"You and Banu share more than friendship," Yasar confirms. "I've felt it through the binding—the way your magic resonates when you think of her, the depth of connection that goes beyond simple affection. Whatever bond exists between you, it's old. Deep. The kind that might be strong enough to shatter an Echo Prison."
Nesilhan goes very still beside me. "What do I have to do?"
I move before thought catches up, positioning myself between her and Yasar, my shadows forming a wall of darkness. "Nothing," I say, and my voice comes out rough with barely leashed violence. "You're not doing anything that involves thatprison or that binding or him." My shadows surge toward Yasar like striking serpents. "Find another way."
"There is no other way," Yasar says calmly, though he takes a careful step back from my shadows. "The prison was designed specifically to require?—"
"I won't risk you for this," I cut him off, my attention fixed on Nesilhan.
"For what? For her?" Nesilhan pushes past my shadows, golden eyes blazing as she turns on me. "She's here because of me, Kaan. Because she helped me, protected me, chose me over her own safety. I owe her this."
"You owe her your life, not your death." The words come out harsher than intended, but I can't seem to gentle them. Not when I can see exactly where this is going. "Look at that prison. You can see what it does—it harvest memories, on connections, on everything that makes you who you are. Using your bond with her to break it could destroy you both."
"Then we die trying to save each other," Banu says quietly from her cage. "Which is exactly what best friends are supposed to do. Stop being dramatic, Shadow Lord. Let her make her own choices."
I want to argue. Want to pick Nesilhan up and carry her out of this nightmare realm, consequences be damned. But the Eclipse won't wait, and we're running out of time.
"There's another option," Elçin says suddenly, her analytical mind working through the problem. "The prison harvest one person's memories. But what if we reverse the flow? What if instead of taking, we use the resonance key to force the prison to give back what it's stolen?"
Yasar's eyes light up with understanding. "Use the binding," he says, gesturing between himself and Nesilhan. "It's already designed to channel magic between us. If we can modify its structure, use it as a conduit?—"
"No." I move between him and Nesilhan before he can finish the thought. "You're not using that cursed binding for anything. It's already draining her. I'm not giving you more ways to steal from her."
"I'm not proposing we strengthen it," Yasar says, and there's something in his voice that might be genuine frustration. "I'm suggesting we weaponize it. Turn it against the prison. Use the siphon effect in reverse—instead of taking from Nesilhan, we use it to take from the prison itself."
The idea has merit, which only makes me hate it more. Because it means working with Yasar, trusting him, using the very magic that's been violating Nesilhan for months.
"Let him try," Nesilhan says quietly. "If it doesn't work, we'll find another way. But we're running out of time, and I won't leave her here."
I study the prison's structure, letting my shadows probe its edges. The magic feels familiar in ways that make my skin crawl. This isn't just ancient demon work—this bears the specific signature of Erlik's particular brand of cruelty. The way memories are layered and woven, the accuracy with which pain is extracted and repurposed, speaks of my father's refined taste for psychological torture.
"Fine," I say finally, the word tasting like ash. "But if this goes wrong, if he hurts her?—"
"You can kill me slowly," Yasar finishes. "Yes, I'm aware. Can we proceed now, or would you like to catalog more creative death threats while Banu bleeds out in front of us?"
The air around us suddenly shifts, magical pressure building until my ears pop. Nesilhan gasps, her hand flying to the crystal at her throat. The binding flares to life, casting golden light that makes the Veil shimmer and twist around us.
Yasar moves to steady her, and every instinct I have screams to tear him apart. But his focus seems genuinely on the prison,those unsettling eyes tracking the flow of magic between binding and cage with scientific finesse.
"Hold on," he says, his voice dropping into something deeper, more resonant. "This is going to hurt."
Then he begins to speak inKara Dil—the Black Tongue.
Not the crude demonic dialect I've heard in taverns and battlefields—the simplified version that demons use for basic communication. This is the true language of Kara Cehennem, the tongue spoken before Erlik and Gün divided our world into Light and Shadow fifteen centuries ago. The language of the original demon kings, before the courts split, before the realms fractured, when darkness held dominion over all creation.
My father taught me fragments of it over the centuries. Enough to understand the shape of ancient rituals, enough to recognize when someone is speaking trueKara Dilversus the bastardized version. But I never learned to speak it fluently—Erlik deemed it unnecessary for his heir. "You command through force," he'd said. "Leave the subtleties of the Black Tongue to those who must persuade rather than compel."
But Yasar speaks it like he was born to it. Each syllable flows with the kind of fluency that takes decades to master, and I realize with cold certainty that those fifty years he spent training with Erlik in Kara Cehennem weren't just about fire-shadow fusion. My father was teaching him the old ways. The secret ways. The language that bends reality itself when spoken correctly.
The words sound like breaking glass and burning wood, like metal scraping against stone and water rushing over rocks all at once. Each syllable has texture—some feel sharp enough to cut, others smooth as polished bone. They don't just fill the air; they reshape it, twisting reality around their pronunciation until the space between us and the prison warps like heat shimmer.
"Karal-thesh na'vorum," Yasar intones, and the air itself seems to inhale. The phrase means something like "I call upon the bonds that were broken," but theKara Dilcarries layers of meaning that don't translate. It's not just words—it's command, intention, and ancient authority woven together.
The binding's light pulses in rhythm with his chant, growing brighter with each syllable until I have to squint against the glare. Through our damaged bond, I feel Nesilhan's magic responding—not to Yasar himself, but to theKara Dil. The Black Tongue doesn't request; it commands. Even twilight magic, that rarest and most wild of powers, must acknowledge the authority of words that predated the very concept of light and shadow as separate forces.
"Beleth ma'karesh tun'dra," he continues, and the binding convulses, strengthening its connection to the prison. This phrase speaks of mirrors and memories, of taking what was stolen and forcing it to reverse its flow. I catch the structure now—he's not just breaking the prison, he's inverting its entire purpose. Turning a cage designed to drain and contain into a conduit that must release and restore.
Elçin has moved closer, her storm-gray eyes wide with recognition. "That'sKara Dil," she breathes, barely audible over Yasar's chant. "I've read about it in the old archives. The language that makes prophecies binding, that turns promises into unbreakable oaths, that..." She trails off, something like fear flickering across her features.
