A gentle rain tapped the windows of Noor General Hospital.
It was a quiet evening. The kind that made people want to stay indoors, drink tea, and forget that evil had ever breathed within these walls.
But not for Zahra.
She walked through the corridors with calm steps, checking on patients, greeting nurses, quietly scanning for signs others couldn't see—shadows too still, echoes too cold, eyes too aware.
Ever since Dr. Iftikhar's fall, she had been more cautious. Evil didn't always leave footprints—it sometimes waited in silence.
She had seen too much to trust peace.
And she was right.
Because that night, at exactly 11:11 p.m., a patient arrived who shouldn't have existed.
He was wheeled into the ER by paramedics who looked… shaken.
Zahra rushed to meet them. "What happened?"
One paramedic whispered, "Found him near the old graveyard. Just lying there. Thought he was dead."
She glanced at the patient—male, late twenties, pale, soaked from the rain.
"Vital signs?"
The medic looked uneasy. "That's the thing. No heartbeat. No breath. No pupil response. But…"
"But what?"
"We tried leaving him. Three times. The ambulance wouldn't start until we brought him back in."
Zahra frowned. "You're saying the ambulance… refused to leave without him?"
He nodded.
They brought him inside.
She placed monitors on his chest. No readings.
Flatline.
Yet, the man blinked.
His lips moved.
Zahra leaned in. "Can you hear me?"
He whispered something. Barely audible.
She brought her ear closer.
The man rasped, "Where is the healer… of souls?"
She froze.
That was her title.
No one knew it but Arif.
She turned toward the hallway.
He was already there.
Arif stared at the man on the stretcher. "He came here… for you."
The man was transferred to Isolation Room 3.
Monitors refused to work near him. Every time someone tried to take blood, the syringe bent.
Every hour, he whispered Zahra's name.
By morning, the nurses refused to enter his room. His presence made their heads ache. Some said they saw reflections in the mirror that weren't their own.
Zahra stayed.
She stood beside the man.
"Who are you?" she asked.
He smiled faintly. "You healed what shouldn't be healed. Now they know."
"Who's 'they'?"
"The Watchers."
Zahra's throat tightened. "The jinn?"
"No. Older."
She contacted Mufti Rafiq again. This time, he arrived in person.
He entered the isolation room. Closed his eyes. Then opened them slowly.
"This is not a man."
Zahra's heart pounded. "What is he?"
The Mufti hesitated. Then said:
"Somewhere between life and death, there exists a realm—ancient, hidden. Very few know it. Even fewer return from it. But there are entities who guard it… and punish those who trespass."
He looked at Zahra. "You closed a gate. Now its keepers want answers."
That night, Zahra dreamed again.
But this was different.
She was standing on a desert plain—crimson skies, no sun.
Black shapes circled the horizon. Whispers filled the air.
Then a voice, cold and massive, filled her mind.
"You have touched what is forbidden."
She turned and saw a giant gate floating in the sky, chained in gold and blood.
"Return what was taken… or suffer the thinning of the veil."
Then she saw something falling from the gate—pieces of light… souls… burning as they descended.
She woke up screaming.
She ran to Isolation Room 3.
The man was sitting up—awake now.
His eyes were glowing faintly gold.
Zahra whispered, "What did you bring here?"
He replied, "I didn't bring anything. I am the message."
"From whom?"
He pointed upward.
Then downward.
"Both."
Zahra turned pale. "You mean… you're a messenger between worlds?"
"Yes. And the balance has been broken."
Arif entered the room.
"Why now?" he asked the man. "Why not when the doctor was alive?"
"Because his experiments were watched. But your actions were not. You invoked healing through faith and mercy. You upset the darkness."
Zahra stepped back. "So we're being punished for saving lives?"
"No," the man said. "You are being tested. For the next gate is opening."
Zahra whispered, "There's… more?"
He nodded slowly. "You think you closed the door. But some doors are living things. They remember the hands that sealed them."
He looked her dead in the eyes.
"And now… they're opening themselves."
That night, patients in the pediatric ICU began talking in their sleep—all at once.
Saying the same thing.
"He is coming. He is hungry. He knows your name."
Zahra rushed to the floor, reciting Ayat-ul-Kursi over the sleeping children.
Arif checked security footage.
In every room, at the exact same time, the temperature dropped to 6°C.
But that wasn't the strangest part.
In each room, the ECG monitors briefly drew a symbol instead of a heartbeat—a circle with an eye in the middle.
Zahra recognized it.
It was the same symbol she saw in her dream—on the floating gate.
Mufti Rafiq called it Ayn al-Tariq—"The" Eye of the Path."
"A symbol used by beings who govern transitions between planes," he explained. "It's a warning—and a countdown."
"A countdown to what?" Arif asked.
The Mufti looked at Zahra.
"To the arrival of something that doesn't just haunt bodies—but time itself."
The man in Room 3 grew weaker.
His body began to fade, pixel by pixel, like old film burning at the edges.
Zahra sat by his side.
"Can we stop what's coming?"
He whispered, "No. But you can choose what survives it."
She gripped his hand.
He leaned forward and whispered in her ear:
"The next gate is beneath the earth. In a place where bones do not decay."
Then he collapsed.
His body turned to ash.
And on the bed, drawn in soot, was the symbol again—the Eye.
Later that night, Zahra and Arif stood on the hospital roof.
The stars above seemed darker.
"We're not just healing anymore," Zahra said. "We're protecting something bigger."
He looked at her. "Are you afraid?"
She hesitated.
Then: "Yes. But I'm ready."
He smiled softly. "Then we stand together."
They watched the horizon.
And in the distance, a single black star pulsed, like a heartbeat.
Something was waking.
Something ancient.
And it knew her name.