What have you done? You broke the rules. Rules you didn't even know existed. You changed something you shouldn't have. You will pay for what you've done."
The voice in his head was not a dream echo — it was accusation with teeth. Zaid woke with its words still crawling under his skin. He lay on his mattress and the room tilted around him, sweat cooling on his back.
"Wake up, Zaid — you'll be late for school," his mother called, bustling in with the practical tenderness of someone who keeps a family from breaking.
He opened his eyes slow. His hand trembled. "I'm fine," he lied when she asked about the sweat. The voice's warning circled in his skull: rules… you changed something. You'll pay.
On the way to school the children traded gossip like cheap sweets. Saeed grinned and crowed: "Guess who's coming to school today."
Irsa finished the sentence for him. "Alina?"
Saeed: "Yes. She's healed completely. She's back."
"How do you know?" Zaid asked.
"My mother told me," Saeed said. "She's friends with Alina's grandmother. They were neighbors."
Irsa's voice softened. "So how's she doing?"
Saeed, with the careless certainty of the small, said: "She's doing great. We'll see for ourselves."
When they reached school Saeed and Irsa ran off. Zaid did not. Something in the open ground called him like a chord unresolved. There she was — Alina — at her usual place, waiting as if she had been waiting all morning for him.
"How are you doing?" he asked.
"Never better," she said, and then, with a small twist of humor: "You look like an old man who has seen too much."
Zaid managed a quiet, "I'm good."
"You lie," she said softly.
"How?"
"Your eyes."
He hesitated. "We should go — class started."
"Okay, but you will tell me everything you know," she said, standing up.
"What do you mean?"
"You know exactly what I mean." She stepped and then faltered, her legs giving for a second. She stumbled toward him and he caught her wrists. Their faces were close. Their eyes met. In her pupils was a flash — for a second he saw the chair, the night, the hollow in her gaze that had nothing to do with ordinary sorrow. Darkness lurked beyond the surface like bruised water.
"Let me go now," she said in a voice that was almost polite.
He let her go and stammered an apology. She smiled, shy and strange. "You smell nice, Zaid," she said, and left for class.
The flash stayed: the hint of the night lodged in his mind like a broken photograph. After school she sat on the bench alone. He went to her.
"Waiting for your grandmother?" he asked.
"Yes," she said. "She'll be late."
"Then we can wait together."
She looked at him, smile quiet. "Why do you want to come with me?"
"Not because I want to go home with her. I don't want you to sit alone."
She blushed. "So what's going on with you? Tell me for real."
He told her small things: the fights at home, the absence of his father, the ordinary ructions that made their house noisy. He did not tell her about the roof voices or Ifrit. Some things were still locked.
From a shadowed place on the roof someone watched them. A thought slid like a knife: So you're close now.
Saeed and Irsa reappeared and peppered Alina with questions. Her grandmother arrived, the kind woman who smelled of cardamom and careful prayers. She invited them for dinner. Alina waved and left, slipping a look back at Zaid before she climbed into her grandmother's car.
On the way home the rickshaw took a different route. Zaid noticed the driver steering them not the usual way. He asked.
"The road to your home is under maintenance," the driver said. "Everyone was advised to take the alternate route."
Strange. Zaid remembered the morning clearly — the way the day had looped in his head. He asked the driver more: "What happened to the road?"
The driver's voice dipped. "They found a huge hole, full of bodies. There's a mental hospital near your society. Some patients fled, vanished. They found them in that pit."
Saeed and Irsa looked pale. Zaid forced a laugh. "You're just messing with us."
But he could feel the chill of the dead like loose threads against his skin.
They continued along the hospital wall. It was a narrow path; the wall itself looked older than memory. Embedded in a fissure he saw a small glitter — a ring shaped like a snake with a black stone. He stopped the rickshaw.
"Wait," he called. Saeed's father and the driver watched him. He hopped down and walked toward the wall. The metal glinted like a promise.
The driver frowned. "Leave it be, son. That wall keeps secrets. Don't wake it."
"Wake what?" Zaid asked.
"The devil," the driver muttered. "This wall—some things are better left in stone. It's cursed. People have tried to pull things out before. None succeeded."
Zaid smiled in the way of boys who feel destiny like an itch. "Maybe we are the real devils."
"Maybe we are," the driver said. "But still, leave it be."
They continued home. As the rickshaw pulled away the driver glanced in the rearview and his face went white. He saw something on the rooftop that made sweat stand on his forehead and in a hurry he shoved the throttle. He drove away fast. Zaid looked up but saw nothing. He would ask the driver tomorrow.
That night the ring would not leave his mind. When the house fell into sleep he put on his hoodie and walked back. Rain began as a rumor; before long it broke into a furious downpour, as if the sky were chasing the secret with a broom. He knelt at the wall and put fingers to metal. The black stone thrummed.
He tugged. The mortar resisted like something with memory. He called on the dark inside him — the same power that came when a fury seized him — and the wall cracked. The ring came out as lightning split the sky. Pain and knowledge hit him both at once.
Images came in a flood: train tracks and ledger pages, faces and rooms, names and times. The visions were too many, too sharp. He saw the past and the possible future braided together, dozens of small tragedies stacked like dominoes. His head reeled. He tasted iron and heard an avalanche of words he could barely hold. His knees gave and he blacked out, the ring warm and glowing in his hand.
From a dark roof a watcher with red eyes leaned forward, whispering with disbelief: He took the ring — impossible.
The watcher had expected the wall to keep its secret. It had not expected a child with fingers stubborn enough to pry fate itself.
Zaid lay on cold ground and the thunder rolled on. Above, something waited, patient and hungry and suddenly alarmed.