Chapter 204
As a master archer, Sa'd had learned that danger often came from the most unsuspected places, from openings the eye never noticed because they were too low, too dark, too much like gaping mouths that never screamed.
And deep within the instincts sharpened through dozens of battles, he felt that this dry well was no ordinary well, that something awaited at its bottom, something that did not breathe yet moved, something without form yet capable of leaving traces no rational mind could explain.
"I don't like this well," Sa'd muttered inwardly, not daring to voice the thought aloud for fear that his words might become a prayer that summoned the very thing he dreaded. His thick yet nimble fingers drew the bowstring a little tighter, a little more prepared, because in a battle like this, where the enemy could neither be seen, smelled, nor heard, the tension of his bowstring was the only certainty he could trust.
Umar ibn al-Khattab, on the other hand, could no longer tolerate the mysterious atmosphere that shrouded Anas's house like a fog unwilling to leave despite dawn already breaking over the eastern horizon. He stepped closer to the white camel, bringing his fearless ear nearer to the source of the unfading light, and whispered in a voice meant only for the Messenger of Allah and the night sky that still held darkness in its farthest corners.
"O Messenger of Allah, allow me to knock on the door with force. If no one answers, we'll force our way inside."
Hearing that whisper through the communication device hidden beneath her veil, Nirma felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end, not from the cold, but because she knew exactly what would happen if Umar truly knocked on that door.
The door would open. The courtyard with its bottomless portal would be revealed. And no one would be able to explain why, in the seventh century, there existed a hole in the earth that smelled not of soil, but of electricity, ozone, and something that had never been created by the same God who created the scent of rain, ripe dates, and blood upon the battlefield.
Nirma could not hear what the golden light said to Umar. Perhaps human ears were never designed to perceive the frequencies of a voice emerging from a source without a throat. Perhaps the Messenger of Allah chose not to answer with words. Or perhaps the true answer was silence itself, a silence that spoke more profoundly than a thousand sermons. Yet she saw Umar release a long breath, the kind of breath that escaped a man who had just lost an argument with himself, a breath that stirred his thick beard and caused his broad shoulders to rise and fall in a way he had never allowed an enemy to witness.
"Very well," Umar whispered, more to himself than to anyone else.
"I will be patient. But by Allah, if Mus'ab and the others are down there, beneath this ground, beneath this dry well, beneath this unseen abyss, then we will descend, even if we must do it one by one. I will be the first."
With heavy yet cautious steps, Umar began inspecting the surroundings of the house. He circled the fragile woven walls, approached the date grove behind the house, peered into the old dry well, and with every step his hand remained firmly upon the hilt of his sword, never leaving it, never relaxing. For within the heart that feared no one except the God who had sent Muhammad was a voice he could not silence, a voice insisting that tonight was unlike any other night, that within the home of this ordinary young man, who had never asked to become the center of anything, lay a secret beyond the grasp of human logic, a secret that could only be uncovered by descending into the bottomless well, into a darkness untouched by the light of the sun, the moon, or the stars.
Amid the silence, growing thicker like honey solidifying in the cold of winter, Nirma and Arya turned toward each other at the exact same moment.
Not because they had planned to, but because instincts sharpened by countless missions that had nearly claimed their lives had taught them that in moments like these, a glance was the only language no one could intercept, not even the golden light that remained silent upon the white camel.
And when Nirma's left eye met Arya's dark brown gaze, neither of them needed to say a single word, because they both knew.
The Messenger of Allah was speaking.
Not through sound, for sound required air, vocal cords, and the vibrations of the eardrum, but through something older than language itself, something that could only be received by hearts not overwhelmed by fear and doubt.
From atop the white camel, the golden light neither moved, flickered, nor changed in intensity. Yet something unseen rippled through the air surrounding it, waves traveling faster than light, yet slower than prayer, waves that touched the chest of Ali ibn Abi Talib, causing him to straighten his back like an arrow freshly drawn from its bow. They touched the shoulder of Zubair ibn al-Awwam, causing the fingers gripping his bowstring to loosen by half a centimeter. They touched the crown of Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas, drawing his gaze away from the old well and slowly toward the half-open door of Anas's house.
"We're going in," Abbad ibn Bishr whispered to Abdullah ibn Rawahah.
Not because he had heard the command with his ears, but because he had felt it within his ribs, within the joints of his fingers, within the pulse at his neck that had suddenly begun beating with the very same rhythm it had the day he first proclaimed the shahada before the Messenger of Allah years ago.
Yet what sent a chill racing down Nirma's spine, and especially Arya's, who had long grown accustomed to terrifying situations across countless timelines, was neither the portal in Anas's courtyard nor the darkness surrounding the old dry well.
It was Umar ibn al-Khattab himself.
From behind the veil of obscurity wrapping around their bodies like a blanket woven from bent light, Nirma saw with her own eyes that although Umar appeared to obey the instruction, for he no longer insisted on knocking at the door and had stepped half a pace back from his position beside the white camel, his body betrayed something entirely different.
It was not his feet that moved, for they remained rooted to the ground now dampened by the approaching dawn. It was his eyes, the same eyes renowned for never wavering before enemy ranks on the battlefield. They shifted slowly, far too slowly, like the hands of a clock that never seem to move yet always reveal a different time whenever you look away. Their direction was not toward the door of Anas's house, not toward the old well that had drawn Sa'd's suspicion, not toward the companions beginning to enter the house.
Instead, they turned toward an entirely different place, toward the exact spot where Nirma and Arya stood, concealed behind the thinning mist as the sun upon the eastern horizon grew impatient to be born.
To be continued…