The sun was already low in the sky when Zainab found the box.
She had only gone into the attic to escape the noise downstairs — her cousins arguing over TV remotes, the heat pressing against the windows like wet cloth, and the ever-present hum of the generator. But once she climbed the wooden ladder and shut the hatch behind her, the silence swallowed her whole.
The attic in her grandfather's old house was dusty, forgotten, and full of stories.
She sneezed once, twice, then stood still. Something was glowing faintly in the corner.
It was a chest. Not cardboard. Not plastic. But real wood, cracked and old, with black iron hinges and something that looked like a faded snake symbol etched into the lid. Around it were old newspapers from the 1960s, a half-broken gramophone, and a photo album with black-and-white portraits of people who looked oddly serious.
Zainab, who never met a mystery she didn't want to solve, crouched beside the chest.
It was locked.Not with a padlock, but with a puzzle — a mechanical dial with seven rotating rings, each marked with letters from ancient scripts she didn't recognize. At the center: a smooth black stone, like obsidian, cold to the touch.
She pulled out her phone, snapped a photo, then sat cross-legged. Her fingers moved almost instinctively, twisting the rings. She noticed that when the sun hit the obsidian stone just right, the letters cast long shadows onto the lid, forming something like a sentence. It looked like a riddle.
"Where memory burns, the path begins. Speak the name lost in flame."
She frowned. Then smiled.
"Grandpa always said his sister disappeared in the fire... what was her name again?" she whispered.
And then she remembered — "Amina."
The moment she whispered the name, the black stone gave a soft click. The chest sprang open.
Inside, lying on dark velvet cloth, was a rolled parchment. Smooth. Heavy. Strange.She unrolled it slowly — and gasped.
It was a map.
Not of any place she had ever seen — the land had rivers shaped like coiled serpents, forests that shimmered with tiny golden ink, and symbols that shifted when she blinked. But in the center was the clearest thing of all: a mark shaped like a teardrop, made of obsidian ink, pulsing faintly as if alive.
And under it, in bold, looping script:
"The first key lies where shadows sleep — the city that never forgets."
Zainab didn't know what any of it meant.
But something inside her stirred. Something old. Something hungry. Something magical.
And she knew one thing for sure:This wasn't just a map. It was a quest.