The night I first whispered the sacred rhythm of Surah Al-Ikhlas, the air around me changed.

  I had been sitting alone, a quiet seeker of unseen worlds, a follower of the strange spiritual philosophy taught by Allan Kardec. Kardecists believe that the veil between worlds is thin, and that spirits speak if the mind is calm enough to hear them. That night, as the chant echoed softly in my room, something stirred behind my forehead—my Bathni Aankh, the inner eye.

  The world folded.

  Not with thunder or light, but with a slow dissolving of ordinary reality. Walls softened into mist, and before me appeared a landscape that no earthly geography could claim.

  The sky was dim and heavy, colored like cooled asphalt after rain. Beneath it flowed a vast river, dark and metallic, glimmering faintly as if mixed with blood and shadow. It reminded me of the ancient wound of Chiron, a river of sorrow moving endlessly through the land.

  “This is the Abode of Black Death,” a voice said gently.

  I turned.

  She stood there—one of the strangest beings I had ever seen.

  Her skin glowed pale yellow, soft as early morning light. From her back stretched delicate wings, translucent and trembling like petals of golden glass. Yet her lower limbs were small and unfinished, as if the earth had forgotten to complete them. Instead of walking, she hovered lightly above the ground.

  “I am Al-Yahuda,” she said.

  Despite the ominous name of the place, she did not appear cruel. There was mischief in her smile, something playful and secretive.

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  Around us, others of her kind drifted over the dark river. They flew like grasshoppers leaping through air, sometimes folding themselves into tiny shapes. One moment a winged being—another moment a small yellow pomeranian-like creature bounding along invisible paths.

  “They change forms,” Al-Yahuda explained. “We are not fixed like your world.”

  She held a slender wand that shimmered with faint light. When she moved it, the surface of the dark river rippled with sparks.

  “But why does such beauty live in a place called Black Death?” I asked.

  She laughed quietly.

  “Because not everything rejected is evil.”

  Her wings folded slightly as she floated closer.

  “We are the abjected fairies,” she said. “Spirits who once belonged to brighter realms but were cast away—not for cruelty, but for curiosity.”

  Her eyes shone with melancholy.

  “We loved transformation too much. We questioned the rigid order of the heavens. So we were sent here, to the borderlands between shadow and water.”

  As she spoke, something immense stirred beneath the river. The surface bulged gently, like a living hill rising from the depths. From the water emerged the enormous form of a green jinn, peaceful and smiling.

  “This is Khalid,” she said.

  The jinn opened his mouth with a calm expression, as though welcoming travelers into a warm house.

  “When we grow tired,” Al-Yahuda explained, “we rest inside the stomach of Khalid. It is warm there—like a garden of quiet dreams.”

  I watched in disbelief as two fairies folded their wings and slipped gently into the jinn’s glowing mouth, disappearing into his emerald light.

  “Why show me this world?” I asked.

  She looked at me thoughtfully.

  “Because you listen,” she said. “And because you walk the path of Kardecists—those who believe spirits have stories.”

  The wind above the dark river began to shift.

  My inner eye trembled, sensing that the vision would soon close.

  Al-Yahuda raised her wand one last time and touched the air before my forehead.

  “Write about us,” she whispered. “Tell them that even the rejected realms hold kindness, trickery, laughter, and sorrow.”

  Her wings fluttered once.

  Then the Black Death abode faded like smoke over water.

  I returned to my silent room, the echo of Surah Al-Ikhlas still lingering in the air—carrying with it the memory of a fairy who lived in exile, yet still smiled in the shadows. ?