It wasn't on the map.
The place they brought him.
No coordinates.No address.No signal.
Just an old wooden building in a town square so quiet it felt suspended in time.
He entered alone.
The door creaked like it remembered better days.
Dust floated in the still air.There were no cameras.No microphones.No applause waiting.
Only a round table.Chairs.And silence.
"This is the last place decisions were made without an audience," the voice said.
— "Where are we?"
"Sivas. 1919."
Emir blinked.
And the room changed.
Dust turned to bodies.Empty chairs filled.Coats. Beards. Sweat.Tension so thick it pulled at the throat.
And there—at the head of the table—Mustafa Kemal.
Younger. Fierce-eyed.But not certain.
Not yet.
"We were surrounded," he said calmly."The Ottoman government branded us rebels.The British watched from the shadows.Even the locals whispered that we were dreaming."
One of the delegates stood in the memory.
— "You're asking us to stand against the state.To disobey.To risk exile. Execution."
Kemal didn't raise his voice.
He didn't need to.
"I am asking you to remember who we are before someone else decides it for us."
—
Emir felt it in his chest.
Not glory.Not excitement.
Weight.
The room wasn't united.They were afraid.And Atatürk was alone with the idea he refused to let die.
—
"This is what decision looks like," the voice said to Emir."Not clarity.Not power.Just a hundred reasons to hesitate—and one reason not to."
—
Kemal stood, gripping the edge of the table.
"History does not ask us to wait until it's safe.It asks us to move before it's too late."
And just like that, the memory dissolved.The room faded.
Emir was alone again.
But his hands were shaking.
Not from fear.
From recognition.
—
Back in his apartment, he stood in front of the mirror.
The dot he had drawn still lingered.
He took the marker again.
Above the dot, he wrote one word:
Sivas
A reminder.
Of what it means to stand surrounded—and still speak.
"You showed me that on purpose," he whispered aloud.
"Of course."
— "You can drop me into moments of history.How far does your reach go?"
A pause.
Then, lightly:
"Farther than yours, for now."
— "Why me?"
"Because decisions must be made again.And this time,you must be the one standing alone."
—