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With a flash of rukh and searing pain, Judar learned what it really felt like to burn.
It wasn’t from his opponent’s fire-laced weapons. It was from that brat’s unthinkable power.
Al-Thamen called it Solomon’s Wisdom.
Nobody should have been able to do what that kid did. Nobody should have been able to tear the memories of fire licking his wet cheeks from deep inside his mind. He’d been a child. A baby. Hadn’t he?
…Was that him? Was it really? It was so crazy that he doubted it for a split second. But really, it had to be. It couldn’t be anyone else. It had to be him. If that was him, it made everything make sense. All the questions that he’d never thought to ask were answered by those visions.
He felt it. The heat of flames, the incessant stinging of fire, and his mother’s warm arms against his burning body.
It was… what was it? He couldn’t put it into words even if he tried. His mind didn’t work like that. His lips didn’t move like that. Even if he knew what to say, there was no way that he could actually put it into words.
“Nothing lasts forever.”
Hakuryuu told him something like that after his brothers had died. After Gyokuen killed them. He’d been crying, just like how he always was back then, and Judar had no way of comforting him. So he didn’t try.
At the time, Judar hadn’t really understood what he meant. His words were both obvious and unthinkable, and because it was confusing, he didn’t bother thinking about it. But now he was older. He could think things like that through, even though he hadn’t ever done so until now.
See, Hakuryuu wasn’t actually right. There were things that lasted forever.
For the first time, Judar thought about what it really meant to be a Magi.
Al-Thamen had told him what it meant—that he was power itself. That nothing could take that power from him. He’d always be useful… to Al-Thamen… for all eternity…
Because his soul was eternal.
A Magi’s rukh was reborn over and over into new vessels when the world needed them most. It was fate. As a Magi, it was his fate. But… it was, and at the same time, it wasn’t. Because his eternal soul had been crusted over with dark ashes from the strength of that fire. It couldn’t see the light anymore, so didn’t that mean that he couldn’t be reborn anymore?
Didn’t it mean that he’d be reborn someday? Into a clean body, unburdened by the thick ash that had always clouded his vision, even before he knew what it was?
“……”
He’d died in Balbadd. That was what Ithnan said, anyway, sneering like he so often did. He said that Solomon’s fate had wished him dead, but Al-Thamen saved him. So he should be thankful.
Even though what they really wanted was Solomon’s Wisdom, they needed Judar… so they couldn’t let him die, so his soul would never die, so it would never be reborn.
He’d always live in the palm of their hands.
That was… what Gyokuen said, anyway.
She thought he was precious, and Judar had once interpreted those feelings as adoration. He’d once believed, without a shadow of doubt, that he was the most special person on the planet, and that everyone adored him. He was proven wrong again and again. So of course he had to abandon that way of thinking.
Sinbad always said he hated him. Aladdin looked at him with… what was it? It wasn’t anything that he liked. Ithnan sneered. Falan was dead, but even when she lived, it was obvious that her mind was elsewhere. Even Kouha’s grip on his arm was all wrong. He wasn’t really grabbing onto Judar. It was someone else, the ash encasing his true self… if there was ever such a thing to begin with.
As much as he tried to tell himself that those things didn’t matter, they came into his mind again and again, forcing past his conscious desires just like how Solomon’s Wisdom had done.
He tried to freeze them solid in his mind, but it didn’t do much of anything. The ice that he had once thought was the most powerful magic in the world felt flimsy.
He needed more.
He needed to be more.
He needed this world to be… more… more… what?
“……”
Thinking about all that was useless.
The point was that he didn’t need them. He didn’t need fate. He didn’t even need his eternal soul.
Who cared about any of that?
Al-Thamen taught him how to summon the medium. They thought he didn’t know what they were teaching him. He nodded along and did as they said. It wasn’t that he had no choice. He could act like Hakuryuu if he wanted to.
But he didn’t.
Ultimately, just like Hakuryuu, he was powerless alone. Acting out was pointless. He couldn’t pretend like he was strong anymore. Not how he was now, encased in ash.
He wanted to break away.
If he was meant to be covered in ashes anyway, why not burn the whole world black?
He wanted to set it on fire and stop time.
In reality, he wasn’t a fire magician. He was water through and through, and water was meant to put fire out, wasn’t it? But it was too little too late, in the end. Fire was clearly stronger. It wiped his family away. It wiped Hakuryuu’s away.
He wanted the whole world to burn, and at the end of everything, once it was nothing more but sheets of icy ash covering it all… only then could it be reborn.
He wondered idly if his soul would be reborn with it.
---
Nothing happened like he thought it would. It went more like how he thought that it should.
Aladdin stopped him before he could destroy it all. Alibaba helped him on the other side of the world.
That place had been cold. He had been weak. But they found life and that life led them to their sunlit home.
Everything was different. The world was neither hot nor cold. It just was—a blank state, somehow, turning faster and faster into what Sinbad hoped was nothingness.
He met Hakuryuu again after years of separation.
He had spent so long thinking of that blank ashen world. But faced with the possibility, he felt no desire to pursue it. The fire burning harshly inside of him had calmed.
He wasn’t an ally of justice or anything stupid like that. But… if Hakuryuu was going to follow the light, then Judar might as well do so too.
---
It was weird.
Sinbad was gone. The rukh had changed. The world itself had changed. It wasn’t the same world that had held him captive for so many years.
It was… it was…
At the end of it all, Hakuryuu’s hand brushed his. “It’s over.”
Judar’s eyes widened.
It probably wasn’t something that anyone else could see, so nobody else reacted. But he felt it. He really did.
The ash that’d long since coated his skin was released with Hakuryuu’s touch and fluttered through the sky along with the rukh.
“……”
He felt the wind on his bare skin for the first time as he watched it go.
It wasn’t hot. It also wasn’t cold.
Hakuryuu bashfully laced their fingers together. It was warm.
He was alive, born anew in this strange and sunny world.