breath!".
Omar, who was naturally more cautious, shrank back slightly.
" Stop shouting…
"my father says loud voices attract bad luck".
Ali scoffed, waving his hand.
"Your father believes too many stories!".
"Yeah! Ghost stories!"
Yusuf added.
But Omar pointed upward, his voice dropping
"Then explain why the sky looks like that today".
Before anyone could answer, Zayd frowned, looking down at his feet.
"Guys… did you feel that?".
When Ali asked what he meant, Zayd whispered,
"Like the ground…is listening to us".
Hashim told him to stop acting strange,
But Farid suddenly stepped closer, his voice trembling.
"I saw something near the broken well last night".
When Yusuf demanded to know what it was,
Farid swallowed hard.
"A shadow… but it didn't belong to anything".
A brief, half-second of silence fell over the boys before they erupted into forced, nervous laughter.
Ali accused him of lying,
But Farid desperately swore by Allah that it was the truth.
Near the clay houses, the adults were moving through their morning routines,
Completely unaware that this would be their last one.
Amina called out, telling the children to stop talking about nonsense and come help carry water.
Fatima scolded Yusuf to stay away from the old ruins,
While Zainab threatened Hashim that she would tell his father if he didn't listen.
But beneath the mundane chores, an eerie wrongness was settling over the adults as well. Khalid,
The blacksmith, stared at his forge in frustration.
"Strange… my fire keeps dying today,"
he muttered.
Salman, the merchant, looked around uneasily.
"Even the desert wind feels wrong…
like it forgot how to move".
Imran, the hunter, returned empty-handed, noting quietly,
"No animal tracks outside the village…
not even birds".
Near the steps of the local mosque,
The village elders sat together as they always did,
As if their collective presence could somehow hold the fraying world in place.
Sheikh Harun,
The village leader,
Looked at the others with a heavy expression.
"Do you feel it too…?The waiting?"
he asked softly.
Elder Rashid nodded slowly.
"Yes…like something is counting us".
Elder Musa stared out at the still air.
" I have lived 70 years… but today feels like the first day of death".
Sheikh Harun shook his head, his eyes filled with a quiet,
terrifying realization.
"No… not death".
He paused, the word hanging heavy in
the air.
"Judgment".
"The observation became active…".
Above them, beyond the broken sky, something began to respond.
It wasn't a natural weather event or a gathering storm;
It was as if a conscious system had begun deciding what would be allowed to remain.
Chapter End