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Standingispers died on their own.
Not because anyone asked for silence—because the hall felt something approaching, and chose to silence itself before it was silenced by force.
The massive doors at the far end didn't swing open. There was no creak, no hand reaching for a handle.
They simply slid—black metal panels gliding along their tracks with a terrifying smoothness, as if the palace didn't need permission to let its master enter.
The Grandfather walked in.
He wasn't large. If anything, his body looked thin, wrapped in a dark robe that swallowed light more than it reflected it. One step was enough to change the rhythm of the room. The second made the air remember what "awe" meant in a way titles could never imitate.
His presence didn't fill the place like a man.
It filled it like a black hole.
A pressure-vacuum that bent heads without them understanding why. Even the rings of light hanging from the ceiling—those halo-like circles—seemed to dim for a heartbeat, as if out of respect… or fear.
Everyone stood automatically.
It wasn't only respect. It was a bodily reflex, as though nerves received a silent order: stand before you're crushed. Even those who were used to staring dukes in the face without blinking rose too fast for their age and pride.
The cousin lowered his head—not a polite dip, but a real surrender of the neck, like a man offering his weakness to avoid a blow.
And Badr… felt the blood drain from his face. His knees trembled under the table. For one brief moment,t he thought he might faint in front of everyone and become the next "scandal" to be washed with another rope.
But Al-Muqarraḥ—in Azzam's body—did not move.
He stayed seated in the Grandfather's own chair, mukhazzen, cheek swollen with a royal bajma that gave extra weight to his face. His violet eyes held steady, asking no one's permission.
Yet inside…
something inverted.
The air turned sticky.
Not the stickiness of humidity—the stickiness of unnatural pressure, as if the hall had been sealed under a glass dome, oxygen drained, then returned in a measured amount designed to humiliate lungs. His chest tightened. His throat remembered the rope for a second—not as memory, but as sensation rising from under the skin.
The violet seal in his neck began to burn.
Not just pain.
Warning.
Rapid pulses, stacked and relentless, as if the seal were screaming without sound: something is approaching that you do not face on this dose, with this bajma.
And to Al-Muqarraḥ, the Grandfather was no longer an old man.
He was an entity.
Something shaped like a man, but larger than its body. His shadow didn't follow light—it devoured it. Along the edge of his robe hung the "scent" of death—not the smell of a corpse, but the smell of a decision that could make death happen whenever it pleased.
Death here wasn't an idea.
Death here… was a mood.
Al-Muqarraḥ's mouth went dry despite the White. An old survival instinct stirred: don't misjudge. This isn't just a council. This is a center of gravity—and if the true weight has entered, everything before it was training.
He started to rise from the chair.
Not out of respect.
Out of invisible crushing—like standing might ease the pressure in his chest, distribute gravity in a less humiliating way.
Before his knees fully lifted—
The Grandfather's hand arrived.
A thin hand. Long fingers. Calm. No hurry, no anger. It settled on Azzam's shoulder—light pressure.
But it wasn't light.
Its weight dropped like tons. Not on the shoulder alone—on the soul. As if the touch said: sit. Or there is no place for you to stand.
Al-Muqarraḥ froze mid-motion.
And for the first time since entering the hall, he felt that breathing wasn't fully his. Each inhale seemed to ask this thin man for permission before it entered. And the White in his cheek suddenly felt smaller—mere leaves before a hand that could shape the air itself.
The Grandfather leaned in slightly, close to Azzam's face, looking at the full cheek, the shape of the bajma, the way the White sat as if part of an older ritual.
He smiled.
A strange smile that showed little teeth, but showed a man who'd seen enough of the world to laugh at things that terrified others.
In a rough, quiet voice carrying an old accent that almost scratched the language, he said:
"Haaah… you're still mukhazzen?"
The word cracked across the hall like a slap.
Some didn't understand it. Some understood and stiffened. The cousin felt his skin tighten, as if the phrase wasn't a question—it was a reveal: the Grandfather had caught something in this "dead" heir.
Al-Muqarraḥ didn't answer at once. He watched the Grandfather up close—the wrinkles like maps, the eyes that didn't shine with modification or tech, but with raw awareness that cut through masks.
If the Grandfather had said it hours ago, Al-Muqarraḥ would have swallowed it like a threat. But saying it here, in front of the four families, was a veiled announcement: the Grandfather wasn't ashamed to mix old language with new power, and wasn't ashamed to admit that kayf was still a language of authority.
The Grandfather tilted his head, then let out a dry, short laugh—like a pebble striking the bottom of a well.
A laugh from a man who'd finally found a game worth noticing inside a boring council.
Then, without raising his voice, he said:
"Stand—no. Stay seated."
With it, the pressure of his hand increased for a heartbeat, then eased—not mercy, but a signal that he controlled the weight as he wished.
He raised his other hand slowly.
"Hold my hand, boy."
A simple sentence.
But the entire hall understood: this wasn't a request.
This was an event.
Al-Muqarraḥ hesitated for a fraction of a second—too small to be seen—then extended his hand.
It wasn't Azzam's hand that moved.
It was a mountain man's hand that knew some moments aren't resisted with strength, but harvested with awareness. He touched the Grandfather's fingers carefully… the way you touch a live wire knowing the shock is inevitable.
The instant Azzam's fingers met the Grandfather's—
The palace vanished.
The table vanished. The screens vanished. The faces vanished. Even the council's whispers, Badr's fear, the cousin's tremble—gone.
The weight disappeared…
Then another weight arrived.
Al-Muqarraḥ found himself suspended in Chen's sky.
Not metaphor.
Real sky, above toxic clouds—above a thick green layer wrapped around the city like a curse. The altitude was so high that blood seemed to freeze at his fingertips in the first moment. Wind slapped his face with a cold that wasn't air-cold.
It was death-cold, which comesose to the skin.
He opened his mouth to scream, but no sound came.
The air was thin up here.
Screaming was a luxury.
He looked down.
Chen was a maze of neon and smoke: towers like needles stuck into cloud, aerial bridges knotted like glowing veins, turquoise domes glittering in the distance like jewels on a beast's head. He could see red breach lights scattered across the summits. He could see patrol routes like metallic flies searching for meaning in the chaos.
From this height, everything became "logical" in a cruel way: the four families were nodes in a network, the summits were fuel valves, and the people below were movement on a board.
And yet… the city looked small.
Not small in the sense of being worthless—
small in the sense that it could be gripped and compressed between two hands, if those hands belonged to the Grandfather.
He turned.
The Grandfather stood beside him.
Standing on air as if it were solid ground.
His robe didn't flap randomly. It moved as if it knew where air held and where it broke. His face was calm. His eyes steady. He didn't look impressed by the view.
He looked like he'd owned it for a long time.
Al-Muqarraḥ tried to stabilize himself. He remembered mountains, standing on high edges with wind, but this was different. Here there was no rock beneath his feet.
No guarantee.
Only the hand holding him.
The violet seal in his neck was burning.
Fast, stacked pulses, as if trying to synchronize with something in the Grandfather's presence. As if the seal—Al-Muqarraḥ had thought he was beginning to understand—had become a child screaming because its real father had entered the room.
The Grandfather spoke while looking at the horizon, not at Azzam:
"The qat you stole yesterday…"
He paused, letting the words fall like wind.
Then he turned his eyes to Al-Muqarraḥan взгляд thpierces thee d soul, not the skin.
"…isn't just sovereign White."
A shiver crawled along Al-Muqarraḥ's spine.
He didn't say, *the White you got.*
He said, *the White you stole.*
So the Grandfather knew. He knew Al-Muqarraḥ had left. Knew he'd returned Mukhazzenn. Knew more than any man in a council should.
Al-Muqarraḥ didn't apologize. Didn't ask how. Didn't bargain.
He only held the stare steady. Any hesitation up here would be read as weakness.
The Grandfather continued, low:
"This kind… is extremely rare. It doesn't appear except once every hundred years."
He lifted his free hand slightly and pointed down toward the summits blinking red.
"That fuel… is the only thing that can run the violet seal to the end."
"To its highest limit."
The sentence dropped into Al-Muqarraḥ's mind like a stone.
The only biofuel.
So what he had now wasn't just kayf, not just a bodily upgrade.
It was a maximum key.
And keys aren't given without a price.
They don't fall into alleys by coincidence.
He wanted to ask: why tell me? Why now? What do you want?
But wind entered his mouth and forced a small cough. His body wasn't used to this altitude, even after the White's polish.
The Grandfather showed no sympathy. He let him learn. Then said with the coldness of harsh instruction:
"Breathe. Don't fight the air. Let it enter as it is."
Al-Muqarraḥ obeyed. A slow inhale, chest excousins' looksch as it could. An exhale. The dizziness eased slightly.
The seal calmed for one beat, then returned to burning—but now the burn was more ordered, as if locking itself onto a certain frequency.
The Grandfather looked at Azzam's neck as if he could see under the skin. Then he said:
"The seal doesn't work for you because you're noble."
"Or because you carry the family's blood."
A pause.
Then a small smile—like a sting.
"It works because you're… something else."
Time stopped for a fraction inside Al-Muqarraḥ's head.
Not a joke.
Not a passing line.
*So he knows I'm not Azzam… or he can at least smell it.*
Al-Muqarraḥ didn't show confusion. Didn't deny. He kept his face rigid and his eyes steady. In the mountains, if someone suspects you, you don't explain.
You let suspicion grow until they're forced to explain what they see.
The Grandfather squeezed Azzam's hand—lightly.
And suddenly the palace returned. The walls returned. The hall returned.
The return was harsher than the ascent.
Al-Muqarraḥ found himself near the table, panting. His legs trembled for a heartbeat. His skin was cold like he'd come out of deep water. His eyes widened, then narrowed as he forced his newly forged body not to collapse.
Inside the hall, everyone was rigid.
Not because they hadn't seen anything—
because they had.
They'd seen the Grandfather touch Azzam, and then the roombecame "missing."
Then the room returned full again—with Azzam struggling for breath.
Badr stared with unfocused eyeses, no longer sure if the world was fixed or foldable. His mouth hung open, then snapped shut as he remembered where he stood.
The cousin looked pale, and in his eyes was a late understanding: the heir he'd planned to make a scapegoat had become a piece in the Grandfather's hand.
Worse—the Grandfather had chosen him publicly, before all families, without ever saying the words *I choose him.*
The Grandfather returned to the center of the hall as if nothing had happened. He clasped his hands behind his back and let silence devour the room.
Al-Muqarraḥ took another breath—deeper this time. He erased the tremble from his legs, then lifted his head slowly, as if what happened in the sky had been a minor test in a brutal school.
He didn't look at anyone.
He looked at the Grandfather.
The violet seal in his neck was still hot. Its pulse was slower now, but heavier—aware now that there was another source of power in the room, not White, not cameras, but a presence that could lift you into the sky and return you like a knife into its sheath.
Inside Al-Muqarraḥ, one idea formed with icy clarity:
If this fuel appears once every hundred years… then this year isn't ordinary.
And if the Grandfather knows… then the game began long before he woke.
Then another thought arrived, harsher:
If the Grandfather can carry him to the sky with a touch…
He can return him to the rope with a touch.
And the cousins' looks from the back row added a third truth:
Now… they won't settle for a rope.
The violet seal pulsed once—cold.
"Not a warning this time."
A greeting.
As if the hall itself—or someone in it—answered his pulse in silence.