Chapter 158
Nirma glanced at him briefly, then let out a long breath—a sigh that carried the remnants of a burden she was slowly releasing.
"Good people who just happen to carry 23rd-century technology in their bandages," she replied flatly, but there was a tone at the end of her sentence that made Arya realize he had managed to ease her concern.
"Come on," Nirma said afterward, taking her first step toward the northwest, "we've wasted too much time here."
Their footsteps broke the silence lingering among the palm trunks, yet the silence was not truly empty—it seemed to hold echoes of something that had been erased, something that should have once existed but now had no place even in the memory of the world.
In between those steps, Arya slightly raised his wrist, not to summon a hologram, but merely out of an old habit that had not completely faded.
"It's clean," he said softly, his voice nearly dissolving into the whisper of the wind.
"There's no temporal residue. That timeline has been completely erased."
Nirma did not answer immediately.
Her gaze remained fixed ahead, but beneath that calm, something trembled—not doubt, but an awareness of how fragile something called "once happened" truly was.
She took a long breath.
"Erased," she repeated quietly, as if trying to feel the weight of the word on her tongue.
"Not repaired. Not corrected. But removed."
The morning sky was beginning to change color, a pale blue that slowly deepened, as if the world did not care at all that a branch of reality had just been severed from its root.
Within the silence that walked with them, Nirma finally turned her head slightly.
"So in the end, there was never any murder," she said, her tone flat yet layered with something difficult to penetrate.
"There was never any order from the Emperor to conduct an investigation. There was never us… in that house."
Arya gave a small nod, his steps steady on the sand that was beginning to warm.
"There was never any interrogation," he replied.
"There was never any meeting between us and them."
He paused briefly, then added in a quieter voice,
"Even our names were probably never recorded there."
But that statement did not entirely close the matter.
Because between the two of them, there was one thing that remained—a fragment that had not been erased along with that timeline.
Nirma slowed her steps, the tip of her sandal dragging slightly through the sand.
"But I still remember," she said.
"That house. The scent of its wood. The way Ashita stood facing me."
The wind blew a little stronger for a moment, rustling the palm leaves above them like an unfinished whisper.
Arya stared ahead, but his eyes clearly were not seeing the grove before him.
"An agent's memory isn't entirely bound to an erased timeline," he said, as if quoting something he had heard too often.
"Ironic," he muttered.
"A meeting that never happened, yet remains more real than many things that actually did."
Nirma lifted her hand slightly, looking again at the white bandage, as if searching for something that could not be explained by either technology or logic.
"And we don't even know how they erased it."
Arya exhaled softly.
"Exclusive technology," he answered briefly.
"Access that would never be granted to us—as fugitives."
Their steps moved in rhythm among the palm trunks that rose like pillars witnessing more than they were willing to admit, and Arya was the first to break the silence with a deliberately leveled voice—turning the vibration in his throat into something like a cold technical report, because that was the best way to talk about something that had been troubling his mind since they arrived on this land.
"The last point," he said, his eyes directed toward Mount Uhud, which was beginning to appear clearly in the distance, "is most likely on the northwestern slope. If that Abnormal intends to disrupt things, they'll position themselves where they can influence the archers—because that's where this battle is truly decided."
Nirma, who was walking half a step ahead of him, remained silent for a moment, then shook her head slightly.
Not to argue, but to correct, because she had spent three nights in the archives studying every inch of this terrain before the mission began.
"Not the archers," she said softly, her voice like someone recalling a dream she had replayed too many times.
"In Madinah, three days before the battle, what happens isn't military strategy—but a decision. The Messenger holds a consultation. Some companions want to stay within the city, others want to go out. Doubt is a sharper weapon than any sword, Arya. If that Abnormal wants to change the course of history, they won't strike from the hill. They'll infiltrate the council, whisper doubt into the right person, on the right night, so that by morning, when the ranks begin to march out, the foundation of obedience has already cracked without anyone realizing it."
Arya paused for a moment, taking a breath that felt heavy in his chest, then continued walking with a new awareness that their way of thinking had to be as sharp as the tip of a spear—because the threat they faced would never come with a face easy to recognize.
Their conversation circled like clashing blades in training, from one possibility to another, from one companion's name to the next, from one vulnerable point on the battlefield to another that wasn't even recorded on any map stored in the central archives.
Nirma spoke of how Abu Sufyan would scout his trade route a day before the conflict, of how a woman named Ummu Umarah would step onto the battlefield with a courage even the grand histories never fully anticipated, of how a single misdirected message, a single delayed command by just a few minutes, could turn a wave of victory into an unimaginable defeat.
"We're not looking for grand signs," Nirma said between steps, her hand occasionally touching the small pocket behind her abaya—where the remote lay hidden like a second heart beating with a rhythm different from the world around it.
"We're looking for irregularities within normality. A voice that sounds too convincing in someone who is usually doubtful. A silence that runs too deep in someone who usually speaks. Abnormals won't change major events with their own hands—they'll manipulate the people who are already there, because history altered from within is always harder to detect than history altered from the outside."
Arya let out a faint snort, a sound escaping from his nose that showed he understood, yet also felt the weight of that understanding itself.
"Then we won't find anything," he said—not pessimistically, just realistically.
"Because if they're that good at hiding, we'll only know after the damage is done."
And that was where they both stopped, standing beneath the shade of a palm tree whose leaves swayed as if writing something in the air, and for the first time that morning, they looked at each other without needing to continue their long discussion—because both of them knew that after a full day on this land, there was no more time left just to search.
There were decisions to be made, limits to be respected, and a Golgotha waiting for them at the far end of time—with a cross not yet raised and a sky not yet darkened.
To be continued…