24991125 | 0322
Al-Alhazred Mosque | EUNESCO Heritage Site 167 | Floodzone Cairo
30°02′48″ N
31°15′48″ E
Cairo laid submerged.
The Al-Alhazred Mosque It laid submerged.
It lay quiet beneath the washed-out glow of emergency lights and distant fires.
The man entered the mosque unchallenged.
The courtyard was empty when he entered.
No Imams greeted him.
No guards stopped him.
No cameras tracked him.
No alarms stirred.
His strides stirred not a ripple upon the water.
He passed beneath the archway.
A displaced silhouette.
A drifting shadow.
A stranger.
He was hooded and cloaked.
A cloak of deep velvet night, heavy and dark, veiled and layered, threaded crimson and black.
It clutched to his shoulders as a second skin, undulating and soaking in the light.
Living shadows that drank the floodlight and starlight.
At his sides, hung twin black swords in glassy sheaths and an ornate harp, its frame carved of ivory and bones.
His eyes lingered upon the tapestry hanging upon the great hall.
His gaze lingered upon the single icon.
He smiled.
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He walked slowly.
Unhurried.
Each step measured and still.
He crossed the submerged hall with barely a whisper.
Barely a ripple.
He crossed into the inner courtyard.
He stopped.
Something lingering.
The stranger crossed to the fountain.
The tinge of ozone.
The echo of the blade.
He knelt beside the fountain.
Where the weapon – a flanged mace - had scored its masonry.
The marble beneath the floodwater still bore faint scars.
Fracture lines spiderwebbing outward.
The impact had once shattered stone and bone alike.
The water had sought to conceal.
But not to him.
Not to someone like him.
He paused then.
Here.
Where two men had stood.
One breathing.
One already half beyond breath.
He tilted his hooded head slightly.
Listening to acoustics audible only to him.
The air lingered.
A trace.
Not pollution.
Not radioactivity.
Not poison.
Something older.
Memories.
A needle threaded through the seams.
It was here.
He turned his head then.
Regarding the columns encircling the courtyard.
A god spear.
A shard of dawn.
An inferno.
There,
He moved again.
Three steps.
Another pause.
Here—where blood had fallen.
A Black Sword
Of twilight and ash.
A lingering presence.
A memory.
The world remembers its wound.
The dark whispered its name.
Twilight.
The courtyard stirred around him, ghost-echoes unfolding like faded film.
He could see it.
Its edges.
A blade catching light.
A man shouting in fury and faith.
Another answering with silence and precision.
Metal singing.
Stone breaking.
Belief colliding with inevitability.
Faith and steel.
He smiled.
Acknowledgment.
Further along, he stopped beside a low stone bench.
Crumbs remained in the cracks.
Cold tea rings still stained the surface.
Here, men had broken bread together.
Removed helmets.
Shared rations.
Spoken quietly of nothing and everything.
The stranger lingered there longer.
The residue was faint.
Human.
Ephemeral.
He turned.
Slowly.
This was where the weapon had been unveiled.
Drawn from its sheath, unveiled from its shroud.
The stranger smiled.
At long last.
They were here.
They dwelt here.
Their scent, palpable.
Their Imprint.
Burned into reality itself.
Here.
They had always been here.
This temple was proof.
The effigy of their hubris and pride.
He sensed something else then.
Sigil of names.
Names.
Naming.
Asleep.
Latent.
But present.
The strongest echo pulsed here.
Barely perceptible.
A heartbeat beneath stone.
His eyes narrowed imperceptibly.
Traces of the naming lingered.
Long after the etchings bearing them were gone.
He crouched.
His cloak pooled around him, living shadows.
They were crude.
Fragmented.
Improvised.
Bestowed.
He saw it then.
The Gates of the Silver Key
A child’s scrawling.
Power these men do not understand.
They could not comprehend the powers they dabbled in.
“So,” he murmured.
He rose.
He was never there.
