Chapter 177
For a moment, nothing happened.
Only the silence of Medina drifting between the date palm trees, only grains of sand dancing beneath the sunlight that was beginning to lean toward the west.
And then the necklace spoke.
Not with a voice emerging from the metal itself, but with a voice coming from time itself—a voice that sounded like Nirma, yet also not like Nirma at all, a voice as clear as water flowing over stone, but beneath that clarity lingered static, static like a telephone connection stretched across a thousand years.
"Ashita? Are you contacting me out of boredom, or is there important information you forgot to mention earlier?"
Ashita let out a long sigh—a sigh that escaped her chest like someone who had swallowed something too bitter to spit out, yet too large to swallow completely.
Inside her mind, she muttered something she dared not say aloud, afraid it might be overheard by anyone watching from behind the branches of a date palm tree, or from folds of time invisible to the naked eye.
So protective, she thought.
And in that thought, she imagined the Nirma she had known through reports and agent profiles—cold, efficient, never wasting time on unnecessary matters.
Yet it turned out that Nirma had secretly embedded a communication device inside the necklace she had given her, a communication device undetectable by the monitoring systems of the Temporal Cross-Police.
A communication device that could only be activated by a shake that was neither too fast nor too slow.
Like someone far too paranoid to use an ordinary phone because she feared being monitored by her own colleagues, or by the very superiors who were supposed to protect her.
Immediately after the silver light surrounding Nirma and Arya contracted into an ever-smaller point—like cloth being pulled inward from all four corners at once, shrinking until nothing remained except a faint hiss quickly swallowed by the winds of Medina—Arya pressed a button on his wrist.
A small, tarnished silver button he had carried from the year 4666 AD, from an era where technology was no longer about creating something new, but about hiding what already existed.
"Now we're invisible," he whispered.
His voice was barely audible, like a breath that did not wish to disturb the dust on the floor.
Beside him, Nirma nodded, even though she knew Arya could not see the gesture because both of their bodies had become like glass, like water, like shadows without form.
"But remember, this device only hides us from sight—not from hearing, not from smell, and not from the vibrations of footsteps on dry ground. So move as if you've never moved before."
Nirma did not reply.
She simply took a deep breath, feeling the warm air of Medina fill her lungs.
Inside her chest, something pulsed in the same rhythm as the necklace now resting in Ashita's robe pocket.
The necklace she had carried for years.
The one object she had never parted with.
And for the first time, she realized that letting something go did not always mean losing it.
Sometimes, letting go meant giving it permission to do what you could never do yourself.
They moved along the pathway connecting the center of Medina to the district of Banu 'Abdul Ashhal, where Mush'ab ibn Umair—the Companion of the Prophet, known as Al-Musya'ad, the handsome envoy who had once abandoned wealth and family prestige in Mecca simply because he heard a single name that changed everything—spent his final nights before the Battle of Uhud.
Before history recorded that he would fall on the battlefield, his body pierced by arrows, still holding the banner even as blood poured from an arm that was nearly severed.
"Over there," Arya said, pointing toward a structure built from sun-baked mud bricks.
Its walls were not tall, but they appeared sturdy.
Sturdy like the person who lived within them never needed to hide from anyone, because he knew his faith was a fortress no sword could penetrate.
"Mush'ab ibn Umair's house. According to the report from the first agents who arrived on-site, this was the last place he was seen before... before everything happened."
Nirma studied the building from afar.
Her left eye narrowed as she noted details that ordinary observers might overlook.
A roof made from date palm fronds coated with clay.
A central courtyard, the saṭḥ, now empty.
Yet from the marks left in the sand, she could tell that only a few hours earlier, the place had been crowded with people sitting cross-legged in circles, listening to something.
Perhaps advice.
Perhaps prayers.
Perhaps merely stories about the coming war and about a paradise more beautiful than anything they had ever seen in this world.
They approached the entrance.
At every corner, Nirma saw agents of the Temporal Cross-Police standing in positions unlike any she had seen before.
Not displaying ordinary vigilance.
But confusion.
The confusion of investigators arriving at a crime scene only to realize that every clue they uncovered led to more questions instead of answers.
One agent, with short hair and a face far too young for eyes that old, stood near the veranda (ẓullah).
His gaze was fixed blankly upon the wide-open main room.
And from his expression, Nirma could tell he had found nothing he had been looking for.
Only emptiness.
Only silence.
Only air still carrying the lingering scent of something that should not exist in the year 625 AD.
"They've already processed the scene," Arya whispered.
His voice was nearly drowned out by the wind slipping through the gaps in the mud-brick walls.
"But judging by the way they're standing... it looks like they didn't find anything useful. Or maybe they found too much, and it left them confused."
Nirma nodded.
Without waiting for Arya to finish speaking, she stepped inside Mush'ab ibn Umair's house.
Not hurriedly.
But carefully.
Like an uninvited guest whose intentions were not malicious.
And she hoped that if Mush'ab were somehow still here, he would forgive this intrusion, because her purpose was not to disturb the peace of the dead, but to discover why those who should have been dead no longer had graves.
Her invisible body slipped across the threshold.
And the moment she entered the main chamber—the bayt, the room that served not only as a sleeping area but also as a reception room, a place for discussions, a place where important decisions were made through whispers that would never be recorded in any history book—Nirma immediately felt that something was wrong.
"You smell it too?" Nirma whispered.
Her eyes shifted toward Arya, who stood beside her.
Arya merely nodded.
His nose twitched slightly like an animal attempting to identify a scent too unfamiliar to recognize, yet too strong to ignore.
It was not the smell of flesh.
Not sweat.
Not damp earth or dried palm fronds.
It was gas.
A gas with an unnatural sweetness.
Sweet like a flower blooming in the middle of a desert where there was not enough water for anything to grow.
The very same gas reported by agents in Jerusalem.
The same gas that had caused five apostles to fall asleep where they stood while the other seven vanished without a trace.
To be continued…