Chapter 207
"Hey, what's wrong? Did you see something?"
Nirma did not answer for several seconds—seconds that felt like years to Arya, whose heart had stopped and started again far too many times across countless timelines.
When her answer finally came, her voice sounded different, thinner, more like cracked glass that had yet to shatter, more like water that knew it was about to boil but chose to remain still.
"It's nothing," she said, her head still turned behind her, her left eye still fixed upon the yellow light that neither moved nor spoke, but simply waited.
"I was just... hallucinating, maybe. Or thinking about too many possibilities. Or—"
She stopped, letting out a breath that escaped her chest like someone who had just decided not to drown in the very ocean that had swallowed thousands before she was ever born.
"Or maybe this is what they call madness."
Arya did not think—or perhaps he thought too quickly, so quickly that his thoughts skipped the stage of consideration and became movement, became action, became both of his hands landing firmly upon Nirma's shoulders, hard but not rough, like someone trying to wake a friend from a nightmare that had lasted far too long, like someone who knew that if he did not do something now, something else would do it in his place, and that something else would not be as gentle as his own hands.
"Nirma, look at me," Arya pleaded, unable to hide the tremor in his voice—a tremor like the string of an instrument that had remained silent for too long before finally being plucked by trembling fingers, the tremor of a man who had just realized that the companion who had always been his anchor in every storm was suddenly speaking about madness.
"You said this might be what people call madness. What do you mean? If it's important—if it has anything to do with the investigation, the well, Mush'ab, or the others—then you have to tell me. Now. Not later, not after dawn has passed, but now, because time does not wait for people who are too busy locking their secrets inside their chests until those very chests forget how to breathe."
Nirma looked into Arya's eyes for several seconds—seconds that felt like years to Arya, whose heartbeat thundered in his ears, his throat, and the fingertips that still gripped her shoulders.
Within that gaze, Arya saw something he had never before witnessed in the eye of his one-eyed companion.
Doubt.
Not doubt about data, coordinates, or nameless files, because she had long accepted those as truths beyond question.
But doubt over whether there were certain things that should never be spoken, never shared, never transformed into vibrations carried through the air for ordinary human ears to hear, because words, as she had learned through countless missions that had nearly claimed her life, were swords that could never be sheathed once they had been drawn.
Nirma let out a long breath—a breath that escaped her chest like wind trapped inside a cave for far too long, like a confession she had never imagined would one day leave her own lips, like a door suddenly opening despite the promise she had made to herself never to unlock it.
"Maybe what I'm about to say will sound completely insane, Arya," she finally said, her voice beneath the veil quieter than a whisper, quieter than the dawn breeze carrying the scent of damp earth, quieter than the footsteps of an ant crossing the sand.
Yet Arya heard every word.
He heard them with perfect clarity—far too clearly, as clearly as Sinta's name repeatedly carved onto a wooden board that no one dared erase.
"And it would be extremely controversial if Muslims fifteen hundred years from now were ever to hear it. Perhaps it's better if I never tell anyone, Arya. Even you. Not because I don't trust you—because if I didn't, I wouldn't be standing here in Anas's courtyard, in the seventh century, with your blood still pooling between your fingers—but because there are secrets that remain true without ever being spoken aloud. There are truths that are safer when they remain inside the heart that carries them, like embers that will never become flames unless the wind chooses to touch them."
Arya did not become angry.
He was not disappointed.
Nor did he lose his patience as he probably would have years ago, when he had still been a senior officer in the Temporal Cross-Police and had grown accustomed to straightforward answers delivered without riddles or hesitation.
Instead, he simply let out a breath of relief.
Relief like that of someone who had just discovered that his companion had not lost her sanity at all, but had merely chosen not to share a burden that might be too heavy for two pairs of shoulders to carry together, because some burdens became lighter when borne alone, just as snow was more beautiful falling upon a silent mountaintop than upon a city crowded with voices, questions, and words that were never satisfied.
Within the deepest chamber of Nirma's heart—a place she had never opened to anyone, where she kept everything she could never say aloud for fear of being called insane, paranoid, or someone who believed too deeply in things that could never be measured by data—a single sentence continued to circle endlessly like water trapped within an eternal whirlpool, like a recording played over and over inside a mind that had suddenly become far too small to contain everything she had seen, heard, and felt since the night had begun.
"You are not from this era," the voice whispered within her memory.
It possessed no frequency, no timbre, no vocal quality she could identify.
It did not come from a throat, vocal cords, or vibrating air, but from somewhere deeper than all of those—from a place where language had not yet been born, where words had no shape, where communication flowed through light that did not blind but pierced the soul, through a presence that did not speak yet was understood, through an existence that never moved yet traveled faster than even the swiftest prayer.
"Yet I know. You did not come here to harm us."
When those words—words never spoken by any audible voice, words that reached Nirma only through vibrations echoing across her ribs, her spine, and the pulse beating against her left temple in a rhythm unlike any she had ever known—settled into her consciousness, she felt something she had never experienced during all her years as an agent who trusted only data, algorithms, and probability.
"May Allah shower His blessings upon every path your feet shall walk."
It was not fear, because she feared no one except the possibility that everything she did would ultimately change nothing.
It was not joy, because she did not believe herself worthy of receiving a blessing from a Source whose light alone was enough to make her long to kneel, even though no one had ever taught her how to kneel properly.
It was something between the two—something for which human language had never invented a name, because it had been born from the meeting of faith and doubt, hope and despair, from the undeniable truth that she was an intruder from the future, and the equally undeniable truth that she had just been granted permission to continue walking by the Owner of the Light, who had never once asked for her identity, her credentials, or authorization from the Temporal Cross-Police.
To be continued…