chapter eight
677 Words
The next morning, she knew exactly what she had to do.
She needed someone who knew how to move through this strange world of secrets.
She needed the boy.
For a few seconds, she stared at his number on her phone. After everything that had happened, trusting him again felt almost impossible. But something inside her told her that if she wanted to understand the clues, she couldn't do this alone.
She finally called.
“Hello?”
It was him.
“I need your help,” she said.
There was a pause.
“With what?”
“The journey.”
Another pause.
Then he asked, “Are you sure you want me to come?”
She looked down at the mysterious object in her hand.
“Yes.”
That was all he needed to hear.
Later that day, they met and began their journey.
They followed the clues carefully. They walked through unfamiliar paths, checked old landmarks, and compared everything they saw with the information they had collected.
At first, it felt like they were getting somewhere.
Then they realized they weren't.
They had passed the same tree three times.
The boy stopped.
“Wait.”
She looked around.
“Didn't we see that rock earlier?”
She stared at it.
They had.
They continued walking, but somehow ended up in the same place again.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
“We're going in circles,” she said angrily.
“I know.”
“Then we're missing something.”
They searched again.
Nothing.
No hidden door.
No message.
No object.
Nothing.
She was beginning to lose hope when she suddenly noticed something strange.
It was carved into the surface of an old structure nearby.
She stepped closer.
Her heart stopped.
She knew that handwriting.
She had seen it before.
Her grandmother's handwriting.
“No…”
The boy moved beside her.
“What is it?”
She didn't answer.
She slowly touched the writing.
“How could she have written this?”
The boy looked confused.
“When?”
She shook her head.
“I don't know.”
The message wasn't written like an ordinary sentence.
It looked like a puzzle.
There were strange symbols arranged in a pattern, numbers placed between letters, and small marks pointing in different directions.
At the bottom was a symbol she recognized immediately.
The same symbol from the mysterious object.
She pulled the object from her bag.
The moment she placed it near the markings, something became clear.
The symbols matched.
Her eyes widened.
“My grandmother left this here.”
“But why?”
She stared at the puzzle.
“That’s what we're going to find out.”
They spent hours studying it.
They tried reading the symbols from left to right.
Nothing.
They tried the numbers.
Nothing.
They followed the arrows.
Still nothing.
She almost gave up.
Then she remembered something her grandmother used to tell her when she was younger.
She had always thought it was just one of those strange stories adults told children.
But now the words came back to her.
“Don't always look at what is written. Sometimes, look at what is missing.”
She stared at the puzzle again.
“What is missing?” she whispered.
She examined every line.
Every number.
Every symbol.
Then she noticed it.
One space was empty.
A missing piece.
Her hands trembled.
She looked at the mysterious object.
Then at the empty space.
Slowly, she placed the object against it.
Nothing happened.
She frowned.
“Maybe it isn't the object.”
The boy looked at her.
“Then what is?”
She looked at the puzzle again.
And suddenly, she understood.
The missing piece wasn't something they had to find.
It was something they had to solve.
She smiled faintly.
“My grandmother didn't leave us a message.”
She looked at the symbols.
“She left us a question.”
And somewhere beneath all those strange marks was an answer that could change everything she thought she knew about her grandmother.
They just had to c***k the code.
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