Someone in the crowd muttered first.
"...He's so damn wrong."
It wasn't defiance.
It wasn't even grief.
It was disbelief.
A quiet rejection of everything Malik had just said.
And then, slowly, it spread.
"He called himself selfish?"
"That… that couldn't be farther from the truth."
"His self-worth it's..."
"A life that wouldn't amount to anything, huh..."
They all heard it.
That last monologue.
The one where he listed their names like crimes.
As if he murdered them. As if he had killed them with his bare hands.
But he didn't.
He chose them to be saved.
And not just once. Every single time.
It was only that his one... his one choice, his final choice, got stuck.
That one remained.
It remained.
Heads started rising, just a little—a dawn daring to peek over the horizon.
Among them was the silver-bearded man.
"The Sultan weaved his soul into theirs…"
He murmured almost to himself:
