The sound of the doorbell cut through the silence of the room like a dissonant note.Lior lifted his eyes from the laptop screen, where the open tabs showed a jumble of articles and conspiracy forums about disappearances and strange phenomena.Arion, sitting on the floor with his guitar set aside, remained still for a moment.
Lior glanced at the cardboard box on the table as if it might bite."It came this morning," he said, breaking the silence. "Liana sent it by express delivery."
Arion nodded slowly. The phone call from three days earlier echoed in his mind. Liana had always been the calm link in the group, the one who laughed at the fights between him and Seraya. Now, in the rare moments when they saw each other, even from afar, he could see the disappointment in her eyes.
He opened the box carefully. Inside, wrapped in brown paper, was Seraya's notebook.
It was smaller than he remembered the fabric cover faded, the red string holding the pages together, and a small blue stain near the bottom edge, a remnant of ink she had once spilled on a rainy afternoon.Arion ran his finger over the stain, as if expecting to feel her touch there.
Lior took a deep breath."Are you going to open it?"
Arion hesitated. He was afraid that once the notebook was open, the little balance he still had would unravel. But when he pulled the string and the pages spread open, the air in the room seemed to change.
At first, it was like remembering a time when everything still made sense.
The first pages were a festival of colors, soft smudges of green, pink, and gold, outlines of faces that seemed to smile from the paper, scattered words, verses, memories, little phrases that sounded like promises.
"Lights are songs the world sings to those who listen," one note read.
Arion recognized the light, dancing handwriting and felt his chest tighten. That was Seraya before things changed, the Seraya who painted with stained fingers and laughed when the paint ran down the floor.
But even before she disappeared, she had already changed. He never found out why. Sometimes he felt he had failed her. Four months before she vanished, he noticed the differences, the long silences, the distant gaze but he had been too busy with his career. Success was beginning to bloom, and worrying about Seraya had always been something he postponed.
Then came the torn pages.
There were pieces missing, edges ripped hastily. The gaps in the paper looked like open wounds, as if someone, perhaps Seraya herself had tried to erase something.
On one of the cut pages, only a fragment of a sentence remained:
"There is no more color… shadow."
Lior leaned closer, examining the tears."She… Seraya did this?" he murmured. "Since she was little, she never tore a page. Even when a painting didn't turn out right, she kept them all."
Arion didn't answer. He turned another page.
And what came next didn't look like the same notebook anymore.
The bright colors were gone. The paper was darkened, as if a shadow had passed over it and stayed.Golden lines streaked the black background, forming illogical patterns, circular symbols, sentences in languages he didn't recognize. In some sections, the words were written over themselves, layering meaning upon meaning like echoes.
The gold sees what eyes cannot bear.All that is beautiful bleeds before it exists.
Arion felt his stomach twist. It wasn't just what was written it was how the paper seemed to breathe, how the words felt heavy, as if the notebook were absorbing the air around it.
Lior ran a hand over his face."She… painted this?"
"I don't know," Arion said, his voice hoarse. "Seraya changed in the four months before she disappeared."
Lior looked at him bitterly."I thought you hadn't noticed. You were too busy with your career back then."
Arion remained silent. As he flipped through the pages, scattered images filled his mind, the mural in Marais, the strange lights, the people with empty eyes, the dog that hesitated in the middle of the street.
It all seemed to fit.
He stood and went to the window.
The sunset tinged the buildings with a copper hue. The gold spread across the façades like slow-moving paint, and for a moment, Arion had the feeling that the world was breathing in rhythm with the notebook a painting beginning to move.
But when he blinked, the city was just a city again.
Lior was still sitting, staring at the pages."You know what this looks like?" he asked. "As if she was trying to say something. I remember how we were all so busy back then… Little Seraya only had the pages of a notebook to speak through." His voice sounded pained.
Silence fell again, heavy, until the sound of a motorcycle cut through the street below and faded into the distance.
Arion turned another page. At the bottom, written in fine, almost invisible letters, was a phrase:
When the sound stops, follow the gold.
Lior looked up."Does that mean anything to you?"
Arion didn't answer right away. The echo of those words mingled with the last note he remembered playing at the show.
That melody, the one Seraya loved most had ended on a suspended chord, unresolved.As if the music itself were waiting for what came next.
He closed the notebook slowly."I think now… I'm beginning to understand," he said quietly.