He doesn't respond. The Veil has him completely, drowning him in every choice he could have made, every version of that night where he chose differently. I can see them flickering through his shadows—holding our son while I bleed out on cold stone, watching a child grow up without its mother, becoming the kind of monster who sacrifices innocents without hesitation.
"We can't leave him like this," Elçin says quietly. "The Veil will consume him."
She's right. I can feel it—the way this realm feeds on unresolved guilt, the way it's drinking in Kaan's self-destruction like wine. If we leave him here, he'll be trapped forever in this moment, living his worst choice on an endless repeat.
I reach for him, my hand finding his face. His skin is cold beneath my palm, shadows convulsing against my touch.
"Look at me," I say, softer now. Not the wife who hates him, but the woman who understands what it means to drown in impossible choices. "Kaan. Look at me."
His eyes finally focus on mine—black and drowning and so full of anguish it steals my breath.
"I see him," he chokes out. "Every time I close my eyes, I see him. Our son. Reaching for me. And I?—"
"I know." The words are gentle despite everything between us. "I see him too. But he's not here, Kaan. This is just the Veil showing you what you already carry." I press my hand more firmly against his cheek, anchoring him to something real. "We have to keep moving. Banu needs us."
"I don't deserve?—"
"None of us deserve anything." My voice hardens slightly. "But we're here anyway. So either you pull yourself together and help me save my friend, or you stay here drowning while the rest of us do the work."
The sharp edge of my words cuts through his paralysis better than gentleness ever could. Something in his expression shifts—the guilt doesn't vanish, but it settles into something he can carry rather than something that carries him.
"Nesilhan." My name on his lips is broken and raw and real. His hand comes up to cover mine where it rests against his face. "I'm sorry. For all of it. I'm so?—"
"Save it." I pull away before the moment can become something neither of us is ready for. "You can apologize after we get out of this nightmare."
His shadows steady, pulling back from their tortured shapes into something more controlled. It's not recovery—not really—but it's enough to function. Enough to move.
"This way." I stumble forward, and this time all three of them follow. Elçin falls into step beside me, her presence steady and grounding. Kaan moves like a man carrying mountains on his shoulders, but he moves. And Yasar follows at a careful distance, his earlier composure shattered into something that might actually be genuine remorse.
The Veil continues its assault—more memories, more guilt, more regrets made manifest. I see myself in the healing chambers with Kaan, using his body to reclaim agency while hating myself for needing him. See the moment I almost gave in to Yasar at the temple, when the binding made surrender feel like relief. See every choice I've made since that night in the dungeons, wondering if any of them were truly mine or just reactions to violation after violation.
"The Veil draws power from unresolved guilt," Elçin says quietly, her eyes tracking the spirits drifting past us. "That's why it's so dangerous. Not because it lies, but because it shows us truths we're not ready to face."
"I'm drowning in truths I'm not ready to face," I mutter. The binding pulls harder, and I nearly fall. Elçin catches my arm, steadying me, her grip fierce and grounding.
Ahead, the smoke-ground solidifies into something almost substantial—a clearing where the Veil's chaos settles into terrible clarity. And in the center, suspended by chains that glow with the same silver-light as the binding torturing me, is Banu.
She's alive.
Barely.
Her wings—those beautiful iridescent wings that used to shimmer with every color imaginable—are torn to ragged strips, silver blood seeping from wounds that won't heal. Her body is too thin, her light too dim, but her eyes snap open when she senses us. Recognition floods her face, followed immediately by terror.
"No," she gasps, her voice hoarse from disuse or screaming or both. "No, you shouldn't have come. It's a trap. It's all a?—"
The clearing explodes with movement.
Shadow creatures pour from tears in reality—writhing masses of darkness that shift between forms too quickly for the eye to track. One moment a creature has too many joints bentat impossible angles, the next it's nothing but a mouth lined with teeth that spiral inward forever. They move wrong, sliding sideways through space, leaving trails of nothingness where they pass.
The nearest one reaches for us with appendages that branch and split like diseased roots. Where it touches the ground, stone crumbles to dust, then reforms twisted—gravity forgetting which way is down. Another creature crawls along the ceiling, its body a constantly collapsing void that sucks in light and sound, creating pockets of absolute silence broken only by wet tearing noises as it feeds on the fabric of reality itself.
They don't walk or run—they exist in one spot, then suddenly exist closer, the space between never quite crossed. One phases through a pillar, and for a heartbeat I see its true form: a thing of exposed nerves and weeping sores, each wound a tiny mouth whispering prayers to gods that died before the world began.
The temperature drops so fast my breath freezes in the air. Not cold—absence. These things drag the very concept of warmth out of existence, leaving behind something worse than freezing. My skin prickles with the sensation of being watched by organs that aren't eyes, studied by intelligence that doesn't think in thoughts but in hunger given consciousness.
A smaller one—if size means anything here—skitters across the wall on legs that keep multiplying, each new limb budding from the joints of the last. It pauses, and I realize it's tasting the air with protrusions that might be tongues or might be fingers, searching for the scent of mortality in this place where everything should be dead.
Kaan's shadows erupt outward to meet the assault. Elçin's blade sings as she moves into a defensive position between me and the creatures. Yasar's fire-shadow magic ignites those impossible flames that burn dark and freeze hot.
