“Abraham, calm down, my friend. It’s me, Mark. I was watching you from the window — you didn’t notice me at all. What on earth were you two talking about for so long? But more importantly, someone was watching us from behind the reeds. I think he followed me for a while. I couldn’t see who it was — I got scared. I came to ask what we should do.”

Abraham brushed his hand off his shoulder and said:

“You know very well we can’t leave here by land without getting caught by the guards. I don’t think the people around here are informers, and in the dark they probably didn’t see your face. We should leave with the boat immediately. Even if they tell the Lord, they won’t know who we are. To avoid getting caught with the boat, we’ll come back to this island the next night, and we’ll think of a proper excuse for our families.”

Abraham and his friend Mark rowed in silence through the pitch-black night toward the Outer Isle. Both felt a heavy fear — not only because of the suffocating darkness, but also because they had no idea what awaited them on this island that no one had dared to visit, or was believed never to have been visited at all.

Human beings prefer facing a familiar enemy — even one stronger than themselves — rather than facing something unknown in an unknown place. Abraham was frightened, but he couldn’t say anything; after all, he was the one who had suggested going to the island in the first place, and he had to stand by his idea. He couldn’t help thinking:

‘What if that predator my grandfather spoke of— the one said to live beyond the wall — has crossed over to our side? What if Mark gets hurt because of me?’

Mark’s worries about the island were of an entirely different nature. He had heard from some of his acquaintances—those interested in strange and mystical matters—that the place they were heading to was not truly an unexplored land. According to them, a few people had already gone there to conduct certain mystical experiments. Mark knew well that these friends of his enjoyed exaggerating events, bending reality, and dramatizing mysterious stories. Still, he was also sure that they had somehow managed to reach this island and had attempted various things there.

There were several reasons Mark never shared these half-heard mystical rumors with his closest friend Abraham. One was the promise of secrecy he had given to these companions who valued discretion above all else. Another was the fear that Abraham would mock him for believing such wild tales. If Abraham were to treat these stories as a joke and carelessly repeat them to others, it could expose the secrets Mark had vowed to protect — and he feared being punished for revealing them.

Trying to break the eerie silence that hung over the dark water, Mark asked:
‘By the way, have you heard anything about that madman who lives in your forest? They say he hasn’t been seen for days.’

One of the legends Abraham remembered told of a gigantic creature living beneath the lake — supposedly a survivor of the long-extinct dinosaurs. The story claimed that the creature had gained immortality by drinking a life-elixir hidden somewhere in the lake’s depths. Back then Abraham had wondered: ‘How could such a creature even reach this lake? It’s completely surrounded by the land we call the Outer Isle. And if the stories are true, how could a sea creature possibly break through those massive stone walls?’”

Abraham remembered the time his father dove into the irrigation pool to open the small hole near the bottom—
a hole that, from the surface, was completely invisible.
Once opened, the water would flow through channels into the fields.

That hidden opening gave Abraham an idea:
maybe the lake and the sea were connected through some sort of underwater tunnel.

Even if, somehow, a sea creature had slipped into the lake through such a passage and become trapped here, how could it possibly survive in a place with no fish and no plants?
And if the creature never attacked the islanders—never even attempted to eat them—then how was it staying alive?

Abraham increasingly believed the entire monster tale had been fabricated by the Lord to keep the people from crossing the lake and reaching the outside world.
Yet he also knew that every fabricated legend carried a grain of truth—
a remnant of something real from which the story had been born.

Many ancient texts spoke of elixirs said to grant immortality, and countless myths throughout history had bent and twisted these ideas. Still, he couldn’t help asking himself:

“Could it be that such a creature—by pure chance—actually drank something like that?”

Mark still had no answer to his earlier question and was beginning to worry about his friend.
Abraham, lost in thought and mesmerized by the dark water of the lake, hadn’t heard a single word he said.
Seeing him so absorbed—and suspecting the monster tale had gotten into his head—Mark leaned closer, ready to tease him:

He was about to whisper “Bom!” to startle him, but then realized Abraham might flinch and fall into the water, so he gave up on the idea. Leaning closer, he whispered again:

“Buddy, are you okay? Can you hear me?”

Abraham lifted his head.
“Nothing, I just drifted off. Sorry,” he said.
Mark repeated his earlier question about the madman from their forest. Abraham explained that although he used to see him from time to time, he hadn’t seen him at all lately.

“I hope Mark isn’t hinting at anything. He must be asking just to make conversation,” Abraham thought.

The moonlight barely reached the lake and the Outer Isle, filtered through the thick mist. Abraham tested the water with the oar; as the depth decreased, he understood they were very close to the shore.

Then a roar tore through the silence of the night.

They froze—eyes wide, trying and failing to hide their fear.

“What was that?” they whispered.

The distant sound was enough to convince them that the tales about the predator beyond the wall might be true. If the stories were real, it meant they were safe on this side of the barrier… yet they knew they still had to remain cautious.

"Buddy, with this darkness and fog we can't predict what we're talking into. So I think we should wait until morning. We can rest in the boat in the meantime,” Abraham whispered.

Mark knew it wasn’t the time to tease him for being afraid, so he immediately agreed.
They woke up in the morning to the chirping of canaries and the soft chatter of parakeets, just like back home. When they lifted their heads, they found themselves staring at a heavenly patch of land as green and lush as the island they had come from—every shade of green shimmering before them.

They stepped into the lake, pushed the boat forward, and left it on the pearly, clear sand where the waves couldn’t reach. It wasn’t a great ship, of course, but like the sailors in the old tales, they too had “anchored” their tiny vessel on the shore.

After the beach came a steep cliff wall. Climbing it was out of the question. They had no choice but to continue for a while along the lake’s edge—until they realized they had to be extremely careful. They had reached a swampy patch filled with willows, reeds, and unfamiliar marsh plants. The place was soaked in every shade of green imaginable.

They advanced with caution, spacing themselves apart. To avoid sinking, they each carried a thick, thornless branch. Pushing through trees with tightly curled leaves, they eventually lifted their heads and recognized the familiar shape.

It was an oak tree—the same kind that grew everywhere on their island.
Realizing they were walking through an oak-filled thicket, Abraham called out to Mark:

“Stop—don’t step there!”

Mark looked down and realized first that the ground beneath his foot was a patch of marsh, and then that a tiny turtle sat right where he had almost stepped. He swept his foot aside and took a careful step forward, relieved that he hadn’t crushed the little creature and unknowingly started a blood feud. A few steps ahead he spotted more turtles of different sizes. Their stance—firm, still, and oddly regal—made them look like homeowners suddenly disturbed by uninvited guests. Mark understood the body language of these creatures all too clearly.

“We are the owners of this island. Human, what business do you have here? Leave at once!”

Mark answered them with a look of his own:

“Don’t stare at me like that. I could squash you like flies if I wanted. Are you threatening me with your whole family?”

But the moment he pushed aside the curtain of bushes and leafy branches in front of him, he swallowed his words. Turning to Abraham, he whispered:

“Buddy… we’d better stay on good terms with these animals. It’s not just one family here—looks like the entire turtle nation has gathered.”

Abraham took a closer look and saw that Mark wasn’t exaggerating—if anything, he had understated it. There were turtles of every kind he could imagine: long-tailed, tailless, thin-shelled, thick-shelled, and shells covered in every sort of pattern.

The two brave young men felt a flicker of fear at the sight. They knew these animals weren’t predators, wouldn’t attack a human, and couldn’t harm them with any poisonous breath or bite. Yet they still stood frozen for a moment, staring at those silent, unmoving creatures with a mixture of awe, unease, and surprise.

Abraham thought to himself, “We came expecting a lake monster, and instead we ran into the island’s turtles.”
His imagination went further still, whispering that somewhere up ahead a giant turtle—something like the king of all these shelled creatures—might be waiting for them.

Shaking off their surprise and moving on, they soon noticed yet another unexpected sight: the turtles were arranged along the path like a long line of horse-drawn carriages. Curiosity was, for Abraham, the most beautiful of all feelings—so long as it did not violate anyone’s privacy.

“Do animals even have privacy?” he wondered, then asked himself,
“Where are these creatures coming from, and where are they going?”

They followed the direction from which the turtles had appeared. After walking a few hundred meters, they realized that one of the island legends was true: towering walls made of massive carved stones rose before them. Just as the stories said, the walls had been built at the highest points of the island.

Yes, part of the wall consisted of naturally sharp peaks, the sort found on tall mountains—
but the narrower stones fitted between those peaks had clearly been placed there by human hands.

They also noticed that the turtles were coming from somewhere far below these walls. When they took a few steps toward the overgrown spot from which the creatures emerged, they stopped; the dense weeds and shrubs suggested it might be a swamp.

So they changed direction and headed toward the ridge where the wall reached its highest point. Mark warned Abraham that climbing toward the wall could be dangerous because of the muddy ground and slippery rocks, but Abraham ignored the warning entirely.

“Buddy, today is the day. If there really is a predator beyond this wall—and if the whole world is underwater like they say—when else are we going to find out if not today?”

Mark gave him a look that clearly meant “Do whatever you want,” yet he still followed close behind, ready to grab him if he slipped. Holding onto whatever he could, he climbed carefully after Abraham.

Abraham, with some difficulty, reached the edge of the slope.
The wall, not being perfectly constructed, bulged outward in many places. The natural rock formations used in its structure made this inevitable, but it was a real problem for Abraham: even though the wall was only three or four meters high, the stones had no indentations—no place to set a foot.

After following the wall for nearly thirty meters, he finally found a spot where he could climb. He tested the rock, making sure it wasn’t crumbly, then planted his right foot on the ledge and pulled himself up onto the top of the wall with a quick hop.

Standing on the highest point of the Outer Isle, he looked around for a while. When he noticed Mark’s eager expression—“Come on, tell me what you see!”—he began to speak:

“Just like they told us, there’s about five hundred meters of land between this wall and the sea, and the slope on that side is much steeper. That makes this place a natural fortress. No one coming from the ocean could ever see the inside, let alone climb over this wall and get in.”

Abraham raised his right hand to shade his eyes from the sun and narrowed them, clearly struggling to see into the far distance.

“Buddy, this ridge and the wall stretch around the whole island. Even the parts I can’t see must be the same—I can tell from how the mountain continues.”

He turned his head toward the open sea.

“Yes… it’s true. There’s nothing but water out there. Everywhere my eyes can reach—nothing but water. I hate to say it, but… Lord was right. There was a second flood, and the rest of humanity must have been swallowed by the waters.”