Chapter 1: The Star Mapper

Al-Ula, Arabia, 632 AD

The dust of Al-Ula swirled in the morning light, each grain seemingly carrying the weight of a forgotten era. Layla had been walking for seven days without rest, her tattered sandals leaving fleeting imprints on the scorching sand. At twenty-five, her dark eyes reflected a fierce determination, but also the fear of being caught. Against her chest, a leather chest contained all that remained of her past life: fragments of knowledge rescued from the flames of the Sassanid inquisitors. Beneath her tunic, a copper medallion warmed against her skin, a constant reminder of the danger that pursued her.

The wind blew between the rocks, carrying the scent of dry earth and distant spices. Layla paused, wiping the sweat stinging her eyes with a worn piece of linen. Her gaze scanned the horizon, desperately seeking the landmarks indicated on the map of the Twelve Winds. The sun, already high in the sky, transformed the stones into rivers of liquid gold, while shadows stretched like menacing fingers.

Before her, cliffs rose, sculpted by unseen hands. Some formations seemed too perfect to be natural: arches, columns, almost human silhouettes emerging from the heat haze. Her heart pounded. She recognized these outlines, had seen them on a scroll from Axum: testimony to an ancient knowledge that could change everything.

Under this relentless light, the science of the stars intertwined with a sacred fervor. Each of Layla’s steps was an invocation, a prayer to escape her pursuers. Her feet sank into the hot sand, leaving behind traces that would not last. She closed her eyes, inhaling deeply. The air smelled of dust and a hint of incense, as if an invisible temple still prayed.

Beyond the shimmering horizon, she finally found the ruins of Madâ’in Sâlih, a Nabatean city where the stone breathed. The standing rocks, like sentinels, bore inscriptions carved in mixed alphabets: Aramaic letters, Coptic symbols, ancient hieroglyphs. All spoke of a mystery: a “fire in the water” and “ships that do not float.” Beneath the surface of these stones, it was said, pulsed a forgotten vibratory science. Layla knew these words. Her father had translated them before the Shah’s guards came to arrest them. That night, the books had burned… and with them, those who read them.

She felt a foreign memory pulsate beneath her skin. This place watched her, judged her. She sat on a sun-warmed block and opened her chest. Magnetized stones lay within, arranged in a complex pattern. Old, rudimentary compasses. Maps drawn on palm leaves. And, in the center, an object with amber reflections: a miniature Baghdad battery, copper and iron inlaid—her “Solomon’s lamp.”

A gust of wind brought the rustling of date palms and the sweetish scent of ripe fruit. Layla unfolded a silk scroll covered with Persian symbols and Coptic ideograms: the map of the Twelve Winds, her work. Twelve sacred ports, mirrors of the twelve tribes, the twelve apostles, the twelve months—so many steps toward what she called the Mirror of Heaven.

Seven days earlier, in Alexandria, an Ethiopian merchant had entrusted her with a burned manuscript, found in a forgotten temple of Axum. On its pages, a hybrid language, Aramaic and Coptic, described spirals, stellar alignment calculations, and a phrase repeated like an incantation: Bereishit announces the Son.

She brushed the blackened letters, slowly deciphering the only word written in Hebrew on the parchment: Bar (son), Alef Shin (divine fire), Yod Tav (hands of God on the cross). The Beginning, she understood, was a fractal structure—a repeated motif, then repeated again, identical yet never the same, a breach, a universe. Knowledge as ancient as it was dangerous.

She remembered the insistent looks in the alleys of Medina. The Khamsin. A secret order, serving a power that wanted to erase all traces of the Mirror of Heaven. All traces of true knowledge.

Layla took the Baghdad battery, holding it up to her face. A bluish glow escaped from it, like an answer from above. Her father had confided in her the night of her escape: “The subtle and strange power of this battery is a memory. A memory of what has been lost.”

She was sixteen then. The flames were devouring the family library. The cries of her mother still echoed when he pushed her into a hidden tunnel. “Run, my daughter. Find the Mirror of Heaven. It will show the stars as they were before the Deluge.”

She had run, crying, gasping, frightened, but without looking back.

A cloud veiled the sun. The air suddenly cooled. She took out a small copper mirror, tilting it towards the sky. The reflection blurred, distorted… A spiral appeared, similar to a galaxy in gestation, studded with newborn stars.

— Who are you? She murmured.

No answer. But within her, a certainty was born: this journey that had lasted for years was an initiation.

She slipped the mirror into the chest, under the false bottom, her hand hesitating as she touched a steel quill found in a Persian temple. She didn’t know why she kept it. Perhaps she found it beautiful, or perhaps it reminded her of something precious she had lost.

Night enveloped Al-Ula. The stars appeared one by one on the dark vault, until they formed a shimmering sea. Layla sat by her fire, the Baghdad battery within reach. She unrolled the Axum manuscript. The burned letters seemed to vibrate.

— Bereishit announces the Son, she whispered.

She traced a circle in the sand. Then a second, intertwined with the first.

— The Son of whom? Of what? she asked the desert.

The wind fell silent, but her instinct answered. The Son of the Beginning. And the Beginning… was an endless spiral, always larger, always farther away.

In the distance, a rustling of sand. She froze, her fingers on the handle of her knife. Her gaze swept the shadows. A silhouette? No. Only the wind playing with the dunes.

She rolled up the scroll, locked the chest. Tomorrow, she would explore the temple. Perhaps she would find the first key to the road to the East, to the Mirror.

Lying by the fire, the battery clutched to her, Layla sank into sleep. Dreams carried her into an inverted sky where the stars were mirrors, and strange ships of light drifted above the primordial waters.

Chapter 2: The Science of Letters

Mecca breathes in rhythm with the pilgrims’ footsteps. Narrow alleys coil like stone serpents around the Kaaba, where shadows dance between the columns. Ilyas ibn Harun treads silently, his sandals barely grazing the ground, as if each step must honor the sacred silence of the texts he carries within. At twenty-eight, he is already a man of science, but unlike others. His knowledge is measured by the depth with which he hears the letters sing, by the way they vibrate beneath his fingertips.