The night after the speech, Emir collapsed into sleep before finishing his tea.
The room was quiet.His pen still resting against the page.
When the dream came, it wasn't soft.
It struck like thunder.
Ankara, 1921.
Winter.
Snow falling without sound.Smoke trailing from shattered buildings.People watching him as if waiting to be told whether to weep or endure.
Atatürk stood in the center of a ruined post office, holding a cracked radio.
Static bled through the receiver like a wound.
He turned.
Not older, not younger—but unfinished.
A version of himself from the war.Before the titles.Before the speeches carved into stone.
— "We were losing," he said, voice low, boots sunk in mud.
— "We had no supplies.No orders from Istanbul.Just belief.And what little we could carry on foot."
Emir watched.
Atatürk didn't dramatize.He recited.
— "We wired together a broken generator from rail scraps and stove coils.It powered nothing more than a lamp.But the children in the tents stopped crying.Because they believed someone was coming."
He paused.
Then looked at Emir—truly looked.
— "This is your moment now."
— "What you carry isn't a machine.It's proof.That belief can be rebuilt from fragments—if you remember the conditions they were forged in."
He placed a hand over the broken radio.
Suddenly, the static turned.
Not into music.Not into words.
But pattern.
A tone.Oscillating.Layered with resonance and rhythm.
And underneath it—etched faintly into the wooden table beside them—a drawing.
Three concentric rings.Six symbols.Two lines of script in a language Emir didn't know—but somehow understood.
"Bind energy to silence.Bind silence to structure."
Atatürk nodded toward it.
— "This is the second fragment."
— "It's not a device.It's a translation system.For energy.For thought.For memory."
He stepped closer.
— "But understand this:you're not the one meant to decipher it."
He touched Emir's chest.
— "You're the one meant to deliver it."
Emir woke with a gasp.
Sweat.Heart pounding.The imprint of the rings still in his mind.
He stumbled to his notebook.Sketched it.Wrote everything he could remember.
And paused when he reached the final phrase.
"Bind energy to silence."
It didn't sound like an instruction.
It sounded like a warning.
He didn't tell the Builders right away.
He waited.Let the coil hum again.Let the Codex absorb this one quietly.
But Zeynep noticed.
— "You've dreamed again."
He nodded.
She held out her hand.
He gave her the drawing.
She stared at it for a long time.
Then whispered:
— "This… isn't from here."
—
Outside the bookstore, a new arrival stood in the street.Hood up.Hands in pockets.
Watching.
Waiting.
And finally, they whispered:
"He's seen the second one.It's time."