CRACK!
Delia blinked.
Looked again at the seal.
Cracked?!
Huh??
Seriously??
A very thin crack, almost invisible, split the seal from one side to the other in a way too neat to be ordinary damage.
Was not that crack not there earlier??
Now it’s…
Delia stood up too quickly, her chair scraping loudly, making Gisel look up.
“Del, what’s wrong?” “Hold on.” Delia walked closer to the jar, examining the crack up close.
The wax seal had not cracked from damage, no physical pressure could cause a crack this neat.
This crack came from within.
From pressure pushing outward.
From inside the jar…
From inside!
Shit!
Why this?!
Delia swallowed.
“Let the seal open on its own terms…” Alexander’s words from the previous night suddenly echoed very clearly in her head.
“If her blood truly resonates with your seal, it will happen in time.” Again, Alexander’s voice echoed.
Delia looked at Gisel, who now stood beside her with notebook in hand and a very curious expression.
“Cracked?” Gisel asked.
“Seems like it.” “Natural or…” CRACK!
The sound was not loud.
Not dramatic.
Not like in movies where an ancient seal opening is always accompanied by swirling wind and excessive supernatural light.
Oh, no such setting in this author!
Just the soft, consistent sound of old wax splitting apart, until the two pieces of the seal slid onto the table with barely audible thuds.
Then silence…
Gisel and Delia stood side by side, not moving, staring at the jar’s mouth, now unsealed.
Nothing came out.
No smoke, no light, no BOOM SHAKALAKA sound!
Just warm, sandy air, with the scent of olive and spice wafting out gently, like someone opening an old wooden box that had been closed for a long time, letting its contents breathe for the first time.
Gisel inhaled deeply.
Not in surprise.
More like a reflex.
As if her body was responding to that scent in a way that didn’t involve logic first.
“Fragrant,” Gisel murmured softly, half to herself.
And from inside the now-open jar, something moved.
No explosion.
No ten-minute transformation with maximum sound effects, or blue smoke like in the Aladdin movie.
All there was, was presence.
Like someone turning on a light in a room that had been dark for a long time.
Not a change that could be physically pointed to, but a change felt by everyone in the room simultaneously and undeniably.
The air grew heavy in a different way than usual.
Warmer.
More alive.
Gisel did not step back.
Delia noted this with the part of her brain still functioning scientifically.
Gisel, who knew nothing about Jinn and jars and seals and blood resonance.
Gisel, who had come to this museum for thesis references.
Gisel, who had only first seen this jar thirty minutes ago, did not step back!
Amazing!
Instead, Gisel stepped forward one step.
“Del,” she said softly, her eyes not moving from the jar, “you felt that too, right?
Just now?” “Yes,” Delia answered.
“Is that…
normal?
For an antique jar?” Delia considered all possible answers.
“Nope.” Gisel nodded slowly.
Accepting it.
Still not stepping back.
And then, softly, in a way that involved no sound at all, no physical movement from the jar itself, the atmosphere in the room shifted.
The desert scent grew stronger.
Warm like sand that had stored heat all day.
The cold white spotlight shifted to something more golden, warmer, like desert sunlight in the late afternoon, even though no new light source had turned on.
Above the jar’s surface, the dark blue gemstone glowed.
Not toward Delia.
Toward Gisel.
Full.
Consistent.
Like a compass that had just found its direction.
Gisel stared at the gemstone.
The gemstone stared back, or at least, that’s what it felt like to Gisel, and the expression on her face was that of someone experiencing something that had no name in her vocabulary but her body recognized very well.
“Hello,” Gisel greeted.
Not to Delia.
Delia held her breath.
And the room answered, not with a voice that could be recorded or transcribed, but with a warm, directed shift in the air, like someone who had not answered anyone’s greeting in a very long time and was just rediscovering how.
Delia stepped back slowly to the corner of the room.
She was not afraid, because she had already met Alexander first, mwahahaha.
But because there were certain moments where a third person’s presence was a distraction.
And her instinct as a researcher, as a human, as someone who had spent weeks learning to read supernatural situations, said this was one of them.
She just…
observed.
Gisel stood before Hassan’s Jar with her notebook no longer open, her pencil no longer moving, and an expression that evolved from academic curiosity into something far more personal in a span too short to explain logically.
But Delia was not trying to explain it logically.
Because there were things she had learned over the past two weeks, since the full moon night and the coffin and the blood-red-eyed vampire who still commented on how she brushed her hair, that not everything needed a logical explanation to be real.
Some things simply EXISTED.
And their existence alone was valid enough.
“Gisel is…” Delia thought.
“She could never stay long with people who didn’t match her energy.
Always restless, always searching for something she couldn’t name, always a little too excited about things others found ordinary and a little too bored with things others found interesting.” Now, before her stood a creature who had been alone for thousands of years, trapped inside a golden jar.
And there was a girl who had spent over twenty years feeling like she never found a friend on the right frequency.
Well, well!
What would happen??
Delia did not believe in coincidence.
Dudu Yai also wrote about it in his third scroll.
“There’s no such thing as coincidence in the orbit of supernatural creatures and connecting blood owners.” All gravity.
All frequencies attracting resonating frequencies.
And maybe, just maybe, Delia was not the only one carrying that frequency today.
Gisel finally turned toward Delia.
Her expression could not be fully read, a mix of too many things at once, like a book page printed too densely.
But her eyes were clear.
Brighter than before.
More ALIVE.
“Del,” she said softly.
“This is crazy, right?” “Very,” Delia answered honestly.
“But I don’t want to go home.” Delia stared at her for three seconds.
Then nodded slowly.
“I know.” Gisel turned back to Hassan’s Jar.
Stood there in the way of someone who had just made a decision without fully realizing when that decision was made.
And inside the jar whose seal had opened, a presence that had long learned how to let go, learned that force never produced what he truly sought, did the one thing he had never truly tried before.
Waited.
Patiently.
Without magic.
Without charm.
Without unsolicited dreams.
Just present.