Chapter 159
The sun had traveled far when they finally sat beneath the same cluster of palm trees where, that morning, a young boy had fallen from a branch—the same place, a different time, with shadows now stretching eastward as silent witnesses that a full day had passed without leaving any meaningful trace.
Nirma let out a long breath, her fingers touching the bandage on her right hand, which now felt strangely heavy with absence, because all day they had observed, searched, listened to every whisper in the market and every murmur along the streets, yet found not a single anomaly that could be called the work of an Abnormal—only humans with all their doubts, their courage, and the choices they made on their own, without any whisper from behind the veil of time.
"There's nothing," Arya finally said, his voice almost hoarse from whispering for too long.
"No signs. They were never here."
Nirma did not answer immediately, her eyes fixed on the northern horizon where Mount Uhud began to glow red under the dusk, and within her chest there was something she could not quite name—somewhere between relief that the foundation of this history remained intact, or unease because the absence itself felt too perfect.
"Then we leave," she said at last, rising with a measured motion, her hand already slipping into the small pocket behind her abaya, her fingers brushing the cold, unfamiliar surface of the remote despite having carried it for months.
"Golgotha is waiting. And there, we won't be looking for traces—we'll make sure no trace is ever created."
Arya, now standing as well, glanced at her briefly, then gave a faint smile—not one of happiness, but one born from the awareness that their journey was not over, that what was not found in Madinah did not mean it did not exist elsewhere, that history was a body with many veins, and they had only examined one without finding a fault in its pulse.
"At least," he said, shifting his sandals against the ground that had begun to cool, "we won't leave the wrong trace here. Let Madinah remain Madinah—with every decision made by its own people."
One breath, one pulse, one touch upon the remote that lit without a sound—and their bodies vanished from beneath the palm trees like mist brushed away by dawn, leaving only footprints in the sand that would be erased by the wind before they could ever become a question.
When their eyes opened again, the air that greeted them was no longer the scent of dry earth and palm fronds, but the smell of limestone and a tension that hung over Jerusalem like a fog that never fully faded, and in the distance, Golgotha rose with crosses not yet standing, yet whose shadows had already fallen upon the ground—a reminder that in this place, just days before Friday, April 3rd, 33 AD, something far greater than them would take place, and they could only ensure that no hand from outside time dared to touch the foundation that had been set long before their names were ever known to the world.
"We arrived early," Nirma whispered, her voice swallowed by the wind blowing from the direction of Baitul Maqdis, and Arya, standing beside her, simply gave a small nod, his eyes fixed on the hill that would one day become the center of something never finished being debated.
"Now," Arya said at last, his voice nearly lost among dust and time, "we wait. And we make sure that here, just as in Madinah, history unfolds the way it was written—without addition, without correction, without our names within it."
When the first light that greeted them was no longer the orange glow of Madinah but the cold gray of Jerusalem's sky hanging low like un-torn mourning cloth, Nirma and Arya found themselves standing between two limestone walls slick with dew—a narrow passage on the northern side of the city, known to the locals as the path to an old well, a place they had deliberately chosen for its insignificance in the crowded map of history.
Nirma exhaled softly as she adjusted the folds of the olive-colored himation wrapped around her body from shoulder to ankle, its coarse wool unfamiliar against skin accustomed to 23rd-century synthetic fibers, yet she had learned that comfort was a luxury that could not be claimed by those who chose to live as shadows in centuries that were not their own.
At her waist, an empty clay jar hung from a loosely tied hemp rope—a prop that transformed her appearance into something ordinary, a village woman on her way to fetch water before the sun grew too harsh, her face almost entirely concealed by a thick veil that left only a narrow slit at eye level, while her bandaged right hand was now wrapped in an additional layer of cloth she had carefully arranged, resembling an old wound still under care—something that would not invite questions in a city where every day people arrived with bodies marked by bruises and injuries.
"You," Arya whispered from beside her, his voice like a faint ripple within the silence of the alley, "are too perfect as a woman of Jerusalem. I almost forget that beneath all that is cellular healing technology and archives containing thousands of years of anthropological data."
Nirma glanced at him briefly, her visible eyes narrowing beneath the veil with a tone Arya recognized as a mixture of mockery and fatigue that had become their second language.
"And you," she replied flatly, "are too stiff as a pilgrim from Galilee. Loosen your shoulders. A man who has walked from Capernaum doesn't carry himself like a Roman statue."
Arya looked down for a moment at his own clothing—a gray linen tunic hanging to his knees, tied with a wide leather belt holding a small pouch of provisions and a folding knife he had deliberately chosen to avoid suspicion, while a dark brown himation draped over one shoulder in folds he had intentionally left slightly untidy, because a true pilgrim does not have time to adjust his robe every time the wind blows.
In his right hand was a wooden walking staff he had taken from a pile at the corner of the alley before they set out—a choice made not for function, but for symbolism.
In Jerusalem of 33 AD, a foreign man without a staff would appear as someone who belonged nowhere, and in a city filled with pilgrims from every direction, to belong nowhere was the most dangerous form of isolation.
The bandage on his forearm was concealed beneath an additional layer of cloth he had dusted with dirt and olive oil, making it appear like a crude protection from the sun—or a healing burn—something easily ignored in the bustle of a market that would begin to stir in a few hours.
"This staff," Arya muttered, adjusting the wood in his grip, "feels heavy in a way that makes no sense. In our time, weapons have no weight. Here, even dead wood carries the memory of the earth where it grew."
Nirma, already stepping out of the passage, glanced back halfway, her voice soft beneath the thick veil covering most of her face.
"That's because here, Arya, objects have not yet lost their names. This wood knows it came from an olive tree that grew on the slopes of the Mount of Olives. And that tree knows that soon, from wood like itself, something will be built that will change how the world remembers."
To be continued…