The third watch of the night had begun in the small wooden house on Captain Saad's island. Outside, the night insects were creating a rhythmic, almost hypnotic, chorus, but inside the house, a heavy silence reigned. It was a silence born of intense mental exertion, a quiet focus so deep that the outside world had ceased to exist.
Three days and three nights had passed. They were, in a way, prisoners on that island, their prison bars forged from an unsolved puzzle. Captain Arthur Conroy's diary lay in the center of the table, an untouched sacred object. Its pages had been turned more times than they could count, every line scrutinized, every mark analyzed. Yet, it remained stubbornly silent, guarding its secrets.
Jerome finally leaned back in his chair, breaking the spell. A long, frustrated sigh escaped his lips. "Perhaps he really was mad."
His voice fell like a stone into the quiet room. On his laptop screen, high resolution scans of the diary's pages were covered in his digital notes. "I mean, look at all this. Star charts that do not correspond to any known constellation. Mathematical calculations that lead nowhere. And this handwriting… in some places it is the precise script of a soldier, and in others, it looks like a child's scrawl."
He stared up at the wooden ceiling, frustration etched on his face. "We are trying to solve the mental puzzle of a man who likely lost his sanity. Maybe this is just… grief. Grief put down on paper."
From the floor, surrounded by a small fortress of books, Sara disagreed softly. "No. It is not grief, Jerome. It is fear." She had barely slept, her eyes were swollen, but they burned with a passionate fire. "He was trying to hide something. So desperately that he even altered his own handwriting."
She held up a scanned page on her tablet. "Look. When he writes about the sinking of the ship, his handwriting is firm and disciplined. But as soon as he mentions the 'knowledge' or the 'tablets,' his script nearly breaks down, as if he is terrified of even writing the words."
Mayra stood by the window, looking out at the dark, placid water of the Tigris. She could feel both Jerome's frustration and Sara's passion. They were at an impasse, every attempt leading to a dead end. The seals, the diary… they were all pieces, but they did not seem to fit.
'This key does not fit into a lock,' Captain Saad's words echoed in her mind. 'It teaches you how to feel the lock.'
Mayra closed her eyes. Feel it. The thought resonated. We are trying to see it, to analyze it. Maybe we need to feel it.
She returned to the table and sat down. She simply picked up the oval, snake seal. She held it between her palms, focusing on its cool, smooth surface, its weight. She ran her fingers over the raised body of the snake swallowing its own tail. She shut out the world, the sounds of her friends' quiet debate fading away.
After a while, Sara's concerned voice broke through her concentration. "Mayra? Are you alright?"
Mayra did not answer. Her eyes remained closed. Her fingertips were moving with incredible slowness along the outer rim of the oval. And then, she felt it. A slight roughness. Something so fine, so subtle, that it could easily be missed. It felt like tiny, deliberate scratches made with a needle.
She opened her eyes. Her voice was a hoarse whisper. "Light."
Jerome grabbed his table lamp and brought it closer. Mayra rotated the seal at a specific angle in the light. And there it was. Not just random marks of time, but symbols. Very small, almost faded cuneiform symbols, engraved in a perfect circle along the entire edge.
Sara's breath caught in her throat. She leaned over the table, her eyes wide with disbelief. "How is this possible? We scanned it. Why did the scanner not pick this up?"
"A scan reads the surface," Jerome explained, equally stunned. "These symbols are so old and worn, they have almost become one with the metal's texture. They can only be found by touch, or with the perfect light. This was done deliberately."
Mayra's heart was pounding. "What do they say?"
Sara took a small magnifying glass from her pocket. She examined the symbols for a long time. "They are not words," she finally announced. "They are numbers. Sumerian numbers."
It was a breakthrough, but it was also another puzzle. A circle of numbers. Mayra's mind raced. Numbers… a circle… She picked up Captain Conroy's diary. Her gaze fell again on the hand drawn compass-like circle, the one with the three hundred and sixty degree markings.
A slow smile spread across her face. "This is it. This diary is the lock, and that seal is the key."
The idea was so simple and brilliant, they were amazed they had not seen it before.
Mayra's voice was filled with a new, strong energy. "Sara, read these numbers to me. In order, exactly as they are written."
Sara held the magnifying glass to the seal and began to translate, her voice a steady, rhythmic chant. "The first number is… twenty three."
With a pencil, Mayra placed a small, precise dot on the twenty three degree mark in the diary.
"The second… one hundred and fifty seven."
Mayra marked the second point. The room had transformed. Sara was the codebreaker, Mayra was the strategist, and Jerome was the observer, his own mind racing to see the emerging pattern.
After about fifteen minutes, Sara's voice grew tired. "…and the final number… three hundred and forty one."
Mayra marked the last dot and put down her pencil. The page was now covered with dozens of scattered dots, looking like a strange new constellation.
Jerome leaned back. "Alright. We have a lot of dots. Now what?"
"Now we connect them," Mayra said. She picked up a ruler and began to connect the dots in the exact sequence Sara had called them out. First to second, second to third, and so on.
When she connected the last dot, a strange, angular zig-zag pattern was formed on the page. It still looked meaningless. A heavy silence fell upon them as they stared at the random lines.
But Mayra was not ready to give up. She picked up the page and held it up to the light of the single lantern burning in the middle of the room.
As the light passed through the old paper, another image emerged, one that had been invisible before. A star map, drawn in a faint, faded ink.
And now, the zig-zag pattern was no longer random. It was passing through the stars, connecting specific stars to one another. It was forming a shape. The shape of a word. A word that could only be read by someone who possessed the diary, the seal, and the right perspective.
Sara's voice was a trembling whisper as she recognized the connected stars. "It… it is a name. A name written in cuneiform."
They had solved their first great puzzle, together. But the name that emerged before them was not a celebration. It was a clue that pointed towards an even deeper and older conspiracy.
Where was this name going to lead them?
And were they ready to walk the path where the world's greatest empires had already stumbled and fallen?