The City of the Dead was not silent. It was the hush of a held breath. As Omar passed through the great gates of the Northern Cemetery, the cacophony of Cairo—the trams, the shouts, the perpetual motion—did not simply fade, it was swallowed by an ancient quiet. Here, grand Mamluk mausoleums, built for sultans and emirs, served as homes for the city's poorest. Laundry lines were strung between ornate tombs, and children played hide-and-seek among the graves of forgotten nobles. Life and death were not neighbors here; they were roommates in a crowded, dusty home.
The sun was setting, painting the sky in hues of bruised orange and deep violet. The shadows that pooled around the domes and weathered stones were long and cool. For any other Cairene, this place was eerie at worst, a symbol of poverty at best. For Omar, now cursed or blessed with his new sight, it was a minefield. His Clarity was a constant thrum behind his eyes, and here, the psychic landscape was a mess of tangled threads. He could see the lingering silver resonance of generations of life and prayer, but it was frayed, interwoven with cold spots of grief, despair, and something else—something watchful.
He felt the spies first. It was a prickling sensation on the back of his neck, the feeling of unseen eyes tracking his every move. These were not human observers. The feeling was too diffuse, too omnipresent. He recalled the stories his grandmother used to tell, tales of the Djinn who could ride on the evening breeze or hide in the shape of a shadow. He had dismissed them as folklore. Now, he knew they were field reports from an invisible war. These watchers felt minor, like scouts, their presence a faint, irritating buzz in his heightened senses. They were trying to unnerve him, to taste his fear.
He clutched the address—a simple notation of a tomb number and a quadrant—and pressed on, forcing his gait to be steady. He would not give them the satisfaction. The path twisted through narrow alleyways, past families settling in for their evening meal around small fires, their faces lit by the flickering glow. They paid him no mind, another stranger in a transient place.
He finally found the mausoleum, a modest structure compared to its neighbors, its dome cracked and its walls crumbling. This was the address from the file. A tattered blanket served as a door. The air around it was colder, and Omar's Clarity showed him why. A deep, ugly stain of that inky, void-like corruption saturated the stone entrance, pulsing faintly like a dying heart. It was a psychic wound on the fabric of the place, the residue of Ibrahim Al-Sayyad's bargain.
As he reached out to push the blanket aside, a voice, raspy and hard as stone, cut through the quiet.
"The foolish seek answers in places that offer only contagion."
Omar froze, turning slowly. An old woman sat on a low stone bench nearby, one he had completely overlooked. She was shrouded in black, her face a roadmap of wrinkles, her eyes dark and piercing. She was not looking at him, but into him, and he had the unnerving feeling she saw far more than a simple clerk.
"I am just looking for a man's former home," Omar said, his voice tight.
"You are not," the old woman countered, her gaze unwavering. "You are tracing the slime of a Djinn, and you are tracking it all over this place with your loud light."
"My… light?" Omar was taken aback.
The woman squinted, her head tilting. "It is bright. Unfocused. Like a lantern left burning in the daylight. You are drawing every bottom-feeder and night-flyer for miles. You are Zuhri."
The word struck Omar with the force of a physical blow. Zuhri. It was a name whispered in fearful tales, a term for those born with a foot in both worlds, marked from birth. It was said they were coveted by the Djinn, that their blood held a special resonance. Those who fell became the most terrifying sorcerers. Those who stood firm… they were weapons.
"I... I don't know what you mean," Omar stammered, a denial that felt hollow even to him.
"You do not have to know for it to be true," she said, a flicker of something like pity in her eyes. "That light you carry gives you the sight to see the stain, but it also makes you a beacon. The creature that nested in this tomb is gone, but its master knows the scent of its own poison. And now, it has scented you. Leave this place. What was done in there is finished."
Her warning was stark, her wisdom clear. He should have listened. But the image of Ibrahim's folded body, the words on the note, the whisper in his own apartment—they were hooks that had buried themselves too deep.
"I have to know why," Omar said, his resolve hardening.
The old woman sighed, a sound like grinding stones. "Then be quick. And do not touch anything. Some stains never wash out." She fell silent, her eyes closing as if the sight of him was too much to bear.
Taking a deep breath, Omar pushed aside the blanket and stepped inside. The corruption was overwhelming. It was a physical cold, and the air smelled of ozone and rot. The room was bare save for a thin sleeping mat and a small charcoal brazier. But with his Clarity, Omar saw the true state of the room. The inky stain was everywhere, smeared on the walls, pooled on the floor. It was the psychic filth left behind by a prolonged infestation.
He scanned the room, looking past the physical grime to the energetic residue. And there, on the floor beneath the sleeping mat, he saw it. It was invisible to a normal eye, but to him, it blazed with a dark, malignant fire. A complex symbol had been etched into the stone, a dizzying pattern of interlocking angles and curves that seemed to violate the principles of space. It was a gateway. A summoning circle. The very "wrong geometry" from the note.
At its center was a different kind of script, a jagged, serrated language he recognized instinctively as the tongue of the Djinn he'd encountered. It was a contract. Omar couldn't read the words, but he could feel their intent: a desperate plea for forbidden knowledge. And around the edges of the circle, he saw faint, smeared handprints of the inky stain—the signature of the entity that had answered the call.
Ibrahim Al-Sayyad hadn't just made a bargain; he had turned his own home into an embassy for a creature from the Void. This was the source of the contagion.
A sudden, sharp pain flared behind Omar's eyes. The Djinn spies, emboldened by his proximity to the circle, were pressing in. He felt a wave of psychic pressure, whispers of his own deepest anxieties—Layla coughing, the price of the medicine, his own inadequacy. They were trying to make him stumble, to unbalance his soul and make it vulnerable.
He backed away from the circle, his hand instinctively going to his chest where the warmth of the resonant silence had first bloomed. He focused on it, on the memory of its pure, clean tone. The pressure lessened, the whispers fading to a frustrated hiss.
He stepped back out into the twilight, his heart pounding. The old woman opened her eyes. "You have seen it," she stated. It was not a question.
"A symbol," Omar breathed. "A circle on the floor."
"The Djinn's leash," she clarified. "Or its master's brand. It matters little. You have your answer. Now go. You are followed. Do not lead them to your own home. Walk the crowded streets. Lose yourself in the chaos of the living before you return to your own."
Omar looked at her, a hundred questions on his lips. Who are you? What else do you know? What do I do? But her face was a mask of finality. He gave a short, grateful nod and turned to leave, his mind reeling.
He was Zuhri. He was a beacon. And he was being followed. As he hurried away from the City of the Dead, re-entering the loud, vibrant streets of the living city, he could feel it: a single, cold thread of attention, detached from the general buzz of the Djinn scouts. This was a different kind of hunter, more focused, more patient. The old woman was right. He had traced the monster back to its lair, and now, it was beginning to trace him back.