Just as individuals, tribes, and nations keep secrets, so do cities—and perhaps the world itself. There are the archives of hidden histories: the unseen hands that birthed empires, the underground arsenals prepared for an invasion no one speaks of, the civilian units that are anything but civilian, the state’s strategy, its vision, its undisclosed blueprints. These secrets dwell behind doors within doors—rooms inside rooms—what some call the secret chamber.

If a nation can have such a chamber, could the Earth, ancient and fatigued by its billion-year existence, have one as well?

Paleontologists and geologists—those who spend their lives digging through bones and stone—have long argued that science overlooks a critical question. Today, humanity spends billions chasing space. Astronauts are trained, rockets are built, and the brightest minds are fed into the furnace of cosmic ambition. We look up at the sky, veiled in darkness or glittering like a jeweled tapestry, and we wonder what lies beyond it.

But humans have always wondered.

Long before telescopes, before academies, before equations, people stared into that endless black, searching for meaning in a place where nothing alive could breathe.

The sun that lit the world so that men could work in daylight, the moon that guided them through night, and the stars whose usefulness was beyond measure—all of this led ancient people to believe that the Creator of the world and the universe must dwell somewhere out in the heavens.

Modern humanity, with its advancing technological capabilities, has uncovered that the limitless void of space holds horrors and wonders alike—black holes, wormholes, supernovas, galaxies. It is no surprise, then, that today’s curious minds are still drawn upward. Cosmologists claim that the universe expanded like an inflated balloon after the Big Bang, and that to understand how our world formed—and what changes await it—we must gather information from the distant cosmic sea, light-years away.

Recent data acquired through the James telescope suggests that such a goal may no longer be a fantasy. In other words, the Earth’s hidden chamber—its locked room—may lie far beyond anything we can imagine.

But geologists insist on the opposite. According to them, the Earth’s secret is not far above us, lost in the void, but close—so close, we refuse to look down. The oceans, plunging nearly eleven kilometers into blackness, contain more unknowns, more ancient truths, than all that glittering sky above. They believe the answer to the question Where did we come from? lies not in the stars, but on the seafloor.

The seas—far from cities, far from watchful eyes—have always served as sanctuaries for the wicked. Cloaked in darkness, where no light penetrates the depths, men have hatched their schemes of chaos and corruption. And when they sailed above, under the sun, they shielded their faces with anonymity—because no one can truly know whose face is touched by light, and whose belongs to the dark.

Leheb had been traveling for nearly eighteen hours. His eyes had been blindfolded since the moment he was taken. He had no idea where he was, or where he was being taken. From the muffled crash of waves and the distant cries of seagulls, he guessed he was confined to a sealed cabin on a yacht.

He noticed something else—the change in engines. In the beginning, when he listened carefully, he had heard the unmistakable roar of a land-based engine. A powerful one. He would recognize it anywhere.
His father had been a truck driver, and as a child, Leheb accompanied him on long journeys. That sound—the deep growl of a loaded truck pushing against asphalt—was tied to some of the only good memories he still possessed.

His father used to ask him, “Ready, co-pilot Leheb? Is the road clear?” And for a moment, the boy would feel like the world belonged to him.

Those days were gone—buried and silent. But the engine’s voice, that metallic thunder, had followed him into this darkness.

Leheb’s eyes had known nothing but darkness for at least eighteen hours. His journey had begun in the outer districts of Berlin. When the men he still believed to be his allies tried to fasten a black cloth over his eyes, he resisted.

“You’re overdoing this. What are you hiding from me?”

“Don’t take it as distrust, Leheb. If we didn’t trust you, would we give you a mission like this? Would we be escorting you to meet the Millennium Leader—someone so few have ever seen?”

Leheb had no answer. The word millennium echoed oddly in his mind; to him, it conjured hysterical crowds driven mad by pop culture, not reverence. He could not help recalling the ancient warning: the children of Habil were advised to keep their distance from the children of Kabil—the drummers, the musicians, the ones who led hearts astray.

He assumed the term Millennium Leader was nothing more than a coded alias, designed to obscure the identity of a man who had appointed himself the destroyer of the infidel nations before the descent of the Messiah. No sane leader of such a mission would openly adopt a name like that.

Throughout the journey, he oscillated between wondering where he was being taken and what kind of mission demanded such secrecy. He was certain he had left Germany—and possibly Europe—behind.

He suspected that once blindfolded, the men had hidden him inside a concealed compartment in the truck, or perhaps wedged him among cargo. At the start, he had been seated on the floor of the vehicle. His legs stretched out; he could extend them further, but half a meter more, his feet collided with something solid. When he spread his arms, they too struck barriers.

From these cramped parameters, he deduced he was positioned directly behind the cabin, aligned parallel to the windshield.

Hours later, he heard dogs barking and policemen shouting. He assumed he had crossed the German border. But seven or eight hours into the trip, the truck stopped. For a long stretch, he heard multiple dogs, soldiers, and heavy boots circling the vehicle. The thoroughness of the search—the metallic scraping, the guttural commands—told him this was no routine checkpoint.

This was the European Union border, he concluded. And the truck had not crossed unnoticed.

About an hour and a half after the checkpoint, he was removed from the truck and transferred into another vehicle. The scent that struck him first—seaweed and fish, sharp and damp—told him he was near water. The cramped space, the metallic clatter, and the rhythmic slap of waves against a hull made it clear he was now inside a speedboat of some kind.

The vessel halted every hour. That alone confirmed it couldn’t be a cruise liner or anything large; crowded ships crawling with police and civilians would have been suicidal for an underground operation. As always, small speedboats were the safest arteries for human trafficking and illicit cargo.

The pauses, predictable and mechanical, had a single explanation: fuel. These machines had limited tanks; stopping at marinas for brief refills was inevitable.

Leheb had expected a journey of a few hours. Not ten.

What destination required such a distance? A remote coast, perhaps—a forgotten port city. Maybe Africa. Maybe somewhere in the Middle East. Crossing the Atlantic to reach the Americas was implausible. He knew little about maritime routes, but he was certain there were no neat strings of islands spaced exactly one hour apart—floating fuel stations for fugitives. If there were, he had never seen them on any map.

Then again, why would he? Before his family fled to Berlin, Kabul and the Pacific Ocean might as well have existed in different universes—like black and white, two colors with nothing in common but their contrast.

Short, dark-skinned, unmistakably Afghan, Leheb wondered why the so-called Millennium Leader had chosen him for a mission whispered as “special and classified.” What purpose could he serve? With his appearance, he attracted suspicion everywhere he went.

It made no sense that he had been brought across borders just to carry out a suicide bombing—the group’s most basic tactic. Explosives were cheap, local, easy to obtain online or through the organization’s network. He had already assured them that sacrificing his body for God required no sermons, no encouraging pills.

No, no, he thought. If this were about dying, they would not have dragged me this far.

So what was it?

And why had the organization insisted he see the country’s most renowned neurosurgeon? Why fabricate headaches so severe he could barely stand? Why undergo tests and scans if the mission was simply martyrdom?

Worst of all was the surgeon himself—smiling, polite, refusing payment, the kind of benevolent infidel he despised.

Damn these humanist, benevolent unbelievers, he hissed inwardly. Because of people like them, Muslims are deceived—made into servants of infidels who pretend to care.

He felt himself like a mass of magma, building up in stages, ready to erupt. He knew the boat had stopped because he could no longer hear the engine.
Why were they still keeping him waiting?

Hours of darkness had severely damaged his state of mind. In these moments, when his hatred toward traitors and infidels peaked, the fear and uncertainty imposed by the darkness turned him into a living volcano on the verge of explosion.

At those moments, he muttered through clenched teeth,
“What kind of operation is this? First they blindfold me and shove me into a truck, then into some cramped compartment on a boat. I can’t make sense of it.”

As if the darkness wasn’t enough, his hands were also tightly bound. Once, he had managed to snap the ropes—only to end up screaming like a madman.

Right next to the speedboat Leheb occupied, there was a massive cruise ship. No one knew

why such an enormous vessel had anchored a few hundred meters off the coast or why it had remained motionless for months.

But anyone observing from afar could tell, from the cavalcade of luxury yachts approaching it one after another, that it was not a place for families.

The sight said it all: men with cigars pressed between their lips, tuxedos draped over their shoulders, two half-naked, heavily made-up women dangling off each arm.

People in the area seemed used to it.There are two twin siblings that rob a person of reason, make them dull, thoughtless, blind to tomorrow: gambling and lust.

These twins rarely come together in the light of day. They meet in the dark corners of cities, in places run by illegal men. On this earth, there are only a few legitimate spaces where they can openly coexist.

That was why no one found it strange that suitcases filled with cash and yachts filled with women circled the ship like moths around a flame.

A little ahead of the cruise ship, where night met the deep sea, floated a medium-sized black vessel.

It was as if light itself refused to approach it.

For the ship and the waters around it were submerged in the thickest possible darkness.

Not once had anyone seen the so-called Millennium Leader set foot on the cruise ship’s deck—let alone leave the vessel. His greatest pleasure was simply to sit hidden in the shadows and listen to the mingling sounds of gambling money and the laughter of men and women drunk on desire.

No fish ever gathered where the black boat lay.

Divers would tell of the strange sight: no algae, no underwater plant life growing beneath or around the ship. This had been known for some time, but ever since the dark vessel anchored there, stranger things had begun to happen.

Visitors who approached the boat would experience a sudden surge in blood pressure, racing pulses, and deep, suffocating breaths—like a dying animal gasping for air. And though not everyone could see it, some swore they witnessed a figure standing at the prow of the boat: an impish creature with long ears, a pointed chin, and too many sharp teeth—grinning.

Half hallucination, half reality—whatever it was, the mere telling of it was enough to terrify.

For these reasons, the few miles surrounding the black vessel had earned a name:

the Little Bermuda Triangle.

The door of the dark ship’s cellar-like chamber swung open.

A deep voice echoed, as if amplified through a metal pipe:

“Come, Demoş.”

“Honored Millennium Leader, forgive the disturbance. I mentioned this before, but I wanted to remind you. Unfortunately, we failed again. Despite all our efforts, we could not provoke the conflict, the hatred we needed.

The artist we paid millions to—under the banner of ‘limitless freedom’—and the politician, under ‘freedom of expression,’ tried with that caricature… to provoke the M—”

Demoş had barely pronounced the letter Q when the Millennium Leader’s roar shattered the darkness.

“How many times must I tell you? You will not utter their name, nor his, nor their book (Qur’an Kerim) I understand perfectly well what you mean without you saying it.”

He simply nodded, “Yes, sir,” and finished his report.

“In short, both of our provocations failed. Aside from a few violent protests in several cities and attempted church burnings, we achieved nothing. When Christian and Jewish clergy expressed support for Muslims, we lost all leverage.”

“Do we have to orchestrate everything ourselves?” the Millennium Leader snapped, his voice dripping with contempt.

“Let the far-right populists do something for once—since they are the ones who count on extremism to win votes. Do they not have clergy who worship them? When convenient, they seek fatwas from those same men—to justify their crimes, their pedophilia, their corruption.”

There was no light in the black vessel. Not a crack, not a slit through which even a trace of illumination could slip.

Worse yet, a foul, rotting stench seeped from one part of the ship—so thick and corrosive it felt like it would splinter bone.

Demoş suffered from it too, but the hefty pay and his ideological hatred of religion kept him silent. In his mind, he pictured himself as a servant of the Lord of Darkness he had admired as a child.

Despite years of service, he had never seen the Millennium Leader’s face.
On the rare occasions the master emerged from his chamber, he appeared only in a mask.

The Millennium Leader commanded a vast, global network, and Demoş understood why the man guarded his past, his connections, his operatives with such fanatical secrecy. He could not explain the stench that smothered the room, but he assumed—like heat sensors that detect the faintest change in temperature—there were devices capable of identifying a person by the unique chemical trace of their scent. Perhaps the leader cloaked himself in rot so no sensor could track him.

Questions were forbidden. Commentary was forbidden.
So Demoş kept the turmoil in his mind silent.

He was about to step out of the chamber when a thin voice, cutting through the darkness, spoke.

“Stay where you are.”

Demoş froze.
He recognized neither the tone nor the presence. No one—no one but the leader—could possibly be in this abyss of a hold. The vessel carried no one else.

Instinctively, his hand slid toward his weapon—when the voice resumed, accompanied by slow, deliberate footsteps.

“Calm yourself. I am the Millennium Leader—known by another name: Poseidon.”

A hand found him in the darkness, touching his shoulder. Startled, Demoş staggered backward and stepped onto the stairs leading to the deck.

The moonlight struck him full in the face.
He lifted his head—and froze.

Before him stood a man with a long white beard, short disheveled hair, and piercing blue eyes. Bare-chested, muscular, impossibly symmetrical in form—he held a trident-like staff with three prongs.

The shock crashed over Demoş in waves. His voice trembled.

“M-my Lord… is that truly you?”

The man strode onto the deck, raising his arms as wide as his chest would allow. His voice thundered across the water:

“I am Poseidon, Lord of the Seas!”

Demos understood it then—truly understood it.
The man the world whispered about as the Millennium Leader had shed his name and taken a new one: Poseidon.

And in that same instant, the puzzle fit together in his mind. The plastic surgeon they had abducted a month ago. The crates of medical equipment hauled onto the vessel under cover of night. The generators, the lamps, the surgical drugs. The whispers about unprecedented preparations. The reason the doctor had been strangled and dumped into the sea the moment he finished his work.

No one with that many secrets stays alive.

Demos had never asked questions. He did what he was told. But even obedience did not silence the instinct to make sense of the nightmare unfolding around him.

Poseidon laid out the plan, piece by piece, like a priest reciting prophecy. When he finished, he added:

“For all of this to unfold without friction, the island’s Historical and Geological Society will assist you. They already know. Their posters, their banners, their newspapers are ready. You need only speak the words—‘Poseidon has returned’—and they will understand.”

Demos nodded, preparing to leave, when he gestured toward the blinking lantern in the distance.

“My Lord, the young man—Leheb. You wished to meet him. Our men await your permission.”

Poseidon laughed—loud, guttural, thunderous.The sea rippled.

“Excellent. Bring him. And remind him of the rules.”

Leheb had been trapped in darkness for so long his nerves felt razor-thin.
He did not dare show it.
Displeasing the leader meant dying without ceremony—and without a body to bury.

Demos pointed toward the black launch. He nearly said Poseidon waits for you, but caught himself; the title was reserved for the island propaganda.

“Our Millennium Leader awaits you there.”

Leheb muttered, half to himself:

“So this is what I crossed the world for?”

No answer came. It wasn’t meant to.

Demos replied with the ritual line:

“You know only our leader holds the plan. Secrecy is our first doctrine.”

Then, leaning in close, his voice a venomous whisper:

“These infidels listen everywhere. Satellites, automated systems—always listening. That is why we never speak certain words aloud: code names, mission intents, and especially—God, Prophet, anything sacred.”

Leheb blinked.

“I knew they could intercept phones. I didn’t know they could listen from orbit.”

He nodded solemnly—pretending comprehension, pretending belief.

Demos watched him go and thought, with quiet contempt:

Idiot. Walk on, then. Sooner or later, you’ll be the explosion someone writes about.

Leheb sat hunched over the small metal table, buried in the dark of the hold. He assumed the Millennium Leader would enter any moment. The dim light leaking from an old fixture barely illuminated a few meters ahead—everything else was swallowed by blackness.

He raised his head—and flinched. A figure was already sitting across from him. Leheb shot to his feet.

“My lord, forgive me. I did not see you.”

“How could you fail to see a light such as mine, even in darkness?”

A response flickered in Leheb’s mind—Like a prophet, you shine.
But Demos’s warning echoed louder, silencing his tongue.

The Millennium Leader fixed his gaze on Leheb. The moment their eyes met, the pounding in his skull surged to a brutal peak. Ever since approaching the black vessel, he had been drowning in a suffocating unease. Now, just to remain upright felt like a war. His thoughts slowed, numbed—as if his mind had been replaced with circuitry, waiting for command.

“Listen carefully,” the leader said.
“Everyone believes you came here to receive some kind of hidden bomb. Let them. If anyone is tracking you, let them believe it as well. Such assumptions are useful. They mislead the enemy, and they preserve our plan.”

He leaned forward slightly, voice like a blade dragged across metal.

“Once, the digital world was chaos. Now, it is our enemy’s playground. Encryption, covert messaging, coded platforms—intelligence agencies break them all. Faster than ever. Every digital word, every instruction, intercepted before it breathes.”

Leheb tried to decipher the shape of his mission. Why bring him so far? Why all this secrecy? What was he supposed to carry?

The Millennium Leader answered the question before it formed.

“You are not a courier. You are a key. A single key that turns a vast machine. Factories, ships, systems—all obey the simplest mechanism: a key enters a hole, and everything awakens.”

He lifted a hand, drifting it through the darkness.

“You will activate a mechanism. And you will do it in such a way that no one—not even you—will realize it has begun.”

Confusion crawled across Leheb’s face. If he was a messenger, he would at least know to whom or to where.

The Millennium Leader spoke again, cold and precise:

“No. Not like that. You won’t carry a letter—you are the letter. And the key. You’ll deliver yourself to the right place without even realizing it.”

“So… are you turning me into some kind of robot? A cyborg?”

The Millennium Leader almost laughed. You already are my robot, he thought, but he did not say it.

“No. You’ll keep your mind. Your awareness. You will walk like any normal man.”
He took a few slow steps, as if pacing the darkness itself.

“But we’ll wait for the right moment. And most importantly—you will prepare. You will study. Demos will teach you how. Until you return to Berlin, you will stay where we have assigned.”

Leheb hesitated, then dared to ask:
“Why did I go to that doctor? That godless brain surgeon. Is my mission connected to him?”

The Millennium Leader looked at him—nothing more.
The answer was clear: Do not ask.

“I ask the questions here,” he said, voice like a closing vice.

Leheb realized his mistake immediately. He apologized, head bowed.

The leader called for Demos.
“Those two men—set them in motion.”

Then, looking at Leheb, he added with unsettling calm:
“Leaders walk on last. After them, you will step forward. And no one on this earth will be able to ignore you.”

Demos was already turning to leave when something troubled him. He looked back, careful with his wording. He could not say Messiah.

“Sir… the man we placed in the role of that… M—figure. He’s been exposed. Those two police officers you despise—uncovered him.”

“I suspected as much,” the Millennium Leader muttered.
“This operation will deal with them as well.”

Then, as he turned away, a private thought flickered behind his eyes, sharp as a blade:

And most importantly, I will teach those two policemen a lesson they will never forget. And the woman roaming around here—the activist doctor—I haven’t forgotten them either.