Jerusalem — 4:19 A.M.
The city slept on, unaware of the tremors running through Nathaniel Asher's heart.
He sat alone atop the temple's outer wall, knees drawn to his chest, the scrap of parchment still pressed tightly in his hand. The night air was brisk, laced with the scent of stone and earth, but Nate barely noticed it.
The words played in his mind over and over, like a drumbeat he couldn't silence:
"When the Seventh speaks, the Earth shall answer in flame."
What did it mean?
Why did it make his blood run cold, yet stir a strange familiarity he couldn't explain?
He looked out across the rooftops of Jerusalem, a sea of darkness broken only by the occasional flicker of a lamp or the silhouette of a restless traveler. Somewhere in the distance, a rooster crowed — too early — as if time itself had lost its footing.
Nathaniel shut his eyes tightly, willing the anxiety to ebb.
But memory, slippery and uncertain, gnawed at him.
He saw flashes — brief, chaotic:
A world of glass and steel.
Skies filled with smoke.
A great city crumbling.
Crimson lightning crackling through black clouds.
But it was impossible. This was Jerusalem, the Holy City. Such things did not exist.
He shook his head violently, as if trying to dislodge the images.
"You have heard it..." the cloaked man's voice echoed in his mind.
"You just don't remember."
Nate pressed his forehead against his knees. "What is happening to me?" he whispered to the void.
A soft sound broke the silence — the gentle scrape of sandals against stone.
He stiffened and looked up.
Brother Elias, one of the elder priests, approached slowly, his hands tucked into the sleeves of his robe. His face, usually stern, was soft in the moonlight.
"Couldn't sleep?" Elias asked, his voice a low rumble.
Nathaniel hesitated, then shook his head.
Elias settled beside him with a quiet groan of effort, joints protesting. For a while, they simply sat together, watching the horizon pale ever so slightly with the coming dawn.
"You know," Elias said at last, "sometimes the spirit stirs because it hears things before the mind understands them."
Nate glanced at him sideways. "What do you mean?"
The old man smiled faintly. "Dreams, visions, strange happenings — these are not accidents. They are seeds. They are meant to be pondered."
Nathaniel said nothing.
After a moment, Elias reached into his sleeve and pulled out a small, worn book bound in deep blue cloth. He offered it to Nate without a word.
Carefully, Nate accepted it.
The cover was unmarked, plain. He opened to the first page and frowned.
The text was dense, handwritten in a language he didn't recognize — but the margins were filled with notes and drawings:
symbols of stars, swirling winds, bolts of lightning.
At the very bottom of the page, scrawled in hurried ink, was a phrase:
"Seven Thunders. Seven Seals. Seven Voices."
His heart skipped a beat.
"What... what is this?" he asked.
Elias's eyes twinkled with a secret sadness.
"It is a record, young Nathaniel. Of things long hidden. Of promises made before the foundations of the world."
Nathaniel closed the book gently, suddenly aware of its gravity.
"Why give it to me?" he asked, voice barely above a whisper.
Elias smiled again, but there was a weight behind it this time, a gravity that settled in Nate's gut like a stone.
"Because you are part of it," the old priest said simply.
"You always have been."
Without another word, Elias rose and shuffled away, leaving Nathaniel alone with the heavy book and heavier questions.
The first light of dawn kissed the city's highest spires.
Jerusalem stirred from its slumber.
But within Nathaniel Asher, something older was awakening —
something that would not be so easily quieted.
He sat there long after the sun rose, the words on the parchment and in the book etching themselves into his soul:
Seven Thunders... Seven Seals... Seven Voices.
The echoes would not stop.
Not anymore.