The days following the creation of the crystal calculator settled into a new, strange, and intensely focused routine. The clinic, once a simple sanctuary of healing, had become the clandestine headquarters for a two-front war. By day, it was business as usual. Lloyd and Sumaiya continued to treat the endless stream of patients from the Lower Coil. Their partnership was now a thing of effortless, unspoken grace. He would diagnose, she would prepare the remedies, and together they would perform the small, quiet miracles that had earned him his sainthood. Their shared work was a grounding force, a constant reminder of the human stakes of their larger, secret ambitions. But when the sun went down and the doors of the clinic were bolted, a different kind of work began. The humble healer’s shop transformed into a laboratory and a war room. Lloyd would spend hours with his new creation, the crystal calculator. He began the painstaking, meticulous process of expanding its capabilities. He used the smaller Lilith Stones that Lord Qadir had provided to create new, specialized “chips.” He built a more complex memory unit, allowing the device to store and recall a small amount of data. He designed more sophisticated logic gates, enabling it to perform not just simple arithmetic, but also comparative analysis. His work was a constant, delicate dance on the edge of Sumaiya’s comprehension. He would explain each new component in his carefully crafted, mystical terms. The memory unit became a “stone of remembrance,” capable of holding a “harmonic echo” of a piece of information. The logic gates were “stones of discernment,” which could “judge the resonance” between two different energy patterns. To Sumaiya, it was a beautiful, esoteric art, like a master painter mixing new, impossible colors on his palette. She would watch for hours, her fascination boundless, as he meticulously carved the stones and soldered the delicate silver threads, slowly, painstakingly, giving his thinking machine a more complex and powerful mind. Meanwhile, she was engaged in her own, equally clandestine work. During the day, she would disappear for hours, using her position at the palace to navigate the treacherous, whispering currents of courtly society. She became a master of subtle, targeted intelligence gathering. She would listen to the gossip of the ladies-in-waiting, she would engage the royal librarians in seemingly innocent conversations about ancient family histories, she would bribe stable boys and kitchen maids for the scraps of information that fell from the tables of the great lords. She was hunting. She was searching for any rumor, any legend, any forgotten piece of history that might hint at a hidden source of high-grade Lilith Stones. Her search was a frustrating, needle-in-a-haystack endeavor, but she pursued it with a relentless, unflagging determination. Her belief in Zayn and his dream was the fuel that drove her. In the evenings, she would return to the clinic, and they would have their own private council of war. She would share the fragments of information she had gathered—stories of a minor noble house that had experienced a sudden, inexplicable rise in fortune two generations ago, whispers of a reclusive alchemist in the mountains who was rumored to have created an artifact of immense power. Googlᴇ search novelFɪre.net Lloyd, in turn, would listen intently, using his own strategic, analytical mind to sift through the raw intelligence, separating the plausible leads from the fanciful dead ends. He was her handler, her analyst, her commander, and she never even knew it. Together, they were a two-person intelligence agency, working in perfect, secret synergy. Their relationship, in these stolen, lamplit hours, deepened into something that defied easy definition. They were partners, co-conspirators, two soldiers in a secret war. The bond between them was forged not in romance, but in a shared, profound, and world-altering purpose. One evening, after a particularly fruitless day of research, Sumaiya returned to the clinic looking weary and discouraged. “It is impossible,” she said, slumping onto a stool, the fire in her eyes dimmed. “The secrets of the great houses are buried too deep. Every lead is a dead end, every story a fable. We will never find what you need.” Lloyd, who had just successfully installed a new memory chip into his calculator, looked up from his work. He saw her frustration, her flagging morale. He knew he needed to give her a new injection of hope, a fresh reminder of what they were fighting for. “Perhaps you are right,” he said with a quiet sigh. “Perhaps the dream is too grand.” He then beckoned her over to his workbench. “But let me show you the progress our ‘mud bricks’ have made.” He had spent the past week programming his device with a new, complex protocol. He had painstakingly transcribed the key information from one of his mother’s advanced anatomical atlases into a series of punch-card-like wooden slips. He had fed this data into his machine, storing the fundamental architecture of the human body in its new, expanded memory. He turned to her. “Give me an ailment. A common one.” “A fever,” she said, her voice listless. Lloyd entered the symptom into the machine. He then added a second piece of data: ‘Patient is a child, age five.’ And a third: ‘Accompanied by a dry, hacking cough.’ The calculator hummed to life, the azure light flowing through its silver veins in a complex, analytical pattern. It was cross-referencing the symptoms against the anatomical data stored in its memory. After a few seconds, the central crystal glowed, and a series of shimmering words appeared. [PROBABILITY ANALYSIS:] [1. BRONCHIAL INFLAMMATION: 87%] [2. VIRAL INFECTION (COMMON STRAIN): 11%] [3. ALLERGIC REACTION (ENVIRONMENTAL): 2%] [RECOMMENDED TREATMENT (BRONCHIAL INFLAMMATION):] [HERBAL MIXTURE 7B: SALIX ALBA (3 PARTS), THYMUS VULGARIS (2 PARTS), GLYCYRRHIZA GLABRA (1 PART). ADMINISTER AS WARM INFUSION THREE TIMES DAILY.] Sumaiya stared at the glowing words, her exhaustion and discouragement vanishing in an instant, replaced by a fresh wave of pure, unadulterated shock. The machine had not just performed a calculation. It had performed a diagnosis. It had taken a set of symptoms and produced a logical, reasoned, and precise medical conclusion. It was not just a thinking machine. It was a doctor made of stone and light. “You see, Sumaiya?” Lloyd said softly, his voice a low, hypnotic whisper filled with the promise of a better world. “This is what we are fighting for. This is what we can build. And this is just the beginning.” He had just given her a glimpse of the future, a taste of the beautiful, impossible dream. And as she stared at the glowing crystal, her resolve, which had begun to waver, was reforged, harder and sharper than ever before. The hunt would continue. And she would not fail. The diagnostic machine, the crystal calculator, sat on Lloyd’s workbench, a silent, dark monument to a future that only he could see. For Sumaiya, it had become a focal point, a sacred artifact. She would often find her gaze drifting to it during the quiet moments in the clinic, her mind still struggling to encompass the sheer, world-altering potential that lay sleeping within its crystalline heart. The demonstration had been a masterstroke. It had not just impressed her; it had fundamentally rewired her entire belief system. The world she knew was governed by the slow, grinding forces of politics, of inherited power, of ancient traditions. Zayn, with his quiet genius, had shown her a different path. He had shown her a world that could be reshaped not by swords or edicts, but by the relentless, beautiful power of pure logic. Her admiration for him, which had been born in the fires of the Dahaka Jungle and solidified by the miracle in the Qadir sickroom, now underwent its final, glorious transformation. It was no longer just respect or gratitude. It was a profound, unshakeable, and almost religious faith. She saw in him not just a good man, but a pivotal figure in history, a prophet of a new age, a man whose potential was so vast, so magnificent, that it was a crime against the gods themselves for it to be constrained. And it was constrained. She saw it every day. She saw the brilliance of his mind, a mind that could conceive of a thinking machine, being forced to spend its precious hours tending to the petty, mundane ailments of the slum. She saw his frustration, his quiet, scholarly despair as he looked at his crude, B-grade Lilith Stones, knowing they were inadequate for his true, grand vision. He was a master architect, and the world had given him nothing but mud and straw to build his cathedral. This realization ignited a new fire in her soul. It was a fierce, burning, and profoundly righteous anger. The initial guilt she had felt for dragging him into the dangerous world of the court was gone, replaced by a new, even more powerful sense of responsibility. It was no longer enough to simply protect him. She now saw that it was her sacred duty to unleash him.