“Amīr al-Muʾminīn.” The stranger waved their hand in a seemingly dismissive gesture. Before Xavier even realised it, the world around them had changed. The grass, the creek, the village in the background—they have all been replaced by large, gently undulating sand dunes. A desolate desert enveloped them on all sides, stretching endlessly as far as the eye could make out. 

“Wh…where are we?” Xavier spun his head frantically to survey the vast and arid landscape. “What is this place?” 

“The mighty Caliphate of the Enlightened Padishah,” they answered, holding their hand up against the sweltering sun as if to block its glaring rays from reaching their eyes. “Before the Empire came to be, the entire Northern continent was under his sole dominion and control. His followers, numbering in the tens of millions, worshipped him as a god who descended down to the earth to save humanity.”

Xavier watched the stranger slowly bend down and ran their long fingers through the sand. “But of course, there will always be those who refuse to believe in the heavens. To demonstrate his godhood to the kafirs, Amīr al-Muʾminīn gave his most faithful a divine gift—the power to wield sihr, the magic of this world. Sihr helped humanity to overcome their flaws and achieve feats that would have otherwise been impossible.”

They picked up some sand and let it flow through their fingers, scattering the tiny orange grains in a circle on the sand. To Xavierʼs astonishment, the circle rapidly expanded along the desert floor, much like a shockwave travelling from an epicentre. The ground began to shake, and before his stunned eyes, a magnificent city began to slowly rise up from the featureless sand dunes. Buildings taller and wider than the greatest skyscrapers in the Empireʼs capital emerged in a matter of seconds. The sand beneath his feet dissolved into a shiny, black material, forming a large open broadway that stretched before his eyes. 

Slowly, the scenery around him changed into a sprawling metropolis on a scale that he had never encountered before. A myriad of brightly-lit billboards and signs hung overhead, almost obscuring the sky from view. Horseless carriages whizzed past him at incredible speeds, blasting his face with a rush of wind. Humanoid shadows strolled along the broadway, chattering away in a foreign sing-song tongue that was both husky and mellifluous at the same time. 

“Sihr allowed the humans to bring their envisioned dreams into reality,” the stranger’s voice reached his ears as though they were standing right behind him. But when he spun his head around, he realised that a tall, young man was smiling at him. 

Xavier blinked. “You…”

“Since I recreated a scene from my past, you are now seeing a past version of me—the me who existed before I became ‘God’.” There was a mixture of pride and gentleness in his striking brown eyes and upturned lips. Xavier noticed that he was dressed in a robe-like tunic with flowing long sleeves, with strange decorative markings on his wrists. 

“Do not mind these imprints,” the man said, subconsciously hiding his wrists with his sleeves. “They mean nothing to you.”

“O-oh, no, I didn’t mean to stare,” Xavier hastily said. 

“It’s alright.” The man paused, as if mulling over his words until he found the right ones to say. “These imprints…they are the mark of a ‘summoned’. I told you that I wasn’t from this world, do you still remember?”

He nodded his head, and the man gave a slight smile. “Originally, sihr was a power only wielded by mystical spirits known as jinn. It was never something meant to fall into the hands of humanity. In order to bestow the gift of sihr upon his faithful, Amīr al-Muʾminīn invaded the spirit realm and stole sihr from the jinn.”

Xavier hesitated. “He…stole the jinn’s power?” 

“That’s the nice way of putting it,” the man admitted. “Amīr al-Muʾminīn committed such a grave sin that even the heavens could not ignore it. In the end, he was punished—once every five years, he must sacrifice a faithful to the vindictive jinn to return sihr to where it rightfully belongs. If he fails, the jinn will invade and wreak havoc upon the human realm.”

“But there’s no way he would sacrifice one of his believers…right?” Xavier mumbled. 

The man nodded his head silently. “Yes, and Amīr al-Muʾminīn devised a plan to circumvent this punishment. The exact words were ‘sacrifice one of your faithfuls to the jinn’, but as enlightened as he is, he found the perfect loophole. You see, the heavens never specified where the faithful have to be from. He didn’t have to sacrifice any of his people—not if he could summon humans from other worlds and convert them to becoming faithfuls first.” 

“Summon humans from other worlds?” Xavier paused. There must be a reason why the man specifically used the word ‘summon’—it was something he had mentioned earlier… 

He inhaled sharply. “You said that those markings are the mark of a ‘summoned’, didn’t you? And you said that you aren’t from this world, so…”

“That is correct, dear Xavier.” The man smiled sadly. “I was one of the humans summoned into this world. We were lied to by Amīr al-Muʾminīn, who wanted to completely destroy the spirit realm and render the jinn powerless to be a threat to his Caliphate. All of us were led to believe that we were waging a holy war, a virtuous jihad against the jinn.”

“He told us that if we won, we would become the heroes of this world. Wealth, glory, anything we wished for that we couldn’t obtain in our previous lives—he promised us all. But in order to win decisively, he said, we needed the power of sihr. And he gave each and every one sihr, on the one condition that we swore loyalty to the Caliphate and worshipped Amīr al-Muʾminīn with our blood, our bodies and our spirits.” 

“None of us knew the truth. That is, until it was far too late—by then, everyone else had died in that senseless and bloody jihad,” he said quietly. “Everyone else but me.” 

“Thatʼs…I donʼt know what to say,” Xavier muttered honestly. It was so much to take in that he felt he could not offer any kind of condolences. 

“There’s no need for you to feel pity, Xavier. These events are nothing more than a faint recollection for me now.” The man shook his head and gave him an enigmatic smile, a smile that seemed both melancholic and sinister at the same time. 

Seeing the manʼs smile sent a bone-chilling shiver down his spine. He apprehensively looked around at the bustling street they stood on. The people obliviously walking along the sidewalks. The carriages screaming past them. The magnificence of the buildings that towered over everyone. There must be a reason why such an advanced civilisation has been completely erased from history.

He was about to open his mouth to ask when the man answered his unspoken question. 

“I was the most reluctant out of all who were summoned. I wasn’t convinced that Amīr al-Muʾminīn was telling me the truth, you see, because I found it suspicious that he needed to summon so many ‘heroes’ despite having such great power,” he said. “To persuade me, Amīr al-Muʾminīn gifted me Ayrı Dünyalar. The promise of an Empire.” 

An Empire.

It took Xavier only a moment for realisation to dawn upon him like a bolt. “Don’t tell me…n-no way, you are—”

“I was,” the man corrected with a dark look in his eyes. “King Cetheri the First, the One who crushed the Caliphate and established my Empire on its ashes.”

“I killed Amīr al-Muʾminīn and gained his divine powers. I hunted down every single human in this world who could use sihr and banished them to the spirit realm, before sealing the border between our realm and the jinn.  I purged all who followed Amīr al-Muʾminīn and ravaged their homelands beyond recognition. I reshaped the entire continent to create my ideal world, a world where only I can wield magic and ascend to become a true god.”

“But I don’t wish to be ‘God’ forever, Xavier,” he said, his voice suddenly softening. “When I was given Ayrı Dünyalar, I was also given something Amīr al-Muʾminīn never gave anyone else. Ayrı Dünyalar isn’t just a promise of an Empire, you see.”

“…you were given a chance to return to your home world, weren’t you?” Xavier finally breathed. “Its name. Ayrı Dünyalar. Two worlds apart, seven commandments in total. My guess is that the painting has a condition that if your Empire lasts for seven generations, it will open some kind of gateway between this world and your home world. Then, you’ll finally be able to go back to where you rightfully belong.”

“An excellent deduction, as I expected from your intellect.” The man nodded his head. “Once Anastasia becomes the seventh Queen of the Aetherium Empire, I will be able to return home. But…that isn’t as easy as it sounds, so I must seek your help, dear Xavier.” 

“My help?” He was barely able to contain his laugh at the man’s self-deprecating statement. “Pardon me, but aren’t you God himself?”

“Yes, but I’m afraid I won’t be one for long,” the man said bitterly. “I have given you and Anastasia my assistance, and I promise that I will help you as much as possible through my gift to you.”

“But, Xavier, if all else fails…please see that Anastasia ascends to the throne by the Festival of Aetherium.”

“Huh…?” His eyes widened in shock. “W-wait, why me? Is there something wrong? Tell me now, please!”

“I have committed a grave mistake, dear Xavier. Some…someone has broken through the border…” The man shook his head violently, as if trying to push a bad memory out of his mind. “The Empire—no, the entire world order is in grave danger, Xavier. Though I look young, my spirit has aged well past its natural limit. I have to dedicate everything I have to fight this threat, and even so, I’m not certain that I can win.”

Before Xavier could react, the man grabbed his hands and clasped them in between his own tightly. Never in his life could he have imagined that the Lord himself would be begging for his help—Xavier was utterly at a loss for words when the man spoke to him for the last time.

“Dear Xavier, child of this world, I hereby entrust my seventh heir to you. Please take good care of Anastasia…” God’s voice dropped to a low whisper. “Take care…of Rei…”