The Breath Box installed at the eastern highlands school had worked for
39 consecutive days.
It served 63 students.Four teachers.One custodian who used it to make tea every morning at 06:00 sharp.
Until day 40.
On that morning, it was silent.
Not broken.Not humming.
Just… still.
The first to notice was the school's science teacher, Halide.She checked the coil, the regulator, the basin.
Everything looked intact.But the mist never formed.
She sent a message to the Builders.
Yusuf read it aloud over breakfast.
— "Not functioning. No signs of external damage. Please advise."
Ziya frowned.
— "It shouldn't fail that way. Even in worst-case scenarios, the resonance loop drifts—it doesn't collapse."
Leyla was already grabbing her tools.
— "We need to see it."
—
They arrived late that evening.The sun had already dipped behind the mountains.
Children peeked from windows.They recognized the Builders now—like heroes from a storybook still being written.
Inside, the coil was cold.Power cell untouched.No corrosion.
But something was wrong.
Ece crouched beside it.
— "Someone cut the grounding wire. From inside the casing."
She held up the clipped strand.Clean. Deliberate.
Ziya's jaw tightened.
— "Sabotage."
—
They asked no questions of the school.No accusations.
But that night, Zeynep found a folded piece of paper taped under the desk near the prototype.
It read:
"We didn't ask for a miracle.We just wanted to be left alone."
And beneath that, in smaller writing:
"You are being watched.And not everyone wants water shared."
—
They brought the device back.
Repaired it.
Quietly.
Leyla added a new lock mechanism.Yusuf replaced the damaged node with a redundant fail-safe.
But the silence had changed them.
The Breath Box no longer felt invincible.
And that was something they hadn't prepared for.
—
That night, Emir sat on the roof, notebook open but unwritten.
Atatürk didn't appear in his dreams.
And the next morning, one of the newer workshop assistants found a symbol scratched into the back wall:
A spiral, broken at the center.
They thought it was vandalism.
But Çağla stared at it for a long time.
And then said:
— "This wasn't done by a stranger.This was left by someone who knew where to cut…and where it would hurt."
End of Chapter 113Cliffhanger:As the Builders investigate, another Breath Box—in a city across the country—goes offline.
And this time…it burns.