Chapter 205
Arya, who had been trying to calm his racing heartbeat by silently counting his breaths—one, two, three, just as his first instructor had taught him at the headquarters that had probably become forgotten ruins by now—felt his chest turn to stone when Umar not only looked in their direction but also began to move, step by step, walking closer to their position with a pace that was neither hurried nor hesitant, the stride of someone who knew exactly where he had to stop even though his eyes could see nothing.
"Why is he walking toward us?" Nirma whispered, her voice slipping from behind her veil with a tremor she could not hide, trembling like the string of a violin pressed too hard by shaking fingers.
"Could this device that makes our bodies invisible be emitting some kind of wave that humans in 625 AD can somehow perceive?"
Arya quickly shook his head—so quickly that his neck ached a split second later—and his voice came out as a whisper forced to remain calm even though his stomach felt as if it were being stirred by the hands of an invisible giant.
"No, that's impossible. Completely impossible. Every trace of radiation emitted by a normal human body is perfectly concealed beneath this invisibility. I assembled this device myself from the remnants of twenty-seventh-century technology, Nirma. There are no waves, no frequencies, nothing at all that could be detected by the senses of a seventh-century human. Not because our technology is too advanced, but because it was designed by time hunters to hunt other time hunters. If its signals could be detected, every infiltration mission would fail before it even began."
Umar continued walking, and every heavy footstep upon the ground, now damp with the dew of dawn, felt like a hammer striking Nirma's and Arya's chests in turn—not because the hammer changed hands, but because both of their hearts beat in the same rhythm, the rhythm of war drums pounded by tireless hands, a rhythm that declared danger was not coming from a portal, nor from thumbless creatures, nor from sweet sleeping gas, but from an elderly man with a thick beard walking toward them with absolute certainty that he was approaching something that should never exist in the courtyard of a young Khazraj man in Madinah in the year 625 AD.
Umar slowly turned his head from right to left, his sharp eyes, like those of an eagle soaring high above the desert, sweeping every inch of the air around him.
When his gaze settled in their direction—toward the place where Nirma and Arya stood frozen by a fear they could no longer control because, as they had learned back at headquarters, fear could never truly be controlled, only concealed—the distance between them and Umar was no more than a few inches.
It was close enough for Nirma to see the veins tightening along Umar's neck.
Close enough for Arya to catch the scent of his robe, still damp with the night's lingering dew.
Close enough for both of them to feel the warmth radiating from the body of the man renowned for never retreating a single step on the battlefield.
"O nation of the jinn," Umar suddenly spoke, his voice not loud, yet echoing through Nirma's ears like thunder rolling across a cloudless sky.
"I do not know what kind of beings you are or where you come from, but do not interfere with the urgent affairs of the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him. For if you do, it will not be me whom you face, but a sword that has never failed to separate a head from its body in a single stroke."
Hearing those words, Arya felt his legs begin to weaken.
Not because he was afraid, but because he realized that Umar was not speaking to jinn.
He was speaking to them—to two fugitives hiding behind layers of technology designed to bend light and suppress the radiation emitted by the human body, yet never designed to bend the unwavering conviction of a man who had, since his youth, grown accustomed to hearing whispers beyond the reach of ordinary ears.
Before Nirma could whisper anything—before she could grab Arya's arm to retreat, to run, or to do anything at all that might save them from a situation spiraling beyond control—Umar gripped his sword with a right hand that had never trembled, even though age had long caught up with him.
Then, in a movement so swift that Nirma's left eye could barely follow it, Umar swung his sword sideways, a horizontal slash aimed not at Anas's door, nor at the old well, nor at the shadows shifting among the date palms, but directly at Arya's left arm—precisely where nothing could be seen by ordinary human eyes, precisely where Arya's real arm existed beneath the veil of bent light.
Nirma watched everything unfold in an unnaturally slow motion, like a recording played at half speed, like a nightmare she could not stop even while knowing she was trapped inside it.
Umar's sword sliced through the air, cutting through the lingering mist, cutting through air that suddenly felt colder than before.
Then the blade touched something.
Not something visible, but something Umar felt as resistance that had no right to exist within empty air—and the slash stopped.
Not because Umar halted it, but because something else, something Nirma could never explain with words, perhaps born from the yellow light still resting above the white camel, perhaps from a prayer she had never managed to utter, stopped Umar's hand at the very instant the tip of the blade had reached the outermost skin of Arya's left palm.
One more millimeter.
One more heartbeat.
One more breath.
And Arya would have screamed.
Blood would have flowed.
The veil of invisibility would have been shattered, for no technology could ever become advanced enough to conceal the pain that escaped a human mouth in the form of a scream that could never be faked.
"Forgive me, O Messenger of Allah," Umar suddenly said.
In that fraction of a second—which felt like an entire year to Nirma, whose heart had stopped beating—Umar loosened his grip on the sword, lowered his arm, and turned away from the place where he had nearly struck something he could not see.
His steps were faster than before, like a man who had just realized he had made a mistake that no ordinary apology could ever repair.
When he reached the side of the white camel—beside the yellow light that never faded—he knelt, not in simple submission but in the manner of a soldier prepared to accept a death sentence.
His voice, emerging from a chest still heaving with emotions that had not yet settled, reached Nirma clearly through the communicator hidden beneath her veil—far too clearly.
"Forgive me," Umar repeated, this time in a quieter voice, deeper, like a man whispering directly to his own Lord.
"I allowed my emotions to overcome me. I sensed something there—something unseen yet tangible, something that did not breathe yet moved—and I mistook it for the presence of Satan seeking to deceive you, O Messenger of Allah."
To be continued…