I force myself to breathe through the pain, to push down the panic clawing up my throat. The binding pulls harder, and I stumble another step toward Yasar before I manage to anchor myself with a burst of light magic. Gold clashes with silver where my power meets the chains, creating sparks that fall upward instead of down.
"Nesilhan." Elçin's voice cuts through my struggle—steady, analytical, the warrior-scholar assessing a tactical problem. Her storm-gray eyes track the visible manifestation of the binding with an intensity that makes my skin prickle. She sees it. Really sees it. Her expression shifts through surprise to recognition to something harder—understanding laced with fury.
She knows what this means. What it reveals about everything that's happened since Yasar arrived.
But she says nothing. Just moves to position herself between me and Yasar, one hand resting on her sword hilt in silent promise. The binding doesn't care about her intervention—it pulls regardless, phantom chains cutting through physical obstacles like they don't exist.
"We need to move," Kaan says, his voice rough with unhinged violence. Through our bond—that other connection, the one that came before Yasar's violation—I feel his rage and helplessness warring with the desperate need to find Banu before this realm destroys us all. "Can you walk?"
"I don't have a choice." I force the words past gritted teeth, channeling fury into strength the way I've learned to do over these brutal months. The binding might drag at me with every step, but I'll drag it right back. "Let's find her and get out of this nightmare."
The landscape around us writhes and warps in impossible geometries, as if reality itself has been unmoored. Trees thrust gnarled roots toward a churning sky that seems to exist only in feverish flickers. Rivers defy gravity, flowing sideways and upwards, cutting through stone as easily as flesh. And everywhere, spirits haunt the broken terrain.
They drift through the venomous ground in translucent hordes, glowing faintly with their own internal torment. Some have faces that almost coalesce into familiarity before dissolving again. Others manifest only as discordant shrieks given form, raging silently in their own personal purgatories. Our presence goes unnoticed, irrelevant to their eternal anguish.
"There." Yasar extends an elegant hand ahead, his voice carrying a note of urgency. "Do you feel it?"
I do. Beneath the pain of the binding, beneath my own chaotic twilight magic, there's a familiar signature pulsing in the distance. Fairy magic—bright and wild and distinctly Banu's. It's faint, weakened by captivity or injury or both, but it's there.
She's alive.
Relief floods through me so intensely my knees almost buckle. Four months of searching, of dreaming about her torn wings and silver blood, and she's actually here. We can actually save her.
"That way," I confirm, starting forward. The binding immediately pulls harder, redirecting my path slightly toward Yasar. I compensate, fighting for every step, golden light flaring around my clenched fists.
We move deeper into the Veil as a strange, fractured unit—Kaan leading with his shadows sweeping for threats, me following Banu's trail while battling the binding's constant tug, Yasar keeping pace at a distance that satisfies neither the chains nor his own complicated guilt, and Elçin guarding our rear with the silent intensity of someone cataloguing every detail for future reckoning.
The realm resists us with each step.
Gravity shifts without warning, sending us stumbling sideways across what used to be vertical. Time stutters—one moment we're walking, the next we've already arrived at a destination we haven't reached yet, then we're back at the beginning wondering if we moved at all.
And then the memories begin.
The first one hits hard—the world dissolving into that night four months ago. I'm in the dungeons again, my back against the cold stone, and Banu is crying against my neck. But it's not Banu. It's never been Banu.
"Nesilhan!" The false friend's voice is perfect, desperate, broken in exactly the right ways.
And then the knife.
Cold sliding through silk, through skin, through everything I am. My breath catches not from pain but from the betrayal that cuts deeper than any blade. The warmth spreading across my stomach, Elçin's scream echoing off stone walls, my own heartbeat slowing as the world blurs at the edges.
I'm dying. Our baby is dying.
And then Kaan is there, his face raw with a terror I've never seen before, and he's making a choice?—
"It's not real." Someone shakes my shoulder hard enough to jar me back to the present. Elçin's face swims into focus, her expression fierce. "The Veil is showing you the past. Don't let it pull you under."
I blink, gasping, and realize I've stopped moving. Tears stream down my face—when did I start crying?—and my hand is pressed against the scar on my abdomen through my leathers. The binding has pulled me almost to Yasar during my moment of weakness. He stands frozen a few feet away, watching me with something that might be genuine concern or might be carefully constructed sympathy. I can't tell anymore.
"Keep moving," I force out, pushing away from Elçin's steadying grip. "I'm fine."
"You're not fine," Kaan says without turning around. His shadows have gone absolutely still in that way that means he's exerting massive control over them. "None of us are. This place consumes on exactly what we're all drowning in."
As if to prove his point, his shadows suddenly twist into shapes that make him flinch—a tiny form, barely visible, reaching for him through the darkness. A child. Our child. The son who never took his first breath, dying over and over in shadows that used to comfort but now only accuse.
But the Veil isn't satisfied with mere shapes. The shadow child solidifies, becoming horrifyingly real—perfect tiny fingers unfurling toward his father, mouth opening in a silent wail that somehow echoes through dimensions. I can see every detail the healers described: the delicate arch of his brows that mirror Kaan's, the curve of lips that would have smiled like mine. Beautiful. Perfect. Dead.
Kaan's expression doesn't just fracture—it shatters completely. Era of carefully constructed walls crumble as he watches our son die not once but a thousand times, each death a new variation of agony. In one shadow, the baby drowns in amniotic fluid turned to poison. In another, tiny lungs struggle and fail while Kaan's healing shadows arrive seconds too late. Another shows small fingers going still just as they almost grasp their father's reaching hand.
