Jerusalem — 10:18 P.M.
The night had settled over the city like a shroud of velvet, the air still and humming with quiet anticipation. Jerusalem, in its ancient splendor, felt untouched by time after dark. Torches flickered along the narrow paths as Nathaniel made his way back to the seminary quarters, his satchel pressed tight against his side.
He didn't speak to anyone. Not even the guards at the southern gate, who nodded in recognition.
He didn't see them.
His thoughts were elsewhere.
That stone… the stranger… and the strange sensation afterward — a smell that wasn't there when he entered the chamber, but lingered on his robe like phantom ash.
Burnt cedar. Sharp. Faintly metallic.
It clung to him still.
Nate stepped into his small stone room and locked the wooden door behind him. His bed sat untouched. On the desk, parchment scrolls and a wax-sealed inkpot lay undisturbed.
He sat down heavily.
Reached into the satchel.
The stone was warm now. Not hot. But warmer than before — like it had soaked in the touch of that underground chamber and refused to forget.
Just like him.
He rubbed his hands over his face and then stared at the floor for a long moment.
A flicker.
Not light.
Not sound.
Just something—something slipped through his memory like a shadow behind a curtain. Gone before he could recognize it.
A voice?
A woman's voice.
Laughing.
He blinked.
Where did that come from?
He stood abruptly and opened the shutters, letting the night air rush in. It didn't help.
The memory didn't return.
But the laugh… it lingered. Not a figment. Not imagination. Real.
Someone I knew?
He turned back to the room and saw something strange.
The inkpot was open. Not spilled — just uncapped. He hadn't used it in days.
Had he?
He didn't remember.
He picked up his quill and held it over the parchment, waiting to see what his hand would do.
And then, without truly thinking, he began to write:
> "The first shall rise not with a cry, but with silence. When the seal shatters, no wind will blow, no beast will stir. Only the elect will hear the whisper: 'Be still, for thunder walks the earth.'"
He stared at the words.
The handwriting was his.
But the words weren't.
He hadn't known he was going to write that.
He exhaled slowly, heart thudding. The laughter was gone now, but something new pressed at the edge of his mind — a scent again, barely there.
Smoke.
And not from torches.
Not from incense.
It smelled like rubber.
Burnt plastic.
Something that had no place in this time.
He closed the shutters slowly, heart tight in his chest.
"Who am I?" he whispered.
No one answered.
But the black stone pulsed once in the satchel behind him — a soft thud, like a bell tolling deep underground.
And far below, beyond the reach of memory, time stirred.