Chapter 152
Nirma did not respond immediately, nor did she nod or shake her head, because within her mind, in the space she had long used to store all the information she had gathered from year to year, from century to century, from one civilization that fell to another that rose upon its ruins, two images began to form, two images that were equally convincing, equally possible, equally impossible to dismiss with arguments strong enough to erase one of them from the increasingly crowded map in her mind.
The Abbasid Caliphate collapsing with its libraries burned, its knowledge lost, its civilization shattered into fragments under the assault of Mongol forces who had never read a single book in their lives, and on the other hand, the era of Umar ibn Khattab who chose not to record hadith, who chose to let memory become the sole guardian of words that were meant to guide millions of people afterward, who chose to take the risk that generations who had never heard the Prophet's voice would accept something not originating from him as unquestionable truth.
Two eras that were equally crucial, two eras that were equally fragile, two eras that could equally become the perfect stage for something that sought to alter the course of everything without needing to raise a sword, fire a bullet, or do anything visible to eyes that only perceive the surface.
And when Arya, seeing that Nirma had sunk too deeply into her thoughts to be pulled out by just one or two sentences, decided to speak again, this time with a different tone, a tone like someone posing a question he had long kept within his chest, a question he may not have dared to voice since the first time he read the report about the message in the sky above Jerusalem, the voice that came from his mouth brought Nirma out of her reverie in a way she did not expect.
"Regarding a crucial period in Christianity, what if," Arya asked, and within his eyes, those irises that were never truly black nor truly brown, something stirred, something like a curiosity he could no longer suppress, "this Abnormal appeared when Martin Luther began translating the Bible into German, and in England, William Tyndale did the same into English, precisely in the sixteenth century, when the Christian world was splitting into two factions accusing each other of deviating from the true teachings, when words that had once only been accessible to those who understood Latin suddenly became readable to farmers who had never even sat in a classroom, when every person who could read began to dare interpret for themselves what God wished to convey without the mediation of priests or popes or councils that claimed they alone had the right to speak on behalf of the divine. Would that not be an extremely fragile time? Would it not be when a holy scripture that had long been an unshakable foundation suddenly became something fluid, something that could be reinterpreted by each individual in different ways, something that no longer held a single voice but thousands of conflicting voices, would it not be at such a moment that someone seeking to twist meaning would find the most fertile ground to plant their seeds?"
Nirma heard the question, heard it with ears that never ceased to function even when her body rested, heard it with the awareness that what Arya had just said was something she had also once thought about, once considered, once placed on her mental map as a possibility she could not simply ignore.
But after a silence that was neither too long nor too brief, a silence like air drawn into the lungs and held there because it was not yet ready to be released, Nirma shook her head, firmly, a motion born from certainty that did not need to be questioned, a motion that made Arya, who was still waiting with unblinking eyes, release a breath he did not realize he had been holding.
"That era is too calm," Nirma said, her voice leaving no room for further debate, "too calm for something that dares to write its name across the sky of Jerusalem in letters made of light that have no name, too calm for something that dares to twist five sacred verses from five different religions with a boldness that defies the logic we understand, too calm for something that claims time is its own, that life and death are its own, that the mandate of heaven belongs to it. Martin Luther and William Tyndale, the translation of the Bible into German and English, the Protestant Reformation that split the Catholic Church into two opposing factions, all of that is important, all of that changed the course of Christian history in a way that no one can reverse, but all of that unfolded over a long span of time, in a process measured not in days or months but in decades, in events that do not have a single point where everything can change with one precise intervention. And the message from this Abnormal, Arya, the message written with five twisted verses from five holy scriptures, the message left in the sky above Jerusalem on a day when blood flowed through the streets up to the ankles, the message that came from an entity unafraid to declare that it is time, that it is the mover, that it holds the mandate of heaven, that message is not the message of something that wishes to move in silence and calm. That message is a scream, a declaration, a challenge thrown into the face of the Temporal Cross-Police and into the face of anyone who dares claim that time can be controlled by rules and procedures and weapons forged in factories that never sleep. This entity, whatever its name, wherever it comes from, whatever its purpose, seeks to create chaos, Arya, not merely to alter one or two events in history, but to shake the very foundations of two great religions that have become home to billions across the timeline, and it will choose the most chaotic era, the bloodiest era, the most fear-filled era, an era where no one notices what moves behind the scenes because everyone is too busy trying to survive, an era like the Battle of Uhud where the Muslims nearly perished, an era like the Crusades where Jerusalem drowned in blood, an era like when the Abbasid Caliphate collapsed under the assault of Mongol forces who had never read a single book, an era like when Umar ibn Khattab decided that hadith did not need to be written. Those eras, Arya, those are the stages for something that seeks to rewrite history with its own hands."
To be continued…