I turn to follow her gaze and see what she means.
The shadow creatures outside our protective barrier have multiplied. What was dozens before is now hundreds, maybe thousands. They press against the bubble's surface with increasing desperation, their forms shifting and melting and reforming in ways that suggest they're learning, adapting, figuring out how to breach our sanctuary.
And beyond them, in the distance, I sense it—the massive horror that's been hunting us since we entered the Veil. The thing we glimpsed earlier, all wrong geometry and impossible angles, drawn by the massive magical discharge from breaking the prison.
"The bubble won't hold," Yasar says quietly. He looks exhausted, his usually perfect composure shattered by the effort of the spell. "Breaking the prison destabilized the protective magic. We have maybe minutes before it collapses completely."
"Then we run," I say simply, adjusting my grip on Banu. "Nesilhan, can you walk?"
She nods weakly, though I can see the lie in how she favors her poisoned leg. The venom is spreading, dark veins crawling up her thigh despite my earlier attempts to slow it.
"I'll help her," Elçin says, moving to support Nesilhan's other side. "You focus on Banu."
I glance at Yasar, who's still staring at the approaching horde with calculating eyes. "Can you keep up?"
"I'll manage," he says, that careful mask sliding back into place. "Though I'd appreciate it if we could discuss my continued survival once we're out of this nightmare realm."
"No promises," I tell him, already moving toward the bubble's edge. "Stay close. The moment this barrier falls, we're going to have every horror in the Veil on our heels."
The bubble gives us perhaps thirty seconds of lead time. Just enough to get clear of the immediate killing zone, not enough to escape the consequences of what we've done.
When it finally collapses, the sound is like reality gasping its last breath.
The shadow creatures pour through the gap with mindless hunger, and we run.
Banu's weight is negligible compared to the burden of knowing we're being hunted by things that should never have existed, in a realm that's actively trying to trap us here forever.
But she's alive. Broken, bleeding, barely conscious—but alive.
We didn't come here for nothing.
Now we just have to survive long enough to get her home.
Behind us, the massive horror's roar shakes the Veil's foundations, and I know with terrible certainty that the hard part is just beginning.
CHAPTER 20
THE WEIGHT OF KNOWING
Neslihan
The Veil fightsus with every step.
Shadow creatures boil up from the smoke-ground beneath our feet, drawn by Banu's blood like sharks to chum. Each drop that falls from her ruined wings spawns another nightmare—things with too many teeth, too many eyes, geometries that hurt to look at directly.
I stumble over terrain that wasn't there a moment ago, and Kaan's free hand shoots out to steady me. His shadows form a protective sphere around us, but they're thinning. Even he has limits, and we've been running for what feels like hours through a realm where time doesn't work properly.
"How much farther?" Elçin gasps beside me. Blood streams from a gash across her temple where a shadow creature got too close. Her blade drips with ichor from things that shouldn't bleed.
"I don't know," I admit. The binding pulls me forward—toward Yasar, who leads our desperate flight—but also sideways, backward, in directions that don't exist. The sensation makes mystomach churn. "The Veil's structure is collapsing. Every path leads nowhere and everywhere at once."
A roar splits the air behind us. Not a creature. Something worse—the sound of reality tearing, of the massive things we glimpsed earlier getting closer. The ground beneath us ripples like water, and I feel the Veil's fabric strain.
"There!" Yasar shouts, pointing ahead. Through the chaos, I see it—a shimmer in the air that looks almost like normal space. An exit. Maybe. "If we can reach that fold in the Veil?—"
Something erupts from the ground directly in our path.
The creature towers above me—twenty feet of grotesque flesh that seems unable to decide what it wants to be. Its body is a patchwork of textures: sections of raw, weeping muscle transitioning into patches of translucent skin stretched so thin I can see dark fluids pumping through veins beneath. Where joints should bend, the flesh has fused into rigid angles, forcing it to move in lurching, unnatural ways.
