What if Hurmaz had another motive for giving him this mission? Hurmaz had always swayed between doubt and faith about the Saviour ways and his Rules. Perhaps he wanted to put to test the rightness of Saviour’s words and to see how reliable the handwritten narratives are. When he had heard about such deaths, he had found a way of examining the Saviour Narratives, if the deaths were not related, he had to stay in doubt; it still wouldn’t prove the Saviour wrong, since the prophecy might have become true later on. But if they were relevant, there would be no more room for doubting the Saviour Narratives. And Tirad had proved them to be true! Even though he is more sceptic about the Narratives, the Rules and the Saviour followers than he has ever been before. He even believes finding these handwritten pages and the suspicious deaths of the pregnant women might just be a coincident. He can’t accept the Saviour’s prophecy to be true and undermine his Rules. There is no way to find all the original ancient texts, separate the scientific and factual predictions from the added fake and self-serving Rules of the followers. He prefers to deny them all. The Saviour Rules that has led to Hurmaz’s murder, the deaths of the refugee women and children, the massacre on the Parsana Ship and the war that is going to take many more innocent lives cannot be accepted by any justifications. Perhaps this is the reason Hurmaz and Armina had hid these pages, to avoid validating and confirming the Saviour Rules that would sacrifice human lives rather than accept the realities.

Tirad sobs aloud, in the silence and the dim light of Armina’s cabin. He has lost everything and has failed. He had left Lealy behind…lost his faith in the Saviour and the Circle…escaped…he was scared and had run away again…changed his name…lost his identity…but he could not live a normal life at the end. His baby was not human. He had only completed one mission, closing the case of the suspicious deaths of the pregnant women, but at what cost? The cost of never holding his baby in his arms? Or the despaired face of Dalia that would forever dwell in the pain of losing her baby? What good can ever come from such discovery? How would the sea people react to the dolphins raising their children? How can he reveal this to them and not make them afraid of having children and stop them from further killings of the dolphins? He doesn’t know what to do yet. Maybe it would be better if he kept it all to himself for now. They cannot fight nature and even if they do, there is no victory. But there is another war going on now and he might already be too late to stop it.

He wipes his tears with the back of his hand and sniffs. He gets up. It’s time to go and put an end to all this. He needs to take care of Dalia and find his way back to deal with Mart once and for all. He wraps Armina’s page and the other blank papers in her green scarf and rolls them in a small, leather piece he found on the floor. He ties the leather on his head. If he doesn’t put his head under the water, he can take the papers back with him to the boat. He has to show Armina’s page to Dalia. Even though she can’t read, but seeing the ancient handwriting might help her to calm down. She needs to know neither of them was to blame for losing their baby. Dalia had no other choice but to give birth in the water and even if Tirad had caught the baby, it would probably never survive on the boat. And how strange it was that the dolphins knew the baby belonged to them without having read any ancient narratives.