The heat broke in the late afternoon, but it did not break gently. It shattered.
The sky, which had been a relentless sheet of white iron for weeks, suddenly bruised purple. Clouds, heavy and swollen like water-skins ready to burst, rolled in from the east, swallowing the sun. The air grew heavy, static-charged, smelling of ozone and wet dust—the scent of the earth opening its mouth to drink.
At the tea stall, the change was instant. The customers, sensing the violence of the coming storm, scattered like ants. Fatima, clutching her shawl, looked at the sky with superstitious dread.
"It will be a deluge," she muttered, packing her coin box. "A real drowning. I'm going home to check the roof. You two close up. Secure the canvas, or the wind will take it to the next city."
She hurried away, leaving Ayon and 'Sara' alone in the gathering gloom.
Ayon moved to the front of the stall. He didn't rush. He watched the clouds roil and twist. To him, the storm felt like a familiar song—chaos seeking order.
"You should go inside," he told Sumayra, his back to her. "The roof in the storage room leaks, but the corner is dry."
Sumayra didn't move. She was wiping the last table, but her eyes were fixed on him.
Since the incident with Bilal Khan, the dynamic had shifted. She was no longer just observing a specimen; she was living alongside a mystery. She had seen his wit, his kindness, and his strange, detached power. But she had never seen him afraid. Or happy. Or angry.
He was a lake without ripples.
Then, the first drop fell.
Splat.
It hit the dust like a bullet. Then another. Then the sky simply opened up.
It wasn't rain; it was a curtain of water. The sound was deafening, a roar of millions of drops hammering against the corrugated tin roof of the stall. The world outside turned into a grey, washing blur. The temperature plummeted.
Ayon stood at the edge of the stall, the spray misting his face. He didn't step back. He leaned into it.
Sumayra walked up behind him. The noise of the rain created a cone of privacy, isolating them from the rest of the universe.
"You will get wet," she shouted over the roar.
Ayon didn't answer. He was staring into the grey abyss of the storm. His face, usually composed in that vacant, peaceful mask, had changed.
The mask was gone.
In its place was a naked, raw expression of yearning. His eyes were wide, reflecting the falling water, but they were looking at something far away. Something lost.
Sumayra felt a strange pull in her chest—a physical tug, like a hook caught in her ribs.
"Ayon?" she asked, stepping closer.
He blinked, as if waking from a dream. He turned to her. For a split second, he didn't seem to recognize her.
"The rain," he whispered. His voice was low, but somehow, it cut through the thunder. "It washes everything clean. But it never washes away the memory."
"What memory?" Sumayra asked.
Ayon looked at his hands. "The ash," he murmured. "When the city burned... the rain came too late. It turned the ash into black mud. We walked in it for days."
Sumayra frowned. What city? What fire? He sounded like a man speaking from a different century.
A shiver ran through him. It was the first physical weakness she had ever seen in him. He wrapped his arms around himself, the cold dampness of the storm finally piercing his unnatural resilience.
Without thinking—driven by an instinct she couldn't name—Sumayra reached out.
She wanted to offer comfort. She wanted to touch his arm, to ground him in the present.
Her fingers brushed the skin of his forearm.
BOOM.
It wasn't thunder.
It was a shockwave that exploded inside her skull.
The moment her skin touched his, the world vanished. The tea stall, the rain, the smell of dust—it was all ripped away.
Sumayra gasped, her body going rigid. She wasn't standing in the stall anymore.
She was drowning.
She was drowning in an ocean of blue, crushing sorrow. It wasn't her sorrow. It was vast, ancient, and heavy enough to crack a planet. She felt a loneliness that stretched back thousands of years—a silence so loud it screamed. She felt the phantom pain of a thousand wounds, the weight of a thousand secrets.
She saw flashes—fragmented, chaotic images searing into her mind:
A pearl shattering.
A sky turning red.
A face... a woman's face... laughing, then screaming.
And beneath it all, a name echoing in the dark: Ilma. Ilma. Ilma.
It was overwhelming. It was a tsunami of emotion crashing into her shielded, royal Jinn heart. She couldn't breathe. The grief was eating her alive.
"STOP!"
She yanked her hand back with a gasp, stumbling backward. She hit the counter, the metal rattling.
The connection severed instantly.
The rain rushed back into her ears. The stall reappeared.
Sumayra stood there, clutching her chest, gasping for air as if she had just surfaced from deep water. Her heart was hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs. Tears—hot, unbidden tears—were streaming down her face.
She looked at Ayan with wide, terrified eyes.
"What..." she choked out. "What are you?"
Ayon was staring at her. He looked equally shaken. He was rubbing his arm where she had touched him, his eyes wide with shock.
He had felt it too.
He had felt her.
For a second, the walls of his fortress had come down. He had felt her confusion, her arrogance, her hidden fear... and a strange, burning light that felt like a star trapped in flesh.
But more than that, he had felt the connection. The snap of a tether falling into place.
Soul Link, the ancient knowledge whispered in his mind. The bond of the fated.
His face went pale. This was dangerous. This was impossible. A Soul Link only happened between equals. Between beings of the same resonance.
She is not just a runaway girl, he realized, the truth hitting him hard. She is something else.
Sumayra was trembling. The residue of his sorrow was still humming in her blood. She felt heavy. She felt sad.
"I felt..." she whispered, her voice trembling. "I felt your pain. It was... it was endless."
She took a step toward him, her fear warring with a sudden, intense compassion. "Who hurt you like that, Ayon? Who did you lose?"
Ayon stepped back. The shutters slammed down over his eyes. The mask of the Clay Doll slammed back into place, harder than before.
"You are tired, Sara," he said, his voice rough. "The storm has frightened you. It was just static. The lightning."
"Do not lie to me!" Sumayra cried, her voice cracking. "That wasn't lightning! I was inside your head! I felt it! I felt... her."
The mention of 'her' made Ayan flinch. His expression hardened into stone.
"You felt nothing," he said, his voice cold, final. "You are imagining things."
He turned away from her, facing the rain again.
"Go to your room," he commanded. "Sleep. We have work tomorrow."
Sumayra stared at his back. She wanted to scream. She wanted to grab him and shake the truth out of him. But the sorrow she had felt... it was too sacred. Too raw. It wasn't something you demanded answers for.
She wiped the tears from her face. Her hand was shaking.
"You are not a simple man," she whispered to his back. "And I am not leaving until I find out why a man made of clay carries an ocean inside him."
She turned and fled into the storage room, slamming the door behind her.
She collapsed onto the mat, pulling her knees to her chest.
She closed her eyes, but the images wouldn't stop. The burning city. The woman's face.
And the realization hit her like a physical blow.
She wasn't just observing him anymore. She was connected to him.
If he bled, she would feel it. If he cried, she would ache.
She was a Princess of the Highborn. She was supposed to be above mortals. But now, she was tethered to a beggar by a bond that defied all the laws of her world.
Outside, Ayan sank onto a crate.
He put his head in his hands. He was shaking.
He hadn't let anyone in for a thousand years. Not truly. He had kept his grief locked in a vault, buried deep beneath the earth.
And this girl—this clumsy, strange girl with the soft hands—had just walked right through the wall.
He touched his chest. His heart was beating fast. Not with fear. But with something he hadn't felt in centuries.
Resonance.
"Who are you, Sara?" he whispered to the rain.
He reached into his pocket and touched the leather book. The prophecy. The picture.
A terrible thought crossed his mind.
Is it possible?
Could the stars be this cruel? Or this kind?
He looked at the closed door of the storage room.
The rain continued to pour, washing the world clean. But inside the tea stall, the lines had been blurred. The boundaries between master and servant, human and Jinn, observer and subject, had been washed away.
They were no longer strangers. They were linked.
And in the distance, far beyond the clouds, a new presence felt the snap of that link.
A shadow moved in the void. A Prince turned his head, his eyes burning with jealousy.
Zayd had found the trail.
The rain would stop by morning. But the storm... the real storm was just beginning.