Chapter 1: The Divine Voice
The house stood alone at the farthest edge of the village, leaning slightly against the wind like an old listener too humble to interrupt. It had been built from mountain stone and timber gathered from the forest where the snow lay thick year-round. The roof was bowed and thatched with weather-worn straw In the twilight, it looked less like a home and more like a prayer whispered into the land .
Inside, the light came not from fire or glass, but from a small clay lamp lit near a simple prayer mat. Its flame shivered softly, casting long shadows across the mud walls. In one corner, shelves lined with humble belongings—handmade woolen scarves, a clay jar of salt, a tin of oil, a pair of carved wooden spoons—stood neatly, as if placed with intention rather than need.
A man knelt on the mat. His name is Barakiel, and his spine—though weathered by time and burden—remained upright as he bowed gently into the final sajda of the evening prayer. His palms, thick with calluses and old scars, pressed flat against the floor. He wore a worn wool cloak, and his beard—mostly silver, like river frost—grazed his chest as he bowed.
There was a stillness in his presence, something deeper than calm. It was the stillness of a man who had long made peace with a world that did not notice him.
He rose from his bow, sat back on his knees, and whispered the final words of his prayer with the kind of reverence only those who have tasted poverty and held onto God can possess.
Behind him, in the half-dark, two sleeping forms stirred beneath a quilt sewn from old robes and patched shawls.
His wife, Mahira, lay closest to the hearth. Her breathing was quiet, her body curled like the stem of a vine resting after a day of bending toward the sun.
Their daughter, Nooriyah, lay beside her—young, but not a child. Her hair spilled like ink over her shoulder, and though she slept, her lips were parted as if still in conversation with a dream.
Barakiel’s eyes rested on them briefly. Then he turned back to the lamp and whispered—not with desperation, but with an old and patient longing.
“My Lord,” he said “Do not let them be forgotten.”
Here is deepening the world of Barakiel’s household—its silence, devotion, and fragile beauty—while gradually moving toward the sacred rupture that is to come.
Outside, the wind moved in long, soft ribbons through the trees. It did not howl. It crept. It sifted between bare branches and over frozen rooftops, weaving a quiet language only the land could read. Snow hung in the air like breath unclaimed, falling in slow spirals under a starless sky.
Barakiel stayed seated, his knees aching now, but he paid them no mind. His hands rested on his thighs, fingers curled inwards. The prayer was finished, but he had not yet risen—not because of ritual, but because his soul had not yet let go.
He was not a man given to dramatic petitions. His prayers were mostly the same each night: gratitude for breath, a plea for sustenance, the health of Mahira, the peace of Nooriyah. But tonight, something in him had shifted. Not out of desperation, but from an ache deeper than fear—an ache that came from knowing he could no longer give his daughter what she deserved.
Nooriyah was of age. She had grown with beauty, but more than that—with dignity. Her heart was soft, but steady. She had been raised not only with teachings, but with silence—Barakiel’s kind of silence, the kind that listens. And now she stood on the edge of womanhood with no suitor, no dowry, no path ahead. It was not shame that troubled him It was sorrow. Sorrow that she would remain a flower never noticed, blooming in a hidden valley where no one came.
He pressed his hands together.
“O You who hears before hearing is formed,” he whispered, “give her what I cannot.”
Behind him, Mahira stirred faintly, and Barakiel turned to look once more. She was still asleep. A soft sound escaped her lips, but it was no word, only a mother’s half-dreaming sigh. Nooriyah, wrapped in her woven shawl, remained motionless. A lock of hair fell across her cheek, and the lamp’s glow caught it like a thread of night woven with gold
Then the flame wavered.
Barakiel blinked.
And something entered the room—not through the door, not through the air, but through the space between silence and presence. It did not crackle or rush. It settled.
And the world changed.
where the sacred enters—not loudly, not suddenly, but with the ancient weight of revelation, changing Barakiel’s world in a way that cannot be undone.
It came not as a sound, but as a stillness more perfect than silence.
Barakiel sat motionless. The air in the room had not moved, yet something had shifted—like the space around him had thickened, as though time itself had paused in mid-step to allow something older to arrive.
Then, a voice.
It did not strike his ears in the way voices do. It unfolded within him. As if his bones had been waiting their whole life to remember something they had once known in a place before breath.
“O good old man,” it said.
The words were not thunder. They did not ring or roar. They simply were—and their presence was more profound than any storm. Each word was as still as stone and as alive as fire. They did not ask for attention; they commanded it by existing.
Barakiel closed his eyes.
His breath slowed. Not from fear—but from awe. A kind of awe that few are ever allowed to taste in their lifetimes. He did not speak. He did not move. He only listened.
“You have remembered Me,” the voice continued. “In a time when memory has been traded for cleverness, you have remembered. In a world of men that has turned its back to the unseen, you have knelt. You have taught light to your child when the world teaches only mirrors ”
Barakiel’s heart, though steady, seemed to fold inward with every word. The warmth from the lamp touched one side of his face, but the rest of him felt enveloped in something beyond fire or flesh.
“Now hear,” the voice said.
“There is one task I ask of you At first light, rise Take your daughter and a handful of psheno—the millet that is closest to the root of the earth. Carry it with you. Walk beyond your village until the frost no longer feels like frost. Do not ask where to go. Do not ask who you will meet. You will know. When you meet him—whoever he is—you must give your daughter to him. He is the one .”
And then—
Nothing
No thunder. No parting heavens. No wind. Only the sound of his own breath, and the soft crack of the clay lamp’s drying oil
where the sacred enters—not loudly, not suddenly, but with the ancient weight of revelation, changing Barakiel’s world in a way that cannot be undone.
Barakiel absorbs the sacred charge he’s been given—weighty not just with command, but with divine intimacy
Barakiel did not move
The voice had gone, but its echo lived inside him—not as sound, but as shape. It lingered like a fragrance after rain, like the fading pulse of something enormous that had brushed against the edges of his soul. He sat in stillness, though not the same stillness as before. This one was fuller Heavier. As if a fire had been placed inside his chest and sealed shut with light .
He opened his eyes slowly.
The lamp was nearly out. Its flame had thinned to a whisper of gold, flickering against the curve of the wall, painting faint tremors across the shelves where jars and folded linens slept. Mahira had turned slightly in her sleep, her arm draped across her waist. Nooriyah had not moved. Her breath rose and fell in the rhythm of dreamers untouched by earthly worry.
Barakiel lowered his gaze to the floor.
He did not question.
He did not doubt.
He only let the silence sit with him a while longer, allowing his heart to catch up to what his soul had already accepted.
When he finally rose, his joints creaked like old wood in a shifting wind. He folded his prayer mat carefully and placed it beneath the window, where dawn would later glance upon it. He did not rouse his family. The voice had not told him to speak—not yet. There is a kind of obedience that lives not in action, but in the readiness to move without answers.
He stepped outside into the night.
The snow met him like a friend. It did not sting. It wrapped around him, slow and soundless. The stars above were not stars tonight They were eyes—ancient, innumerable, watching The moon hung behind a veil of pale clouds, half-lit, as though it too were waiting for morning.
Barakiel took a deep breath. It filled his chest with the scent of cedar, ice, and something else—something like memory returning from a long exile.
Then he whispered the only word his tongue could find.
“Ameen ”
And the snow kept falling.
continuing with Barakiel’s quiet return indoors, and the deepening of his bond with Mahira and Nooriyah—each motion preparing the soul for what the dawn will demand
Inside, the house had cooled. The fire in the hearth had dimmed to a bed of faintly glowing coals. Barakiel stepped in quietly, shutting the wooden door behind him with a breath’s softness. He moved through the dark like someone who had walked through it many times and no longer feared what it held.
He unfastened his cloak and hung it by the window peg. The wool was damp with snow, its fibers glistening under the last flicker of the lamp. He did not wake Mahira Instead, he sat down beside her, his back resting lightly against the wall.
She must have felt him return, because she stirred. Without opening her eyes, she reached for his hand and found it, folding her fingers through his.
“You stayed long in prayer tonight,” she murmured, her voice dry from sleep but soft as an old song.
Barakiel looked at her hand in his. Her palm was warm despite the cold, her grip gentle and steady. This hand had braided Nooriyah’s hair every morning since girlhood. This hand had kneaded the bread, rubbed oil into aching joints, poured water for ablution. This hand had blessed their child’s brow every night without fail.
He pressed it lightly.
“There was something,” he said.
Mahira opened her eyes. In the dim light, they were deep and unreadable, like the well behind the village that drew water even in the dead of winter.
“A dream?”
Barakiel shook his head slowly “No ”.
Mahira watched him.
He turned toward the hearth, its coals now the colour of low-burning rubies “A voice. ”
That single word was enough.
Mahira’s breath stilled. She had not heard such a word from him in many years—not since his father died and left the old texts in his care, not since Barakiel stopped telling dreams because the world stopped believing them.
“Tell me,” she said.
So he did.
He told her everything. The stillness. The light. The words that had no sound. The command to rise at first light. To take Nooriyah. To bring grain. And to give her—to the first being they met.
When he finished, there was no silence in the room. Only presence.
Mahira did not cry out. She did not accuse. She did not even blink.
She reached for the edge of the blanket and pulled it over her knees.
“Then we will do as we are told,” she said.
where the quiet faith of Mahira begins to mirror Barakiel’s, and the home they’ve built in silence becomes the threshold for something vast, uncertain, and sacred
Barakiel watched her in the half-dark, as if seeing her for the first time. There was no tremor in her voice, no disbelief, no need for reassurance. Only the calm steadiness of a woman who had carried faith like fire under her tongue for a lifetime, speaking only when the flame was needed.
“You believe it?” he asked, more out of wonder than doubt.
Mahira turned toward the small alcove where Nooriyah slept “I believe,” she said softly, “that God does not speak unless it is time for something to change.”
Her eyes lingered on their daughter—her form still wrapped in sleep, the outline of her breath rising like mist in the cold room.
Barakiel followed her gaze.
“She will not return the same,” he said, his voice quieter than before.
Mahira nodded “And neither will we.”
For a moment, neither spoke. The coals in the hearth gave a soft hiss, a final ember sighing out. Somewhere outside, the wooden walls creaked under the weight of snow. It was a familiar sound, but tonight it felt like part of something larger—like even the walls had heard the voice and were preparing to let go.
Mahira stood. Her shawl slipped from her shoulders as she crossed to the small earthen jar near the hearth. She lifted the lid gently. Inside, nestled like forgotten treasure, was their last handful of psheno—golden millet, saved not for use, but memory. It had come from her mother’s hands, and from her mother before her. They had carried the seed across winters, not for its taste, but for what it remembered.
She took a square of cloth from the shelf—white linen, hemmed with thread she had spun herself—and poured the millet into its center. Each grain fell with a sound so soft it was almost imagined. She tied the corners with twine, tight and even.
Then she placed the bundle in Barakiel’s open hands.
“Take this,” she said “But do not look back once you leave.”
Barakiel bowed his head. He did not thank her. He did not need to. Between them was a language older than speech, carried in hands and silences.
He rose, and together they turned toward Nooriyah’s sleeping form.
where the moment deepens into the intimate stillness of a family on the edge of the unknown—a farewell wrapped not in words, but in ritual, restraint, and inherited faith
Nooriyah lay still beneath the quilt, her breath slow and even, the way a stream flows beneath ice. Her hands were folded gently over her chest, one thumb resting against a string of old wooden beads she kept with her during the long nights of snow. She was not dreaming—at least not in the way others did. Her sleep was a still garden, a place where silence grew like vines, flowering only when the soul was ready.
Mahira crouched beside her and slowly pulled the quilt back from her daughter’s face. The firelight brushed Nooriyah’s cheek, revealing the soft curve of her brow and the hint of a smile that hovered on her lips even in sleep.
Barakiel stood behind them, watching.
Mahira leaned forward and whispered something into Nooriyah’s ear—words too quiet for the room to hear. Then she kissed her brow, smoothing a strand of hair away from her temple as she had done since the girl’s infancy.
Nooriyah stirred.
Her eyes opened—not suddenly, but with the calm of one who had expected to be woken. She looked first at her mother, then at her father, and sat up without question.
She said nothing.
Her hands reached for the woolen shawl folded beside her pillow. She wrapped it around her shoulders and stood.
Barakiel stepped forward, the bundle of psheno in his hand “We leave at dawn,” he said softly.
Nooriyah nodded. Her expression did not flicker with fear, nor confusion. Only something ancient—something like readiness, the kind found in prophets and saints, and in women who know the cost of obedience but choose it anyway.
She crossed to the water basin and washed her face.
Mahira brought her a fresh scarf—deep green, with delicate embroidery of old trees and stars, passed down through generations of women who had prayed by hearths and waited for husbands to return from fields of snow.
Nooriyah wrapped the scarf around her head and shoulders.
And the house, filled with only breath and firelight, felt like the waiting room of some larger story about to unfold.
Carrying the family into the tender silence of dawn Every gesture now becomes farewell, every breath weighted with the unknowable
The night grew thinner. Outside, the stars began to dim, as if turning their faces away from what was coming. The village lay deep in sleep, blanketed under its endless snow, unaware that in one quiet home at its farthest edge, something ancient had stirred—something older than law and more enduring than fear.
Within that home, Barakiel lit a final fire—not for warmth, but for remembrance. He added a few splinters of pine and watched as the flames licked upward with slow devotion. The light filled the room with amber, painting Nooriyah’s features in quiet gold. She sat cross-legged near the door, her hands folded in her lap, eyes half-closed—not praying aloud, but holding prayer inside her like a seed.
Mahira stood by the table, packing a satchel with care. She placed in it a flask of water, a heel of bread, and a handful of dried herbs wrapped in cloth. Not much—but enough. She moved with slow precision, her hands refusing to tremble.
Barakiel watched her from across the room. He did not speak. If he opened his mouth now, it would be to weep—and there was no space left for that. Not in this hour, where silence was more sacred than speech.
When the cock crowed in the distance, just once, as if hesitant to announce the coming light, the three of them turned toward the door.
Mahira stepped forward first. She held Nooriyah’s face in both hands and pressed her forehead gently to hers. The scarf shifted slightly, revealing the girl’s brow, smooth and still.
“My daughter,” Mahira whispered, “this world forgets those who remember the light. Go with the One who does not forget. ”
Nooriyah closed her eyes.
Barakiel took the bundle of psheno in one hand, and with the other, he reached for Nooriyah’s palm. She placed it in his without hesitation.
They stood in the doorway together—father and daughter. The snow outside was pale blue in the early hour, untouched, expectant.
Mahira stepped aside.
And they crossed the threshold.
The path beyond the home begins to open—framed not in adventure, but in sacred surrender, a father walking his daughter toward an unknown ordained by the unseen
The first step into the snow was quiet, almost reverent.
It was not deep—only ankle-high—but each footfall pressed softly into the earth, marking a story that could not be erased. The snowflakes that had fallen in the night were still fresh, unspoiled. Their trail would be the first to grace the path this morning.
Barakiel walked slowly, not because of age, but because of what he carried. In his left hand, the bundle of psheno—grains golden and small, cradled in linen like a secret. In his right, Nooriyah’s hand—warm and steady, like a single living flame in a world grown too cold.
They did not speak.
The wind moved through the trees at the village edge with a voice that resembled breath held too long. The cedar branches bent slightly as they passed, not in resistance, but in acknowledgment—as if even the forest recognized the solemnity of this journey.
Behind them, Mahira stood at the threshold of the house, watching without motion. She did not weep. She would weep later, when no one was watching—perhaps when sweeping the hearth or folding the scarf her daughter had left behind.
But not now.
Now, she held her gaze steady, memorizing the silhouettes of Barakiel and Nooriyah as they moved farther into the snow. Their shapes merged with the morning light, becoming softer, fainter.
At the edge of the village, where the last fence post marked the final boundary between home and wilderness, Barakiel paused.
He turned once—just once—and raised his eyes toward Mahira.
She lifted one hand in silent blessing, palm open, fingers slightly curved as though holding a prayer that had taken on weight.
He bowed his head.
Then they turned away, and Mahira was alone.
The sky above grew paler by degrees, the snow blushed faintly with gold. Nooriyah looked up once at her father, her expression unreadable, and Barakiel felt her squeeze his hand—not for comfort, but as a gesture of strength given, not taken.
They walked on.
And behind them, unnoticed, a single grain of psheno slipped through the cloth, falling to the snow like a golden tear.
Bringing this sacred beginning to its quiet conclusion—a chapter of farewell, of obedience without certainty, and of the first step into a world that will never be the same.
The path ahead widened into a frozen meadow where no trees grew, only pale grasses bowed under snow and frost. The stillness here was thicker, as if the air itself remembered how to listen. Even the birds did not speak. The world had entered a hush so complete it seemed to hold its breath in their passing .
Barakiel felt it in his bones.
This was no longer the land he had known.
He did not understand why the voice had spoken, or why such a task had been given to a man with nothing but a daughter and a handful of millet. But he had learned long ago that the unseen does not explain itself. It only calls. And those who answer must do so with hands open and hearts stripped of certainty.
Nooriyah walked beside him without fear. Her eyes scanned the horizon, but they did not search. It was as if she, too, carried within her some faint memory of what was to come. She had said nothing since they left, but her silence was not distance—it was preparation.
They crossed a shallow ridge where snow had gathered in soft drifts. Barakiel’s feet sank slightly, but Nooriyah moved as if the snow made way for her. The bundle in his hand shifted again, and another grain spilled unseen onto the frozen ground, its weight light but its purpose heavy.
The sun had not yet broken the line of the hills, but the sky had begun to glow—the soft orange of a world waking with caution. It spread slowly across the clouds, like paint on the surface of still water.
Barakiel stopped.
Nooriyah looked at him.
There was a sense, deep in his chest, that they were close. Not in distance, but in meaning. That soon—perhaps in the next breath, perhaps in the next step—something would appear. Not by chance, but by design. And when it did, he would have to do the unthinkable.
He looked at Nooriyah She met his gaze.
Neither spoke.
Then they walked on—father, daughter, and the invisible thread that now tied them to the sacred.
And behind them, in the snow, the grains they dropped had begun to rest not like seeds but like promises.