Chapter 176
"And one more thing," Nirma continued. Her voice suddenly became firmer, more instructive, like a teacher giving guidance to a student before a final exam, or an older sibling reminding their younger sibling not to forget their keys before leaving home.
"The way to use this necklace is simple: you just need to shake it once... and twice. Not three times, not four—once and twice, with a pause that is neither too short nor too long, like a calm heartbeat, like an unhurried breath."
Hearing that, Ashita raised an eyebrow.
Not because she was dismissive, but because the instruction sounded far too simple for an object that originated from the era of World War I, far too simple for a necklace whose surface bore delicate scratches that seemed less like decoration and more like a map, or perhaps a message, or perhaps merely the scribbles of a woman who had waited so long that her fingers began to tremble every time she touched the same piece of metal that now rested in Ashita's palm.
"Once and twice?" Ashita repeated, her eyes fixed on the pendant in her hand with an expression she could not hide—a mixture of curiosity and disbelief.
As someone trained to recognize patterns, analyze mechanisms, and unravel every mystery through logic and data, she could not understand how a simple necklace could function merely by being shaken, as though it were not a historical artifact but a child's toy that required no complicated instructions.
"What happens after I shake it once and twice?"
Nirma did not answer.
She simply smiled again, though this smile was different. It reached the corner of her left eye, a smile that suggested she herself did not know exactly what would happen, that she had never tried it, that she had only received the necklace from someone who had never tried it either, and that faith, sometimes, did not require proof in order to move forward.
"You'll find out when you do it," she replied, her voice soft yet firm, firm like a decision that no longer needed to be questioned. "Or perhaps you won't find out at all, and that's fine too. Because some objects, Ashita, were never created to be understood—they were created to keep us company, to be held during moments when words are no longer enough, to give us a reason to remain standing even when our legs feel ready to collapse."
Tegar, who had remained silent beside Ashita the entire time, unconsciously let out a long breath when he heard Nirma's final words.
It was not the sigh of exhaustion, but the sigh of someone who had just realized he had misunderstood a person all along, that Nirma—whom he had always regarded as a cold fugitive concerned only with her mission—possessed a depth he had never imagined, a depth like a well that never ran dry despite years without rain.
"We have to go," he said. His voice was gentle in a way he had never shown anyone before, gentle like someone saying farewell to something they knew they would never see again. "But we'll take care of this necklace, Nirma. I don't know what awaits us in Jerusalem—whether we'll find clues about Sinta, whether we'll find the missing apostles, or whether we'll discover something we never expected—but at the very least, we won't be leaving empty-handed."
Ashita nodded.
As she slipped the necklace into the pocket hidden beneath her robe—slowly and carefully, like someone placing a piece of glass in the safest possible place because they knew that, despite its fragility, it might be the only thing capable of reflecting light into a place long shrouded in darkness—she looked at Nirma one final time before the portal's light began pulling her forward.
Pulling her toward Jerusalem.
Toward the year 33 AD.
Toward the days when history itself would change if no one was brave enough to stand in between.
"Once and twice," Ashita whispered, repeating Nirma's instructions like a mantra, like a prayer spoken without knowing who it was meant for, yet spoken nonetheless because speaking it felt better than remaining silent.
"I won't forget."
The portal light surrounding Nirma and Arya did not fade as portals usually did.
Instead, it shrank, like a cloth being pulled inward from all four corners at once, contracting into an ever-smaller point until nothing remained but a faint hiss that was quickly swallowed by the wind of Medina blowing through the date palm fronds.
Ashita stood motionless for several seconds, her eyes still fixed on the empty space where the two agents of the Temporal Cross-Police had been standing only moments before.
And within her chest, something stirred in a way she could not name.
Not sadness.
Not relief.
But a strange feeling, like finishing the final chapter of a book and not knowing whether to close the cover or start reading again from the first page.
"They're gone," Tegar said in a flat voice.
Yet beneath that flatness lingered something deeper, something that could perhaps be called respect—a respect he had never expected to feel toward a fugitive.
"Now it's our turn."
Ashita nodded.
Her hand slipped into the pocket beneath her robe, feeling the rough surface of the cast-iron necklace that still carried that peculiar coldness—cold like well water in the middle of the night.
Yet beneath that coldness, there was a pulse.
A pulse that could not possibly belong to dead metal.
A pulse like a tiny heart beating in her palm.
The second portal opened differently from Nirma's portal—slower, noisier, its light not golden but silver, like ripples spreading across a lake after a stone had been thrown into it by an impatient hand.
Tegar stepped through first, his silhouette disappearing into the vortex of time leading to Jerusalem in 33 AD.
Ashita was about to follow when a sudden urge—an urge that came not from outside but from within, from the curiosity that had been teasing the edges of her nerves ever since the necklace first touched her palm—caused her feet to stop at the threshold.
"Once and twice," she whispered, repeating Nirma's instructions like a child reciting the route home after being lost for a very long time.
She gripped the necklace tightly, feeling the delicate scratches on the iron surface that, a century ago, had been touched by the fingers of a woman waiting at a harbor.
Then, with a motion neither too fast nor too slow—like a calm heartbeat, like an unhurried breath—she shook it once...
And twice.
To be continued…