Although Twin Island had managed to isolate itself from the outside world for centuries, the chaos of the beyond would, from time to time, seep into its solitude. The island seemed to exist in its own little universe, yet the darker folds of human nature found a way to manifest there, too. Some of its inhabitants carried such heavy pasts that one couldn't help but wonder: Was it the Twin Island that needed protection from the world, or the world from Twin Island?

But really, what difference did it make? Would the existence of yet another tyrant-minded soul change anything in the grand scheme of the outside world? Cruelty... Its definition is almost the same for everyone. But ask, “Who is cruel?”—and you’ll receive a hundred different answers. For everyone’s scale is calibrated differently; everyone’s sense of justice is rooted in their own truth.

These days, if Abraham were asked that question, his answer would be obvious. In his eyes, the greatest tyrants were his father, Petrus, and his accomplice mother, Linda—for they had disrupted the act of kindness he hoped to begin on the island with Mark and their new guest, Odessa. It seemed this conflict would be far harsher than past resentments or the familiar tensions between adolescence and adulthood.

Unaware of how large the island truly was, or whether life existed beyond it, Abraham felt his spirit tightening with each passing day. Under the weight of his mood, he found himself asking:

“Is life merely a struggle? Is this a place where betrayal, injustice, and selfishness rule instead of universal values like sacrifice, compassion, and brotherhood?”

On a night when the bright moon spilled its light across the lake and countless stars shimmered in the sky, Abraham felt a quiet inspiration rising—he could not tell whether it came from far away, from the depths of his heart, or from between the very neurons of his mind. Yet it gently reminded him that life was not an arena of strife, nor were people street fighters. Life was a place of cooperation and forgiveness; people, walking beings made of love and brotherhood. With this thought, his despair began to fade.

He told himself:
“Even if they give that poor girl to a cruel man, even if they hurt me, I will forgive them. Not for my own pride, but so they may reflect on their mistakes. Until then, I will remain silent.”

Had Abraham known that his parents genuinely understood their wrongs, he would not have let this quiet game last so long. And he also hoped the devil would not use this fragile silence to provoke further turmoil.

For reasons he could not fully explain, Abraham’s steps carried him toward Melisa. His heart admitted he felt something for her, yet insisted it was more than that—she eased his loneliness. To him, Melisa was a friend, a confidant, someone in whom he found solace.

Abraham watched the farm where Melisa lived from a distance for a while. When he noticed the men leaving the place where they had gathered to eat, he slipped over the wire fence at a suitable spot and entered the grounds. He knew exactly where to find her. His guess was right—he found her in a quiet corner of the worship house’s garden.

Melisa had known he would come, yet when she saw him, she acted as if she had never expected him at all. When Abraham said he took her surprise as natural, Melisa, eager to hear what she wanted to hear, replied:

“No, I truly thought you would never come.”
Then, with a mockingly dramatic tone, she added:
“Who knows—maybe the lake monster ate you.”

Abraham sensed her playful intent and answered with a faint smile:
“I’m not saying the sentence you’re waiting for today. To be honest, I’m not in the best spirits.”

Melisa’s eyes had been sparkling, as though expecting good news, but the moment she sensed something was wrong, her face fell immediately. Abraham’s mind was still on Odessa’s accusing gaze—eyes that seemed to say:
‘You broke your promise. You betrayed me.’

“There are so many mysteries on this island that we still can’t unravel,” he began. Then he told her how they had found a blonde girl in a short skirt by the lake; how she claimed to have come from the Island of the Qabils; how she said there were people beyond the island and that civilization had advanced; how the girl seemed both aggressive and honest. After explaining all this, he added:

“Strangely enough, the girl was truly knowledgeable in both religious and scientific matters, and her explanations were entirely reasonable.”

“So what happened to her?”

Abraham answered without lifting his head, as though he had done something wrong:
“I had no idea… My mother and father saw her and, thinking she might harm me, they informed the Lord.”
He shook his head from side to side.
“Unfortunately, she must be in the dungeon of the château now.”

What Abraham expected Melisa to say was something like:
“Your parents might be right; that girl could have tricked you and hurt you!”
But instead, he received a reaction he never anticipated:

“So Odessa is now in that dark, locked place all alone?”

Abraham lifted his head to say, “Yes,” but before he could, Melisa was already running away from him.
He considered running after her, but then he noticed the guards entering the area. With all these problems already piling up, the last thing he wanted was to be caught and dragged before the Lord.

His mind spoke to his heart:
“This is no time for sentimentality! Getting caught by these men won’t help anyone—and we can’t go home anyway.”

Unable to make sense of what had just happened, Abraham slipped back over the fence at a quiet spot and left the farm the same way he had come. He had taken only a few steps when he saw someone in a red hood racing toward him from the direction of the fences he had climbed. Judging by the speed of the horse, the rider was in a hurry. Judging by the way she leapt over the fence, she was a fugitive. And judging by her small, slight build under the red hood, she was a girl.

In that moment another thought struck him:

“I never told Melisa the girl’s name was Odessa. Then how did she know?”

With these questions swirling in his mind, Abraham continued toward the center of the island. His head was already crowded with mysteries he could not answer. Why were the teeth of the Marked Ones branded? Were they truly punished by God? The Tower, the turtles, the Island of the Qabil, legends of a world flooded beneath the waters, the three missing youths, the early deaths— so many riddles with no explanation. And now, added on top of everything else, was Melisa’s strange reaction after hearing about Odessa.

What could have caused Melisa to flee the fenced farm? She knew exactly what would happen if she were caught—yet moments earlier she had listened with great curiosity to every detail he shared about Odessa, only to change completely the moment she learned the girl was taken to the dungeon. Her escape must have had something to do with Odessa… but what?

When Abraham strained his memory, he recalled something from his previous visit. When he entered the worship house, the girl who had been sitting beside Melisa had suddenly stood up and slipped away. Abraham had been too focused on Melisa to pay much attention, but now he remembered—the girl had long blond hair, the same as Odessa’s. Was the blond girl truly Odessa?

If so, were Melisa and Odessa somehow working together behind his back?
But then he remembered the day he first met Melisa—how he and his father had visited the farm, how they had seen those people called the Sealed Ones, and how he had met Melisa there. Their meeting had been entirely by chance.

As Abraham was about to pass in front of the château —the one that also housed the dungeon—he noticed a crowd gathered in one spot. He couldn’t understand what was happening, but through the shifting bodies he caught sight of a horse being led out.

A thought crossed his mind:
“Yes… that’s the horse that carried the girl in the red hood earlier. I recognized it by its white tail.”

Pushing his way a little farther through the crowd, he felt a heavy sorrow settle in his chest. His fear had been correct. Melisa, her hands bound, was being loaded into a barred carriage.

He heard the murmurs around him:
“The Sealed girl escaped from the farm and then tried to force her way into the castle. I wonder what the Lord will do to her.”

Melisa kept her head lowered, looking every bit like someone drowning in guilt. But then, for a brief moment, she lifted her gaze—and her eyes met Abraham’s. What he had seen earlier in Odessa’s eyes, that same silent meaning, he saw now in Melisa’s.

“If anyone should be ashamed, it isn’t you,” he told her in his heart. “It should be me… and this entire people. But why did you act as though you wished to enter the dungeon? And why didn’t you ask for my help?”

With a heavy spirit, Abraham walked toward the houses on the western side of the island. He thought about spending some time alone in the tree hut deep in the forest. But then a second earthquake struck—stronger than before. Concern for his parents overwhelmed him, and he turned toward home, though every part of him resisted entering the house.

From the small tree shelter he used to watch those who came and went, he checked on his parents. The house seemed unharmed and they appeared safe, yet strangely, his mother was showing his father the mice he used in his research, speaking to him with unusual intensity.

He was telling his mother what kind of research he had been doing. As she listened, his father began nodding as if agreeing with her explanations. After a while, Abraham noticed their tones shifting—almost as if they were blaming each other. From the louder fragments of their conversation, he also realized the topic was him.

To calm them a little, he sent a small papyrus note tied to the leg of the white dove he used for messages:

"Mother, Father, I am fine. I will come later"
Receiving the note, Petrus and Linda understood that he was nearby and watching them. The first place that came to both their minds was the tree hut he had visited since childhood. Whenever he was upset with them, he would go there. After some time—usually once he calmed down and got hungry—he would return on his own.

But this time was different. His parents had accepted that they had wronged both him and the girl. Wanting to win back his forgiveness—and perhaps surprise him—they slipped quietly out the back door.

Linda knew her child better than herself. She knew well how Abraham would beam with joy when she bought him surprise gifts, birthday cakes, or materials for his inventions. When he was little, he would clap his hands together in excitement; as he grew older, the clapping became a warm smile and a slight flare of his nostrils.

Petrus and Linda moved silently through the trees until they reached Abraham’s small tree hut. Since no sound came from inside, they began to assume he wasn’t there. But when they pulled the branches aside for another look, they saw him sitting quietly, lost in thought.

In that moment, Petrus and Linda exchanged a glance and understood how deeply he was hurting. Not wanting to startle him—or cause him to lose balance and fall from the hut—Linda whispered softly:

"Abraham, my son... are you accepting guests?"

Abraham came to himself as though waking from a deep sleep and tried to act a little aloof. When he turned his head slightly, Petrus stepped in this time:

“My son, let’s talk. You can come down here if you want—or we can climb up to you. But the tree might not hold us. Then you’d have to take care of us,” he said with a faintly teasing expression.

The moment Abraham climbed down, Linda spoke:

“My son, anyone can make a mistake. There is no rule that only children err and mothers and fathers forgive. Sometimes parents, too, cross their limits. Trying to protect you from harm should not have meant handing an innocent girl over to danger. Our desire to keep you safe led us to this mistake.”

“But she wasn’t bad! Weren’t you the ones who always said we must not judge people by their appearance or their family?”

Linda shook her head slowly.
“The one I meant wasn’t the girl — it was the Lord.”

Petrus had not wanted to tell Abraham about the connection between the missing children and the Lord. Everyone already knew Abraham disliked him, and in the years to come, Abraham would learn truths that would make it almost inevitable for him to stand with the Lord. But because Linda kept nudging him insistently, he was forced to speak.

He told Abraham how he had seen the hat of the third missing youth on one of the Lord’s soldiers, and how they had found the girl’s necklace. What he chose not to tell—so as not to confuse Abraham further—was that the girl might have been connected to the Lord’s deceased wife.

They also chose not to mention the many other rumors they had heard about the Lord. Knowing the meaning behind the look in Abraham’s eyes, they steered the conversation toward Odessa instead:

“As for Odessa, we are absolutely sincere,” they said. “We don’t yet know how to save her, but if we can come up with a reasonable plan, we are willing to risk danger. Remember, we served him for many years. We know every part of the château —the dungeon, the storerooms, the servants’ quarters. Everything except the upper floors.”

Petrus didn’t want to give too much information about the château, but he couldn’t stop Linda, who seemed eager to show how genuine their remorse was.

Abraham had always known his parents once served the Lord, but it was the first time he had heard about a secret escape tunnel. Still, part of his mind lingered on Melisa. Telling his parents that she, too, had been arrested and taken to the dungeon felt wrong. He chose to remain silent, thinking they would learn it themselves once they went to the center of the island. After all, everyone was trying to find a way to save the girl.

The silence was broken by Linda:
“Before I forget, there’s something I must show you, my son.”

They went together to the place where the laboratory mice were kept. When Abraham noticed that the teeth of one group of mice were different from those of the other group, he murmured, “Now something becomes clear,” and began to explain:

“As you can see, the stains on the teeth of these mice resemble the marks on the teeth of Sealed girls like Melisa. But the other group has no such stained teeth. Why is that?”

After asking the question, he answered it himself:

“These mice in what we call the control group drank the same water we drink—the water my mother brings every day from the well in the château. That’s why their teeth are normal. But the mice in the experiment group drank water from the lake, and their teeth became stained like this. So, as you can see, something mixed into the lake water is causing the discoloration.

In other words, the Lord’s claim—that the stained teeth of the Sealed are a punishment for disobeying God’s command and marrying someone other than the one chosen for them—is simply not true. The truth is this: the Lord has the newborn babies at the farm drink from the lake water, and that is what causes their teeth to become stained.”

Linda stepped in and, after telling Abraham he was right, added:

“We were never allowed inside the room where the château’s water wells are kept. But a few times, when the door opened, I saw three separate wells inside, each far apart from the others. That substance contaminating the lake water might be in one of those wells. They could be giving water from that well to the Sealed, and from the other wells to us.”

Abraham clenched his right hand into a fist and rested it beneath his chin.

“And that,” he said, “is also why he opposed our project to distill the lake water. He feared his deception would be uncovered. If both the Sealed and the others drank the same distilled water, the system he built over all these years would collapse.”

Abraham stood up and began pacing as if walking out his thoughts. He took five or six steps, turned around, and repeated the same path. Watching him, Linda could tell something was forming in his mind. She whispered to Petrus:

“He’s about to lay his egg.”

Suddenly Abraham stopped and asked:

“Mother, how old was my grandfather when he died?”

“Fifty-one.”

“And my great-grandfather died around the same age. Many others we’ve heard of also died at about that age. Do you think all these deaths are just coincidences?”

Petrus answered:

“You’re right, but they all lived in the same region. Maybe something they ate or drank kept them from living long lives.”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying. What are they eating or drinking that makes them die at nearly the same age?”

Linda stepped in:

“You know it’s a custom on our island—perhaps rooted in belief, perhaps in tradition. When a person approaches fifty, they spend nearly a month in a narrow underground shelter, lying as if in a grave. The purpose is to prepare for death, to imagine the questioning that will come afterward, and to repent sincerely. It is meant to remind them of the reality of death and the responsibility of giving account.”

“Mother, you said that place is narrow like a grave. Then tell me—what is in there? For example, what do they eat or drink?”

“I remember from my father,” Linda said, “everyone brought their own food. But water was always provided there.”
The moment she said it, something dawned on her. Her eyes widened.
“Could it be… are the waters of all three wells different?”

Abraham continued:

“When I purified the lake water, I noticed that two different substances remained in the container without mixing. One of them, yes, stains the teeth—but it clearly doesn’t kill, since the ones they call the Sealed continue living. The second substance must be poisonous, because that is what kills the elderly. And the reason there are no plants or fish in the lake must also be this second substance.”

Petrus spread his hands and asked:
“But what could the Lord’s purpose be?”

“We don’t know for certain,” Abraham replied. “But, Father, I’ve had a theory since childhood. I always wondered—what would happen if the people on this island never died?”

“In that case, the livestock wouldn’t be enough to feed an overgrown population. Perhaps the Lord thinks the same way and adjusts the population according to the amount of available food. The rule forbidding more than two children supports this idea.”

Petrus and Linda exchanged a look. The same thought was passing through both their minds.

Years ago, during heavy rain, Petrus had buried the Lord’s secret wife alone. The rain had soaked the cloth wrapped around the body, causing it to tear. In that moment, he had seen the eight-pointed star carved into her back. He had been stunned; he had never heard of such a large tattoo on the island. And it was unlike the ordinary five-pointed stars.

Another disturbing detail was the deep knife marks above the star, filled with an unusual amount of blood—proof that the symbol had been carved before the woman died.

Petrus had told no one except Linda, afraid of getting into trouble. Afterwards, he regretted even telling her. They had long forgotten the incident until Abraham mentioned a book he had read in the library. The book described the beliefs and rituals of the Sumerians of Mesopotamia.

One sentence shocked them:

"They would offer human sacrifices bearing eight-pointed stars on their bodies to the god jupiter."

Abraham noticed that his parents were hesitating to say something and said:

“You’re hiding something from me again.”

Petrus smiled faintly.
“No, my son,” he replied, then told him about the woman he had buried.

When Abraham asked, “Who was the woman?” Petrus frowned and said:
“She’s nobody. No one important. And it has nothing to do with what we’re discussing.”

Abraham couldn’t understand why his father reacted with irritation, but he didn’t press the matter. Instead, he asked:

“So you’re saying there were rituals on this island involving human sacrifices, Father?”

Petrus answered, “I don’t think so. The woman might have done it to appear beautiful and impressive.”

Linda cut in:
“I think it’s possible.”