As the ship moved forward, the island disappeared first, followed by the trail of black smoke.

“Noah called out, “Crew, the time has come!”

At his command, the crew lowered the boat they had stocked with enough food and water to last for days. One by one, they climbed down into it and rowed toward a small rocky islet they had spotted earlier.

Once the ship had put some distance between itself and the rocks, it came to a halt. Until that moment, everyone’s mind had been occupied with what they had experienced on the island—but now, a new concern crept in: what awaited them next?

They were deeply shaken by what Noah had told them. Their feelings were no different from lambs awaiting the arrival of wolves. Their only hope was that the wolves would not tear them apart—at least not yet. Their plan was simple: the moment they set foot on the soil of the outside world, they would join the alliance of the righteous.

In the ship’s cabin, Petrus, Linda, Cindy, and the others prayed fervently for God’s protection against their oppressors:

“Lord, shield us for the sake of our innocent children and our elderly! We have no refuge but You. You alone command both the sea and the hearts of those whose hearts are as dark and restless as the sea itself. Do not abandon us in this world of exile.”

Abraham wanted to join these heartfelt prayers with the supplications of the prophets, but when he looked for the chest he had brought, he could not find it. Mark noticed his anxious searching and called out:

“My friend, stop looking for that treasure. It’s at the bottom of the sea now! I told you we couldn’t bring it.”

Then, furrowing his brows, he continued:

“Do you think we’re playing a game? You can’t act on emotion and put all of us—including yourself—in danger! Those men despise the very word ‘God.’ And once we step outside this island, I know you intended to use that chest to prove—through the oldest divine texts—that the belief in Divine Oneness existed before every religion. What would you have said if they opened it and looked inside? Besides, you heard it yourself: most people out there don’t care whether something is true or false. They only ask one question—Is the speaker powerful or not?
That’s why we must work and become strong.”

Abraham remained silent. He knew he had no right to contradict Mark.

Then Odesa pointed far into the distance with her index finger.

“They’re coming!” she shouted.

Seth glanced at Noah and said:

“Well, would you look at that—those men are approaching with a small fleet. From what I can see, there are three ships.”

Then, grinning, he added:

“I’m not saying you can’t handle them, of course! But in that glorious country you praise so much, we barely managed to find a single decent ship.”

“It is quality that matters, not quantity,” Noah replied.

Seth thought to himself:

“I’ll show you soon enough what that ‘quality’ and ‘quantity’ you keep talking about really mean.”

As Noah watched the approaching ships, he felt a hand touch his shoulder. When he turned around, the scene before him said everything. The young people stood in front, the elders behind them. Speaking on behalf of the islanders, Petrus said:

“Young man with the thin moustache, we can never thank you enough. Had it not been for you, we would have escaped neither the Lord’s cruelty nor the lava.”

With the emotional atmosphere intensified by the warm sea breeze, Noah struggled to hold back his tears. What he could not bring himself to tell them was this:

“You have escaped a Lord who killed sparingly, but now we are heading into a world filled with tyrants who kill the human spirit, values, and life itself as easily as catching fish. The worst part is that, unlike your Lord, they hide their pitch-black hearts well.”

Abraham, tears streaming from his eyes, embraced Noah as tightly as his small frame allowed and said:

“You promised us—we will see you again in the outside world, won’t we? I know you’ll keep your word!”

Mark added,

“I’m sorry for stealing the mines,”

and the sorrowful faces softened into faint smiles.

Odesa, her eyes glistening, said:

“The day you carried me unconscious from the prison, through endless tunnels and forests, I understood what true sacrifice meant.”

She knew Noah never touched women unless it was a matter of medical necessity, so she did not embrace him—yet it felt as if her spirit had left her body just to touch this warrior of kindness one last time.

Among them, the most fragile and emotional was Melisa. Her eyes, overflowing like a spring, already spoke all that her tongue could not. Before she said a word, Noah spoke first:

“Melisa, whose heart is so gentle that daisies alone can make her smile—may God always lead you to good people. I look forward to your invitation.”

In that moment, Melisa and Abraham exchanged a look; both understood what those words meant.

When Noah gestured toward Seth, they realized they should thank him as well. Seth enjoyed hearing words of praise.

He was just beginning to boast—

“There is nothing I wouldn’t do for humanity!”—

when he saw the approaching ships.

“All right, let the play begin! Everyone to your places,” he commanded.

Seth realized the approaching ships might be watching them through telescopes. How could he explain a group of people crying? Claiming they were weeping for mercy would sound absurd. Everyone quickly moved to their assigned places. Except for Abraham and Mark, all the islanders hid inside the cabin.

Noah and Seth began shouting at each other, then shoving one another. As the incoming ship drew close—so close that its gangway would drop within seconds—they started throwing punches. Out of the corner of his eye, Seth saw the first man leap onto the deck. Making sure he could hear him, Seth yelled at Noah:

“You filthy wretch, don’t you dare move! The stench of your rotten corpse will reach all the way to Istanbul!”

Noah had taken a few steps when the deafening crack of gunpowder tore through the air. His scream followed—and then the splash. Shot, he tumbled into the sea.

The man who had boarded the ship immediately rushed to Seth with two large, broad-shouldered brutes behind him. They tried firing as well. Though they couldn’t see Noah, they kept shooting into the water. They knew full well their bullets meant nothing—but for men like them, appearances were everything. If they could look useful, they could win their master’s favor.

The ship was soon crowded with rough men in tattered clothes, with tangled hair and beards—pirates, obvious from their one-eyed faces and the greed burning in the single eye they had left. It was clear they’d been hired for barrels of wine; everything about them said so.

A moment later, a man stepped aboard—silk trousers, velvet jacket, and a cane in hand—the one clearly in charge. When Mark saw the thick red ring on his finger, one thought ran through his mind:

“Damn it. I wasn’t wrong — these are the wicked ones known as ‘the others.’”

The man with the upside-down triangular beard—its base beneath his lower lip—had a peculiar appearance. He had braided the beard downward, which made Seth think of the goats on the island. “If these men are as stubborn as those goats, we’re in trouble,” he thought.

“What happened here, Seth? We were just about to assume everything was going according to plan and board the ship—then suddenly a fight breaks out, punches are thrown, and we hear gunfire! What is all this?”

“Sir, this zealot called Noah—the leader of the group we came with—lunged at me the moment he realized you were approaching. He shouted ‘Traitor!’ and tried to overpower me alive. I attempted to subdue him, but when he came at me with a razor, I had no choice but to shoot.”

“Judging by his name, he’s not a Muslim!”

“Honestly, I couldn’t tell. The man kept talking about Jewish beliefs I’ve never heard of. He knew things about Eve, the serpent—stories I did not even know existed.”

“Whatever. Judging by the blood in the water, it’s unlikely he survived. Now, what happened to the crew?”

“That so-called Lord kept us imprisoned. They entered the small island in the lake to rescue us. In the chaos that followed, we managed to escape, but we heard they were killed.”

Seth could see suspicion in the man’s eyes. He signaled to his assistant.

“Yes, Signore?” the assistant said, stepping forward.

“Go below deck and bring one of the men here.”

The assistant grabbed the first person he found—Petrus—and pushed him before the Signore. Trying to play the “good cop,” the Signore scolded his assistant for his roughness, then asked:

“What happened to the crew on this ship? Seth says they drowned, but claims he didn’t actually see how it happened. You must have seen something—tell me.”

In that moment, Abraham and Mark understood just how right Noah had been about these deceitful men. Although Seth had never said the crew drowned, he pretended he had, testing whether they would lie to protect each other.

But Petrus—and everyone else—had studied their roles well.

“When we boarded this ship, the crew was already gone. I wasn’t there when it happened, but all we know is that they were killed by the Lord’s men. They must have been wounded in the chaos and died,” he said.

He briefly considered bowing before the Signore, but stopped himself—doing so might reveal that he had been instructed beforehand on how to behave and what to say.

As he was about to leave, the Signore’s assistant signaled for him to bow. Petrus obeyed. He had bowed before the Lord as well, saying:

“Before our master, the representative of God—whatever he commands!”

But he just barely avoided repeating the same mistake now. Not knowing what else to say, he remained silent.

Once he had bowed before a pious-looking Lord; now he was bowing before this man instead.

The Signore, satisfied with the answer, concluded that Seth had told the truth. This eased not only Seth’s worries but the islanders’ as well. They were now certain that Seth, acting out of self-interest, would not betray them.

While Abraham scanned the sea from the corner of his eye, he noticed something small—like a narrow reed—moving upright across the water’s surface. He wasn’t entirely sure of what he had seen, for the object was the same blue as the sea. And with sunlight slipping through the dark clouds and shimmering on the water, spotting such a tiny stick was nearly impossible. For that reason, there was almost no chance the men on the ship would notice it.

Realizing that Noah must be breathing through this tube as he moved beneath the surface, Abraham felt relieved. According to the plan, Noah was not supposed to be wounded. From the blood in the water, they had assumed Seth had shot him, but since Noah had fallen backward so quickly, no one had been able to tell where he was actually hurt. Seth had not sabotaged the plan—but he had certainly given Noah a “surprise” he would never forget. Whether Seth truly wanted him dead or not remained unclear.

When Abraham saw Noah’s blood spreading through the sea, for a moment he considered detonating the last mine, shouting in his mind:

“To hell with all of you, you wretches!”

But he held himself back.

Their hope proved right—Noah had not died, though he was suffering pain worse than death. The bullet had only grazed his arm, but the saltwater seeping into the wound caused him unbearable agony. Gritting his teeth through the torment, he pushed forward, sometimes even using his injured arm as he swam beneath the surface.

Fortunately, when Noah saw that the ship seized by the mystical order was sailing in the opposite direction, he surfaced and called out to his friends waiting for him on the rocky islet, raising his uninjured arm to make himself visible. He had no strength left; he could faint at any moment. Fearing the worst, his friends emerged from their hiding place among the rocks and rowed toward him. Half-unconscious, Noah was lifted into the boat. They immediately bandaged his wound to stop the bleeding. Slowly, Noah regained awareness. When he began cursing Seth and his thick moustache, he added:

“He’s a scoundrel, but not a murderer. He didn’t shoot me in the stomach. And knowing I’m a good sailor, he must have guessed I could survive with one arm. As painful as the saltwater is, he also knew it would cauterize the wound and stop the bleeding. That mangy dog must have calculated that I’d pass out from the pain—or maybe he wanted me to die in agony, I don’t know! If you hadn’t come, I would have drowned.”

When the oppressed saw the Signore walking toward the cabin, they quickly lowered their hands, which they had raised in prayer. As the door opened and the Signore saw young and old islanders crowded inside, he said:

“Thank God—you’re all safe!”

When no one responded, he continued:

“What now? Don’t you believe in God? Is this behavior befitting of you?”

But the islanders, having studied their roles carefully—and frightened by the man they called Signore, whose long nose, pointed chin, protruding ears, and shiny clothes reminded them of the demon figures in old icons—remained silent.

Finally, one of them felt compelled to speak:

“If there were a God, He would have pity on us and spare us from disaster!”

Hearing this, the Signore burst into laughter, unable to hide his delight.
This was the mystical order’s favorite tactic: approach someone in distress and whisper that if a God existed, He would certainly help—or that, if He did exist, He must be cruel and merciless. Their goal was to turn the sufferer’s anger toward God.

Because the Signore himself was a schemer, he trusted no one. Leaning toward Seth, he whispered:

“So, where are those who supposedly believe in Divine Oneness?”

Seth had anticipated this question. He knew these men, having heard things from the tower about the island, would be particularly attentive to religious matters:

“Sir, the true believers in Divine Oneness stayed behind. They thought God would help them, so they wished to remain on the island. Most of the ones who came with us either believe in our sky gods or have no faith at all. A few believe in God only out of custom—tradition, really—and I thought we could guide those few as needed.”

To verify Seth’s words, the Signore questioned the islanders:

“Who is your greatest god?”

He heard a chorus reply, “Ismar, Sin, and Sames,” though he sensed that not everyone had answered the same way. He ignored this. What mattered to him was that none of them mentioned the One Creator worshipped by Jews as Yehoda, by Christians as God, by Muslims as Allah.

Turning again to Seth, he asked:

“Which one is the alchemist who spoke from the tower on the island?”

“Sir, he disappeared shortly before we reached the island. We don’t know whether he died or is still alive. His family searched for him until the very last moment, but they never found him.”

The Signore found Cindy, Odesa, and Melisa’s explanations about their father’s disappearance consistent, so he suspected nothing from them. But he was still trying to make sense of Ilius’s disappearance.

“What kind of work did he do? Alchemists work through a master–apprentice relationship. Whatever he was researching, he must have shared it with a student,” he said.

Odesa stepped forward and handed him the papyri containing formulas and research journals.

“He did his work in secret, so we never fully understood what he was studying. But we believe he was researching a more advanced way to carry sound across great distances. Skilled alchemists will understand these formulas.”

Everyone knew that the true reason this mystical order had come to the island was to learn the discovery related to sound transmission. They also knew the order would seek the formulas and the materials used in the mechanism. Mark and Odesa had therefore altered several of the formulas they had learned from Ilius, adding and removing details to make them useless.

Like a man who had just found a chest of diamonds, the Signore eagerly took the papyri containing the formulas and placed them into the cartridge he had brought with him. In his mind, the men known as “the others”—those with dark intentions—would study these formulas and instantly understand everything needed to replicate the invention.

The Signore explained to Seth that if the islanders stayed together, they might act collectively and resist. But if they avoided mentioning the discovery of sound transmission and presented themselves simply as rescuers who had saved these people from an unknown island, they could gain the sympathy of many scholars. With the atmosphere of victimhood surrounding the islanders, they could plant these people in critical positions across different nations and cities. Then he added:

“In short, we can use their misfortune to serve our purposes. And who knows—perhaps in the future, we may even use things that never existed on the island, pretending they were real.”

As they had planned earlier with Noah, Seth introduced Abraham for his courage, Mark for his alchemical skill, and Odesa for her command of ancient Hebrew words. The Signore assigned them to different places according to their abilities. The mystical order, not knowing Abraham well and failing to recognize his true talents, tried to use him in their wars against the natives of the American continent. He eventually found a way to escape. He did not return to his family, knowing that would be the first place they would search.

He began seeking the clergyman Noah had described—the one with the distinctive physical features—but the vast continent seemed endless. Abraham reasoned that because the priest knew he was being sought, he would likely stay in central, populated areas. The first place that came to mind was the Church of Our Lady in Washington. There he found the man he was searching for, identified by the cut on his right earlobe. His name and title also matched.

After answering the security question correctly, Abraham was certain he had found the right person. Staying with him and other sincere Christians, they tried to resist the mystical order’s attempts to sow chaos across the continent, spreading the teachings of Jesus and striving to turn the New World into a paradise.

Once Abraham set out with his strategy to fulfill his lifelong mission, he looked up at the night sky—blue and jeweled with stars—just as he had in the old days. First he remembered the island, then the loved ones he had left behind. His heart did not beat like a drum; it pounded like an exploding mine. No matter how he turned in his bed, he understood that his heart was restless. At last he diagnosed himself—his heart had raised a banner of rebellion:

“You spoke of truth first, and love for humanity—we remained silent. But enough now! Complete what is missing within us.”

The voice did not rise only from the left side of his body—it echoed through his entire being. And when he realized that his heart was not beating thump-thump but whispering “Melisa… Melisa…”, he immediately set out to find her.

With the cardinal’s help, he found her exactly where he expected—in God’s house, serving as a nun. His eyes told Melisa everything. Likewise, Melisa’s eyes were saying:

“How can I marry you when I have taken vows as a nun?”

But when the cardinal explained that the established priest–nun tradition did not bind them—that people could serve their faith without being official clergy, and that sincerity brought far greater reward—Abraham wasted no time. With the approval of her mother, Cindy, he married Melisa.

Although the idealists and the mystical order gained advantages over each other in different ways, neither side achieved complete victory in this relentless struggle.

It did not take long for Mark to find the renowned Dr. Wickens near Zurich. Mark both protected him—knowing he was a prime target of the mystical order—and joined his research. The order could not understand why, despite poisoning his food several times, their own men died instead of him. Because he was constantly watched by spies, they could not risk shooting him either. And when they saw that he never went to the police to report Newton’s death or the other murders, they eventually abandoned the idea of killing him.

Believing it would contribute to the progress of humanity, Dr. Wickens shared some of Isaac Newton’s notes with other scientists. The information he provided led them to believe that sound, writing, and images could be transmitted over great distances through energy. Inspired by this idea, scholars began to focus their research in that field.

Guided by the mystic order, Mark spent some time in Jerusalem. There he found Odesa. Seeing that she was no longer headstrong and sharp-tongued as before, but carried herself with the dignity befitting a lady, he wished to marry her. And when Odesa realized that Mark, unlike in the past, had become a braver man who valued women, she accepted his proposal.