Malik's body screamed. Every nerve in his skin, every bone under flesh, every breath clawed out of his lungs. He lay there, sprawled on the cracked, blood-stained ground, face turned upward toward the heavens.
The sky above him was still. Pale, uncaring. That sky had watched him bleed more times than any living soul. It had seen him fall. Burn. Break. Be unmade. Again and again. That sky had been the ceiling to his tomb more times than he dared remember.
What was the number now? A billion? Trillion? Quadrillion? Quintillion fractured blinks folded over each other like ash and paper and grief? Who the Hell knew?
Somewhere, in the middle of all those loops, all those endless rewinds and do-overs and screams that didn't echo anymore…
He had started dreaming once more.
Stupid dreams. Beautiful, stupid dreams.
Like the one that he saw before all of this...
Before blood spilled like water...
Before a ballad got ripped in half right in the middle of its best damn note...
