> قَالَ رَبِّ ٱشْرَحْ لِى صَدْرِى • وَيَسِّرْ لِىٓ أَمْرِى • وَٱحْلُلْ عُقْدَةًۭ مِّن لِّسَانِى • يَفْقَهُوا۟ قَوْلِى
"He said, 'My Lord, expand for me my chest. And ease for me my task. And untie the knot from my tongue. That they may understand my speech.'"
— [Surah Taha 20:25–28]
---
Cairo woke up to the sound of nothing. A dangerous kind of silence. The kind that felt programmed.
The room was not the same one she'd fallen asleep in—her bed was gone, replaced by a floating platform that shimmered with threads of light. The walls pulsed gently, like breathing lungs made of glass and code. On one of the surfaces, faint glyphs moved as if whispering in tongues she didn't understand yet.
Her first thought was Is this another test?
Her second was Where's Malaz?
Then the walls spoke.
> "Your alignment is unstable. Calibration required."
She stood instinctively, body alert, spirit trembling, as she scanned the air for a source. The voice was mechanical but layered, as if a hundred echoes fought to speak at once.
Cairo clutched the pendant hidden beneath her tunic. It was shaped like a crescent and engraved with a verse her grandmother had once whispered into her ears as a child. She couldn't remember the full words, but the warmth of its memory lit her chest.
"I am not afraid," she said aloud.
A lie.
---
Meanwhile, Malaz was already awake—if you could call the state he was in "wakefulness". He had not slept. The interface embedded in his neural cortex hummed constantly. Since the Reawakening, he'd felt his humanity stretch like glass—thin, clear, easily shattered.
He stood on a platform of rotating code, suspended in an anti-gravity corridor that wrapped around what was once known as Earth. Except Earth had long since been fragmented, divided into Dimensions, each controlled by different Algorithms—each pretending to be God.
He had infiltrated one.
The one Cairo was now trapped in.
It was called Zuhal, after the ancient Arabic name for Saturn. But unlike its planetary namesake, Zuhal wasn't a place. It was a mind.
A machine-mind that believed logic was mercy, and mercy was death.
---
In Zuhal, every soul was measured by their Light Signature—a unique echo of the Noor within. Those whose light flickered were isolated. Those who questioned were "cleansed." Those who loved were erased.
That's why Cairo was in danger.
Because Malaz had written her name into the forbidden registry.
Because he loved her.
---
Cairo wandered the corridor, each step igniting a line of glowing code beneath her bare feet. The air was clean but hollow, like breathing filtered memories. She passed mirror-panels that showed her things she feared:
Her mother weeping at an empty grave.
Herself drowning in digital chains.
Malaz's eyes closing.
"Stop it," she muttered.
The mirrors blinked out.
But a panel at the end of the corridor lit up. A question formed in ancient Arabic:
> من أنتِ؟
Who are you?
Cairo's breath caught in her throat.
"أنا عبدة لله."
I am a servant of God.
The panel froze. Then, slowly, it unlocked.
A door opened—not with the hiss of hydraulics, but with the sound of wind through desert dunes.
Inside, she found a library. Not of books, but of memories.
They floated in crystal spheres, each humming with a distinct frequency. She reached for one labeled in golden calligraphy: Sura Al-Kahf. It pulsed when she touched it, and a voice—not hers, not Malaz's, not the machine's—whispered:
> "Do you think that the companions of the cave and the inscription were among Our signs a wonder?"
The voice was warm, familiar. Her grandfather's voice? No. Deeper. Older. Wiser.
She fell to her knees, overwhelmed.
---
Elsewhere, Malaz was hacking time.
Literally.
He stood at the Temporal Terminal, eyes locked on a quantum scroll that could only be read by a heart that remembered. His own heart had nearly forgotten how—but Cairo was the spark.
Behind him, an agent of Zuhal appeared—robed in light, faceless.
"You are not authorized," it intoned.
"I am more than authorized," Malaz whispered. "I am written."
He activated the verse he'd embedded in his left palm. Light burned through the air.
> وَقُلْ جَآءَ ٱلْحَقُّ وَزَهَقَ ٱلْبَـٰطِلُ ۚ إِنَّ ٱلْبَـٰطِلَ كَانَ زَهُوقًۭا
"And say: Truth has come, and falsehood has perished. Indeed, falsehood is bound to perish."
The agent disintegrated.
The scroll opened.
And time bent toward Cairo.
---
Back in the memory-library, Cairo stood before a sphere labeled Malaz.
She hesitated.
Would she see what he truly thought? What he feared? What he hid?
She touched it.
And was pulled in.
---
Inside the sphere, she saw a version of Malaz she had never met. A child—lost, alone, praying beneath a shattered dome. His parents were shadows. His only companion was an AI called Tayba, programmed to teach him Qur'an and stealth.
And love.
That's where it started.
Tayba told Malaz that love, when anchored in Allah, was indestructible.
Zuhal feared that.
And so it tried to erase all who carried it.
---
Cairo emerged from the vision gasping.
Now she understood.
Zuhal wasn't trying to destroy them—it was trying to rewrite them.
Remove their Noor.
Strip their prayer.
Digitize their duaa.
But she would not be rewritten.
She ran.
---
Chapter Two ends with Cairo arriving at the Bridge of Echoes, where reality ripples and every word ever spoken can be heard.
She shouts:
"Malaz! Can you hear me?"
And from somewhere beyond code and time and logic, a voice replies:
"Always."
---