CHAPTER 5 — THE BOY WHO REFUSED TO DIE
Barely escaping Noor Jahan's devastating attack, Huba Huba shot out of the cave and fled into the dark jungle.
He pulled his remaining dark aura tight, propelled forward by the sheer fear of death.
But his condition was now worse than a wounded, blind animal.
His small, terrifying bat wings were severely scorched by Noor Jahan's strike.
The greatest disaster, however, was that Imran's arrows had left him completely blind—the shafts were still brutally lodged deep inside his hollow sockets.
Flying blindly through the dark jungle, his trajectory completely collapsed. He lost all balance.
SMASH!!!
Tumbling out of control through the air, he slammed headfirst into the thick trunk of an ancient tree.
The impact was so violent that another deep crack splintered across his bowl-like skull.
"AARRGGHH!!"
Huba Huba shrieked in pain and rage, dropping to the ground with a heavy thud among the filthy dirt and dry leaves.
He was violently dizzy.
He tried to lift his heavy head from the dirt, hissing furiously,
"That witch...
Noor Jahan...
I want to peel her skin...
I will chew her alive...
I will—"
Sssshhhhhhhhh...
Suddenly,
a light, warm,
and fast stream of liquid splashed directly onto his face and wide jaws.
Huba Huba froze for a second.
He flicked his long, battered red tongue out and tasted the liquid, assuming it was his own blood bleeding out from the crash.
But the taste was entirely different.
It was warm, salty, and absolutely... vile.
"Thooo!
Thooo!"
Huba Huba opened his massive jaws and began to spit violently.
"What is this?! Whose filthy poison is this?!"
Standing just above him, hiding behind the roots of that massive tree, was Omar.
The adopted son of Salman, the village merchant.
The skinny fourteen-year-old boy was so terrified on this night of horrors that his bladder had completely given out, and he was standing in the dark with his pants down.
Omar's hands were shaking violently.
He looked straight down... realizing his 'stream' was landing directly on the face and mouth of a terrifying, black, winged, severed head.
A head with no eyes, only broken arrows sticking out of its sockets.
Omar's mind went completely numb. His breath caught in his throat.
"G-G-Ghost..."
Omar stammered, his stream still going out of sheer terror.
"WHO ARE YOU CALLING A GHOST?!
I AM THE DEVIL HEAD!"
Huba Huba roared, blind with rage.
But as he opened his wide mouth, another splash of the stream went straight down his throat.
"BLEEARRGHHH!
THOOOOO!
YOU RUINED MY MOUTH!"
Huba Huba lifted off the ground, spitting and coughing.
"YOU SON OF A DOG,
I WILL EAT YOUR FLESH RAW!!!
I WILL DRINK YOUR BLOOD!!!"
Even though he was blind, his heat-tracking senses were still fully active,
and his long tongue whipped through the air,
hunting for his prey.
Omar went into pure panic mode.
He desperately grabbed a massive, thick dry wooden branch lying in the dirt with both hands.
Before Huba Huba could sink his filthy teeth into Omar's leg—
THWACK!!!
Fueled by blind terror,
Omar swung the heavy branch with all his might,
smashing it directly into Huba Huba's face like a bat hitting a ball.
"KAAAKKK!!!"
Huba Huba's skull snapped to the side.
The impact was so flawless and brutal that two of his jagged teeth broke off and flew into the air, and the arrows lodged in his eyes were driven even deeper.
He crashed back to the dirt with a heavy thud.
"I-I'll kill you!
D-Don't come near me!"
Omar screamed,
crying.
He frantically tried to turn and run, but in his panic,
his half-down pants tangled around his ankles.
Omar tripped and fell face-first into the dirt.
"YOU ARE DEAD TODAY!!!"
Huba Huba growled,
hovering back into the air.
But Omar yanked his pants up in one swift,
desperate motion,
gripped them tightly with one hand,
and sprinted into the pitch-black jungle with a speed as if death itself was chasing him.
Huba Huba was left near the ground—
spitting, coughing,
and screaming in rage.
"MY MOUTH!
AAARGHHH!
STOP RIGHT THERE!
I WON'T SPARE YOU!"
But Omar was already far beyond his tracking range, vanishing into the dark.
Omar ran alone through the dense, suffocating darkness, panting heavily.
His heartbeat hammered in his ears like a war drum.
The air carried such a heavy stench of burnt flesh and ash that it was numbing his brain.
"Allah..."
Omar whispered, crying,
"If I die here, no one will even come to bury me...
I don't know where my Abu is,
if he's even alive or dead..."
Suddenly,
Omar's foot hit something heavy in the dirt,
and he tripped,
crashing hard onto his face.
"Ugh..."
Omar groaned, pushing himself up on his elbows.
He rubbed his eyes and looked forward.
A body lay in the dark.
It was completely incinerated—burned into a charred, coal-like husk.
Its blackened fingers were gripping the dirt tightly, as if it had desperately tried to claw the earth in its final moments of agony.
All the blood in Omar's body ran cold.
He scrambled backward in terror.
And then...
the fingers of the charred corpse buried in the dirt twitched.
Crack...
Crack...
The horrifying sound of brittle bones snapping echoed.
The corpse's head suddenly twisted, turning to face Omar.
Inside that coal-black, ruined face, two bright yellow eyes ignited.
The corpse opened its charred jaw and spoke with a terrifying, dead voice,
"Omar...
save me..."
"AHHHHHHH!!!"
Omar shrieked in absolute terror.
He scrambled backward frantically, squeezing his eyes shut.
He grabbed a handful of dirt and threw it at the corpse.
"Stay away!
Stay away from me!"
But when he opened his eyes, trembling...
nothing was moving.
The corpse lay exactly as it had before—
lifeless and still.
There were no yellow eyes.
It was nothing but an illusion—a horrifying hallucination born from the corrupted dark aura of the jungle and the pure terror in Omar's own mind.
Omar took a long,
shuddering breath,
scrambled to his feet,
and began running toward the village without looking back.
Driven by fear and exhaustion,
Omar finally broke through the tree line and stepped
"inside the village".
He had come here to find his Abu, Salman, and beg for his help.
He held onto the desperate hope that someone in the village might have survived.
But the moment he stepped into the village streets, his feet froze to the ground.
The entire village had been turned into a horrifying graveyard.
Everywhere he looked, there was only fire, smoke, and the ruins of burnt houses.
Charred corpses littered the ground.
The last remnants of Omar's courage began to shatter in his chest.
Just then, through the fog and drifting ash, he heard a faint voice.
"Is anyone there...?"
Omar stepped forward in that direction with terrified, trembling steps.
There, sitting near a burnt house, was a woman. An old lady.
Her body had been horribly ravaged by Jabar's 'Dark Flame'.
Her clothes were reduced to ash, and the skin of her hands and legs had burned into hardened coal.
But the strangest, most unsettling thing was that her face was completely untouched.
Not a single lick of fire had reached it.
Her face was perfectly calm,
but her eyes were entirely empty and dead.
"Grandma...?"
Omar asked with a terrified,
trembling voice.
"How...
how did this happen to you? What exactly happened here?
Where is my Abu...?"
"Everyone is dead..."
the old woman said in a cold, lifeless voice.
"That demonic sorcerer did all of this, child.
The settlement...
the houses...
the children...
it all turned to ash.
My only remaining solace was my little granddaughter...
she was holding my hand.
She was clinging to me in terror..."
The woman reached her burnt, coal-black hand out into the empty air,
as if she were searching for someone in the dark.
"She was crying, child.
She told me she was feeling hot...
and then...
she turned into fire right inside my hands.
I couldn't save her.
She turned to ash and blew away in the wind...
and I am left standing here."
The weight of those words was so agonizingly heavy that Omar's breath caught in his throat.
Jabar's battles, the terror of the devils, Aslam's light—
all of it was meaningless to him now.
Jabar had already accomplished his goal.
He hadn't just burned houses;
he had burned humanity and hope into ashes.
Omar's legs finally gave out.
He collapsed to his knees onto the burnt, blackened soil of the village.
The young boy's shoulders began to shake violently.
A heartbreaking sob escaped his throat, and he broke down, weeping uncontrollably.
"Why did this happen...?!"
Omar screamed, sobbing and looking up at the sky.
"Why did this happen to me?!
First, I lost my real parents...
I was left completely alone!
Then Salman Abu made me his adopted son...
he gave me a refuge!
Then suddenly why all of this...
Where did Abu go..."
In that ruined village,
filled with ash and the suffocating silence of death,
right in front of the charred corpses and the empty-eyed old woman, Omar cried.
He didn't cry because he was afraid...
He cried because tonight he finally understood that there are forces in this world before which a human life is worth no more than a dry leaf.
And in this cursed world, refusing to die was the greatest curse of all.
***END OF CHAPTER 5***