They never find the lamp by accident.
It waits — in ruins, in temples drowned by sand, in marketplaces where time forgets to move. Always watching. Always listening.
No one knows who created it. No one remembers who held it first.
But all who touch it are changed.
Some speak of miracles: limbs restored, fortunes born from ash, dead lovers returned with beating hearts.
Others speak of silence — the kind that settles in after everything familiar vanishes.
The lamp grants three wishes.
Never four. Never less.
And never for free.
What it gives, it takes. Sometimes slowly. Sometimes all at once.
No two stories are alike, and no one tells theirs twice.
But the rumors grow, passed like smuggled truths between desperate hands.
They say the lamp chooses. That it listens for hidden desires, not spoken words.
That it remembers the weight of every wish ever made.
And that when it awakens again —
the stars shift.
The air thickens.
And the voice inside it stirs.