Teresa said, “Just as the fragments of the yacht folded into the submarine, this time the reverse happened. When it resurfaced, the parts unfolded, transforming the sub into a small vessel.”

Mark examined the stab wound in the corpse’s heart and, noting the absence of Poseidon and Leheb—dead or alive—reconstructed the scene with a detective’s instinct.

“Leheb must have entered the cabin. I don’t know what was said, but he must have convinced Demos that his loyalty could be trusted. Realizing their security had been compromised, Demos triggered a mechanism—turned the yacht back into a sub—and descended through the opening, leaving without a trace. And while the hologram flickered into place, we remained oblivious to everything.”

“Once they were far enough away, the sub transformed again into a boat. When Leheb realized he had a chance to act, he stabbed Demos. Then he waited for Poseidon to step outside—onto open deck. He knew he couldn’t kill him inside that confined cell.”

“How would he know that? Poseidon is a man, after all.”

“No,” Süleyman replied quietly. “He knew everything. I told him—the one calling himself the Millennium Leader, Poseidon—was the devil incarnate.”

“And of course,” Mark added, “you must have told him the creature was physically powerful, resistant to bullets.”

“That’s why Leheb seized the moment. He threw himself at Murphy, wrapped his arms around him, and dragged him into the sea. He believed the only way to kill him was to drown him—and in doing so, he drowned with him.”

“Then shouldn’t their bodies be at the bottom of the sea?”

“Who knows?” Süleyman shrugged. “Maybe a giant dolphin swallowed them whole. A water pitcher always breaks on the path of water. Considering that Murphy was the true architect behind the fossil conspiracy—and that no bodies have been found—I’d say this is how their story ended.”

                                                          *******

The sea looked rotten under the weight of night. The sky was black, the water was black, the vessel was black. As if every color had abandoned this ship out of shame. When Leheb stepped onto the deck, even the wind gave up making sound. The ship was not dead, but no living breath could be sensed. It was not the silence of death, but the silence after death, the waiting.

Demos appeared at the head of the stairs, his face torn between shock and humiliation. Yet fear was not his essence. Submission was.

In his eyes lived the core of every evil choice he ever made: obedience, blind, unthinking, uncurious obedience. Sometimes cowardice and evil were partners. He approached in disbelief, as if reality had betrayed him. Words gathered in his throat but refused to become speech.

Leheb did not wait. The death of this man was inevitable, the way night is inevitable after dusk. When the knife came out, the first thing that appeared in Demos’ eyes was not fear,
but realization, late and useless. As if his life had been one long misunderstanding,
and he understood the truth only at the moment of its end.

The blade entered his chest quietly, almost politely. His body accepted death without protest, without drama, without dignity. He collapsed slowly, and the ship seemed to sigh, relieved of a burden. Leheb did not look back. Demos’ body was not tragedy. It was arithmetic. The real equation waited below.

Descending the stairs, the air changed. It felt like the vessel had been divided into two realms: above, the stillness of death, below, the rot before death.

When the hatch opened, a dense smell rose, burnt flesh, dampness, and a third scent with no name. The candles were not candles; they were bones, shaped into wicks. Tables were marked with dried circles of blood, symbols scratched with black sand.

The presence of spirits made no sound, it made vibrations, pressure, weight.
As if invisible mouths were whispering and choking on every word.

A voice inside Leheb spoke: Darkness does not hide evil; it nurtures it. Then a silhouette detached itself from the shadows, slow, deliberate, like a creature mimicking human movement.

Poseidon emerged as if born from darkness, not stepping into light, but dragging darkness with him. The face was not visible, only the expression beneath it: contempt, disgust, vacancy.

He did not speak. A being without need for words does not waste breath.

Leheb’s first response was not fear, but a sharpened, divine awareness,
the kind that silences every small lie inside a man.

As Poseidon advanced, the candles trembled, the shadows shivered,
the air recoiled.

Leheb attacked, not with confidence, but inevitability. The blade cut through the air, struck Poseidon’s shoulder, yet made no sound. It did not meet flesh; it met matterless resistance.

Poseidon answered. The blow was not human. Leheb was hurled back, a table shattered,
glass exploded, blood mixed with liquor. For a brief moment, the shadows bent,
as if hundreds of unseen faces leaned forward in curiosity.

When Leheb rose, Poseidon’s mask was gone. Red eyes, not blood, not fire, but the chemical of hatred.

Ears elongated, the body shifting from human disguise to true form.In that moment, Leheb understood not the evil, but the immortality of it. He did not fear, yet his soul wanted to recoil. It was not cowardice, but the instinct God gives to every living thing.

The fight was short, because time was irrelevant. Poseidon was made to consume worlds,
not wrestle with men. Leheb only had one strength, the certainty of death.Tables shattered,
bottles burst, the floor turned a violent red.

And without a thought, before reason could intervene, he made his choice:

This world will not die. When Poseidon turned his back,
Leheb ran, wrapped his arms around the cold inhuman torso.

The moment he embraced him, time froze, as if the universe understood what was being done. Together, they crashed through the hatch, stumbled up the stairs, crossed the corridor with the sound of bones moving. The deck received them like a witness.The night inhaled for the first time.

The sea was silent, not calm, but expectant. Leheb whispered, not to Poseidon’s ears,
but to his essence:

You die today.

And without hesitation,held in a final act of defiance, he threw himself overboard,
dragging the darkness with him. A heavy splash, a scream without lungs, a curse without words.

The ship shuddered. Candles died out. Symbols broke. Spirits screamed. Darkness, for the first time, lost. The sea swallowed them whole, as if ripping the evil from the world. What remained on the ship was not victory, but the heavy, wordless shadow of peace.

And the night, at last, did not explain, did not judge, did not mourn. It simply fell silent.

                                                           ********

Many conclusions could be drawn from what happened, but the most meaningful of them belonged to Leheb’s story. At any moment, a human being can alter his inclinations, his desires, and, with that shift, seize the chance for an entirely new life granted by God. How strange the arc of existence is.

Leheb—a man who had once stood moments away from burning an icon of the crucified Jesus to ignite chaos, to spark a war between Muslims and Christians—turned back before crossing the final threshold of darkness. And when he did, when he abandoned the path he had chosen, the Creator placed into his hands something of immeasurable worth: the chance to prevent a third world war, a catastrophe being engineered over the island of Cyprus.

He took that chance.
And by doing so, he inscribed his name among the idealists of the twenty-first century.

The angels, witnessing this transformation, erased his name from the ledger of the age’s corrupters, and inscribed it instead among those rare souls whose loyalty defies despair—
the strange ones, the steadfast ones, who held fast to goodness when the world trembled.