When Kemal opened his eyes, the cold beneath him registered first—a sharp, unfriendly chill pressing against his back. The room was no longer bathed in daylight; shadows stretched across the walls, and the sun was sinking outside, painting the sky with the last remnants of burnt orange. His skull throbbed with a dull ache, and his neck protested with a stiffness that suggested he'd been lying there far too long. For a few seconds, everything around him felt unfamiliar, distant—as if he had woken into someone else's life.
Slowly, he pushed himself upright and sat on his knees, glancing around with wary eyes. It was still his room. The desk, the books, the slightly ajar window—all of it untouched. Nothing appeared out of place, and yet the air felt heavier, the silence more oppressive, as if the space around him remembered something he did not.
Then his gaze dropped to the floor, and his breath caught.The stone was still there.
Cold to the touch, yes—but not inert. It hummed with something imperceptible yet unmistakable, a pulsing presence just beneath its surface. It wasn't heat, not exactly; it was a living vibration that spread up his arm, crawled into his chest, and settled in the pit of his stomach like a warning. The carved figures on the disc hadn't shifted, but the stag-headed one now seemed... altered. Its contours shimmered faintly, as if some dormant breath stirred within the stone itself.
His eyes locked with the creature's. Not truly, not rationally—but still, he felt it.Not only was it watching him. It knew him.ath held tight in his chest, fingers trembling around the disc. Part of him wanted to drop it, to flee, to shake this hallucination loose from his mind. But his hands wouldn't move. His limbs were clay, held by something deeper than fear. He shut his eyes, drew in a sharp breath, and whispered aloud
"It's just a stone. Just a stone."
But in the silence that followed, a voice slipped into the edges of his consciousness—not spoken aloud, but pulsing quietly from within, like memory pressed into bone.
"Remember."
And then, the symbols on the edge of the disc began to shift. One, near the top, glowed faintly. It didn't shine with light, not exactly. It revealed itself, like something hidden rising to the surface. The script was close to Aramaic, but not quite. He knew it, or thought he did. Somewhere, long ago—or not so long ago at all.
Then came the vision. Not a dream or delusion. Something in between.
A stone courtyard beneath a blood-red sky.Crumbling pillars. Wind whispering through hollow spaces.
And in the center, standing tall and still, the figure—the same stag-headed form—but no longer etched in stone. It breathed. It turned. It looked at him. And its eyes… they were his own
Kemal's breath caught as he stumbled back from the desk. He blinked hard, and the vision vanished as quickly as it had come, leaving only the sound of his own heartbeat and the cold object still resting in his hand.
He set the disc down, stood quickly, and backed away. The image lingered, the sky burned into his mind like a fevered dream. He needed something to anchor him—anything. Water.
He shuffled toward the kitchen, the sound of his footsteps too loud in the still house. The splash of water into the glass broke the silence, grounding him. He drank too fast; the cold cut his throat, but at least it was real. Tangible.
By the time he returned to his room, the stone hadn't moved. The figures were once again turned toward each other, their postures undisturbed, their mystery sealed. As if nothing had happened.Or perhaps everything had happened—and only to him.
Exhaustion. Stress.Loneliness.These things could twist a man's mind. Couldn't they?
He sat back down and picked up the disc, this time avoiding the figures and focusing instead on the outer markings. With slow, deliberate care, he began copying each symbol into his notebook, eyes scanning every curve, every groove. When he finished, he set the pen aside and sat in silence, staring down at the stone as if waiting for it to blink.
Finally, he reached for his phone. For a long moment, he simply stared at the screen, the cursor blinking like a heartbeat in his hand. Then he typed:
"If you're free tomorrow, can we meet?There are some new things I need to talk about."
He hit send. Set the phone down. And waited— not for a reply, but for the weight of what he had to say to stop pressing down on his chest.