Zahra ran—her short, steady legs propelling her through the oppressive darkness.
Her hospital gown offered little protection against the chill. She stumbled but quickly regained her balance.
"Is the darkness working with you?" she whispered, her voice barely audible, almost swallowed by the suffocating silence.
A Staff launched out from the gloom, aiming to strike. A long, twisted shaft of dark wood or bone, seemingly moving of its own accord.
She twisted aside, narrowly dodging, her breath shallow. Her fingers closed around the worn ring on her finger, gripping it tightly.
Behind her, the eye began to speak—its voice a guttural murmur echoing both inside her head and the heavy air around her, yet layered with faint, discordant whispers that seemed to come from multiple points in the darkness around the main gaze.
"Don't run now. I mean it when I say I haven't moved in over two thousand years."
Zahra let out a breathless, unamused laugh. "I couldn't care less."
She pressed forward, her hospital gown whipping around her legs, pulling and clinging with each step. Every motion felt like a struggle.
She longed for the freedom of the 47th star, where water kissed her feet and creatures watched her sprint across liquid plains with fondness. Here, the world resisted her every move.
The darkness rippled again. This time, the movement seemed to originate not just from the central eye, but from slightly above and below it, like disturbed fabric. She sidestepped, just avoiding another strike.
"Hey, you overgrown eyeball!" she shouted, her voice slicing through the quiet. Her heart pounded, each beat a declaration of her will to resist.
A low growl rumbled, and the hooded darkness around the eye seemed to shift, like a heavy cloak settling.
For a fraction of a second, as it shifted, Zahra caught the faintest gleam – not gold, not silver, but a deep, unsettling violet – from somewhere beneath the hood, near where a cheek might be. It vanished instantly.
"There's multiple eyes under a cloak?" She gasped inwardly.
"What is it... girl?" it asked, the words low and rumbling, thick with contempt and age.
"You still haven't answered my third riddle!" Zahra called, dodging a few staff hits as she darted sideways.
"I was taken by a head of department before you could answer—remember? It was a woman. The beautiful one."
She threw the words like a taunt, a smirk forming as the eye hesitated, clearly caught off guard.
A low, reluctant growl escaped it. "You are correct."
"So here's the deal: if you can't answer, I'll ask again—but only up to three times. Fair game?"
Despite her breathlessness, her voice took on a bright, almost playful tone, teasing him with youthful confidence.
"That's absurd," the eye rumbled, clearly agitated.
"You'd think an all-seeing, three-thousand-year-old eye could solve a riddle from a sixteen-year-old girl," she teased, still weaving through shadows.
"But I guess sight doesn't mean understanding, does it?"
The irritation in its voice softened into curiosity. The words had struck a nerve.
"A mere attempt to provoke... but then again—"
"Your ego won't let you back down, will it?" she interrupted, smirking. Her challenge was clear, even as she moved.
A heavy sigh followed. "You're a bothersome pest." But beneath the frustration, something shifted—eager, almost hungry.
"Fine. Ask away."
Zahra stopped, allowing herself a breath. She dropped to the dark, shadow-laced ground, inhaling deeply. There was a strange thrill in knowing she held power over something ancient with nothing but words.
"Alright." She looked up, meeting the eye's massive gaze. Her voice softened, but each word was sharp.
"Here's the first one."
She delivered it slowly, deliberately:
"Before your first four hundred years,
You watched me dance in future's breath.
Yet in your thousandth viewing glass,
I died before your age could pass.
Though never born and always slain,
Tomorrow's death was yesterday's gain.
In cycles seven, thrice denied,
I am the truth for which you lied.
What am I?"
The eye's iris expanded, focusing intently. It flickered with something—fear? Confusion?
It finally answered, strained: "You speak of... Time itself. I have watched it flow like rivers through the ages. Time that dances, dies, and is reborn."
Zahra shook her head. A wry smile formed.
"Wrong. It's prophecy—changed by the act of witnessing."
The staff lashed out sideways in pure agitation, not aimed at her, but striking the void.
As it swung, the heavy fabric of the hood fluttered violently. For a terrifying instant, the faint light from Zahra's eyes caught the underside of the hood,
illuminating a cluster of smaller eyes – a dozen or more, each a different, faintly glowing, iridescent hue: sickly yellow, bruised purple, void black – packed tightly together like malignant grapes before the cloak settled back into obscuring shadow.
"Next." Her voice was steady, unyielding. The eye was stumbling over riddles like a child.
Without pause, she launched into the second:
"I devour myself to birth my heir,
Each death makes my lineage rare.
My first was your last, my last your first.
Of all your eyes, I am the worst.
When upward gazed, I flow reverse.
When downward cast, I lift the curse.
The more you see, the less I show.
What mortals flee, I make you know.
What am I?"
The eye responded quickly, but uncertainty trembled in its voice.
"This must be Memory—how it consumes itself to create new remembrances. I have seen millions of memories born and die."
Zahra's smile deepened. Triumph lit her eyes.
"Wrong again. It's reflection—a truth distorted by your perception."
The eye recoiled, pupils contracting. It couldn't fathom being bested. Centuries of knowledge slipped from its grasp.
Silence swelled—thick with the eye's humiliation, and Zahra's unshakable poise.
She began the final riddle:
"I am the space between your blinks,
The void where wisdom sinks.
A thousand eyes could never see
The nothing that makes me.
Each truth you've gathered through the years
Dissolves when I appear.
The more you try to hold my face,
The less I leave a trace.
Yet I alone can set you free
From immortality.
What am I?"
A pause. Then the eye responded, wavering:
"This riddle speaks of Death—the one thing my eternal sight cannot fully penetrate. The being that ends all stories."
Zahra's eyes widened for a moment, then she laughed quietly, shaking her head.
"You really don't understand yourself, do you? It's the unknowable—the limit to what you can comprehend."
The eye pulsed with rage. Red lines cracked across its pupil.
"How dare you..."
Zahra lay back, gaze steady.
"Oh, eye... You speak with the experience of millennia, but each answer shows the same flaw: you think watching is understanding. But you've seen too much to see clearly."
The central gaze lost focus for a split second, drifting slightly. In that moment, another faint gleam – a cold, depthless blue this time – flickered briefly from above the central eye, near the hood's peak, before being swallowed by shadow.
"You were given endless sight, but no eyelids to close. No way to reflect. That's why you fail these riddles—because you can't solve yourself."
Her voice softened, almost gentle.
"You, who watched the years pass like grains of salt... did it never occur to you why they gave you eyes, but no mouth? These riddles aren't meant to be spoken. They're meant to be lived, felt, understood. But that would require stillness. Silence."
She paused, eyes fixed on the trembling behemoth.
"Shush now, won't you?"
The eye roared in fury, rushing toward her. Darkness tore apart like a storm.
But Zahra remained still, a quiet smile on her lips—like she knew something it never could.
"UP!" she screamed.
A searing beam of pure white light engulfed her, blinding after the endless dark.
In that brilliant flash, she had one last glimpse: The massive hooded figure recoiling violently, the entire cloak flapping as if burned, the constellation of iridescent eyes beneath it screwing shut or turning away from the painful radiance.
Then, the light consumed her.
The void she left behind grew still. The eye hovered, silent, the shadows retreating as it contemplated—perhaps for the first time in three thousand years—that seeing was not the same as knowing.
And by the time it understood... she was long gone.