I heard light footsteps behind me, so I quickly shoved the bracelet into my pocket, as if merely touching it here would be suspicious.
"Oh… curiosity got the better of you too, didn't it?"
It was Layla, my cousin's daughter, a year younger than me, standing behind me with eyes wide in astonishment.
"Look how neat this place is… but why didn't they let us in when we were kids? Were they hiding something from us?"
I gave a faint smile and murmured, almost quietly:
"I… I don't really know."
She stared at me for a moment, then asked:
"Really… don't you wonder too?"
I shook my head.
"No… it's just an ordinary place."
"Kareem… Layla!"
My grandmother's voice called from afar, forcing us out of the room and into the silent night of the courtyard.
Later, under the pitch-dark sky and biting cold, I leaned back on a wooden chair inside the house, my eyes half-closed, when I began to see something that defied description—not people in the usual sense, but they… were there. Humanoid figures, moving slowly, spectral forms approaching me, while I was frozen, unable to move, as if my body had turned to stone.
One of them came closer. Her beauty was so pure that it brought a strange comfort for the first time in minutes. She whispered softly near my ear:
"Can you help me?"
Without thinking, without fully understanding, I answered:
"Yes…"
Suddenly, I felt my legs moving on their own, following her as if some invisible force guided me. We reached a distant cave, deep but not frightening—there was something familiar about it despite the darkness.
She whispered again:
"Take this bracelet… it will lead you to me, Kareem."
I couldn't speak. A suffocating sensation gripped me, as if the air itself had vanished. Everything turned dark… a heavy silence, and then I woke up. It was just a dream—but even so, I was drenched in sweat, my heart pounding as if I had run a mile without moving.
Dawn had broken, faint light slipping through the windows, but I could not return to sleep. Everything from the dream haunted me… the strange figures, the whispering voice asking for help, and that mysterious feeling when I held the bracelet.
I sat on the chair, holding the bracelet in my hand, feeling a coldness that was not merely metallic—it was like the pulse of life, something inside it watching me and whispering my name in a voice only my heart could hear.
I lifted the bracelet before my eyes. The black stone at its center glimmered faintly, as if something were urging me to move, to discover what I still did not understand.
And I kept wondering… who were those figures? Were they merely phantoms of a dream, or were they real? Who was that woman who knew my name, and how did she know about the bracelet?