And the stars went out, one by one, starting with the North Star.
It looked like a cat had walked on a keyboard. But Aris knew better. He’d spent twenty years decoding Atbash, ROT13, and forgotten wartime ciphers. This wasn't random. The hyphens were too deliberate.
-ysh – maybe it’s - as a dash, then ysh as in “wish” without the w? -ysh = “wish” missing the w? So “wish” minus w = “ish”. No. -ysh z-yrh whym 2024
y (25) – 2 = 23 → s (19) – 0 = 19 → s h (8) – 2 = 6 → f ? No. He was tangled.
The hyphens weren’t missing vowels. They were . On a QWERTY keyboard, each letter in ysh is one key left of a real word. And the stars went out, one by one,
Four minutes to midnight, New Year’s Eve.
If Y=Why, then the phrase is a question about itself. He tried a Caesar shift where the key was the number of letters in "whym" (4). Shift each letter back by 4 positions in the alphabet. He’d spent twenty years decoding Atbash, ROT13, and
zyrh → v u n d → ? No. German? “Vund” isn’t a word. But if the hyphens imply missing letters… v-u-n-d could be found if you add an ‘o’? Or vund → wound ? No. Then he saw it: v-u-n-d. Reverse the shift direction. What if 2024 means the shift is 2-0-2-4 applied cyclically?
He started with the most obvious: 2024. The year. The present. A timestamp? A deadline?