The deeper we go, the stronger the pull becomes. Something down here wants me specifically, and given my track record with things that want me, this will either solve all our problems or create fascinating new ones.
The deepest chamber stops us both cold.
An altar of black stone rises from the center, carved with symbols that actively hurt to look at—not metaphorically, actually hurt, like my eyes are trying to retreat into my skull rather than process what they're seeing. Someone placed this here deliberately—the altar positioning, the protective wards I can feel humming beneath the stone. This isn't random. This is a shrine and a tomb, something built to contain and honor simultaneously.
Upon it sits an object that makes my shadow magic resonate with recognition: a lamp. Not some crude clay vessel you'd find in a merchant's stall, but a masterpiece of burnished copper that seems to glow with inner fire. The kind of artifact that screams "touching me will have Consequences" in approximately seventeen different languages.
The surface is covered in flowing Osmanlica script that writhes before my eyes like living things trying to escape the copper. I can make out fragments: dilek (wish), bedel (price), bagli (bound), sonsuz (eternal). There's something about offerings and debts and prices that must be paid in flesh, blood, and soul, which sounds perfectly reasonable and not at all concerning.
Power radiates from the lamp in waves that make my shadows practically writhe with anticipation. This isn't just an artifact—it's a prison and a doorway, distinction irrelevant when you're standing in a cave waiting to die anyway.
Beside me, Yasar has gone very still. "Kaan. That's?—"
"I know what it is." I reach out deliberately, because clearly I haven't made enough terrible decisions today. My shadow caresses the lamp's surface with reverent touch.
The reaction is immediate and intensely inadvisable.
Light explodes from the vessel—not the golden radiance of sun magic or the familiar darkness of shadows, but something primal. Light that existed before the first sunrise, beforedarkness learned its name. The ancient script blazes like fire across the copper surface, and a sound that might be laughter or might be screaming echoes through dimensions I don't have words for.
Smoke pours from the lamp's spout—thick, golden smoke that moves with deliberate, sensual purpose, like it's taking its time specifically to unnerve me. It swirls through the air, forming shapes that hurt to look at—triangles with four sides, circles that spiral inward forever, angles that don't add up, curves that fold back into themselves wrong.
Then it coalesces.
What emerges makes even my centuries-old instincts sit up and pay attention. A female being takes form slowly, deliberately—first outline, then details filling in like an artist painting from memory. Each curve, each angle appears with deliberate care, as if she's teaching the air itself how to hold her shape.
Skin like burnished bronze that seems to glow with its own light. Hair that flows past her waist in waves of midnight silk, occasionally flickering with golden fire at the tips. Eyes that burn with captured starlight—ancient, knowing, and currently fixed on me with the kind of sharpness that usually precedes either violence or seduction. Sometimes both.
She's wrapped in translucent silk that suggests more than it conceals, and water beads on the cave walls where there was none before, running in rivulets down ancient stone. The air grows heavy, humid, hard to breathe. This is no minor spirit or bound elemental—this is a Peri, one of the ancient djinn-kind, and from the age in those burning eyes, she's been around since before humans decided to get ambitious about this whole "civilization" thing.
"Well." Her voice is honey and smoke, pitched to resonate in frequencies that bypass the ear and go straight to baser instincts. She studies me with the patience of something that's countedcenturies like heartbeats, her head tilting as she takes in every detail. "After millennia of imprisonment, the seal finally cracks." She moves closer, each step deliberate, and I notice how the smoke that birthed her still clings to her form like living silk. "And what magnificent creatures break my bonds?"
Her burning gaze slides between us—lingering on me, then traveling to Yasar with open appreciation. "The Shadow Court's crown prince." Her attention shifts fully to Yasar, and that hunting smile deepens. "And his beautiful cousin. Fire and shadow, bound together in that clever gaze. How delicious—two princes for the price of one."
She circles us both slowly, close enough that her perfume—night-blooming jasmine with an undertone that reminds me of the way air smells before lightning strikes—fills the space between us. "Millennia of waiting, and I'm greeted by such exquisite specimens." Her finger trails through the air near Yasar's jaw without quite touching. "You have your cousin's bone structure, but there's something softer in your features. More refined. As if someone took his brutality and polished it to perfection."
Then her attention returns to me, and the temperature in the room shifts. "But you..." She moves closer to me specifically, dismissing Yasar as thoroughly as one might dismiss a beautiful painting after seeing the original masterwork. "You are the one who touched my prison. You are the one whose darkness called to mine."
A slow smile curves lips that promise paradise. "How... intriguing."
She circles me slowly, and I'm acutely aware that she's assessing—not just my power, but my worth, my uses, my weaknesses. Yasar might as well have ceased to exist for all the attention she pays him now.
"I am Peri Ayse," she continues, trailing one finger along the altar's edge without breaking eye contact. The casual intimacy of the gesture is deliberate—everything about her is deliberate. "Once honored in courts that turned to dust before your grandfather's grandfather drew breath. Now..." That expression again, edged with something that might be bitterness or might be hunger. "Now I am bound. Trapped. Paying a price I do not discuss for a crime I did not commit."
"How tragic," I observe, though my shadows are already whispering warnings about deals with desperate creatures. "And what, exactly, does an ancient Peri want with a cave full of dying immortals?"
Her laugh is music and broken glass. "Want?" She moves closer still, near enough that I can smell her perfume, feel the heat radiating from her skin. "I want nothing, shadow prince. But you..." Her burning gaze holds mine. "You want everything. Healing for your companions. Escape from your hunters. Time you don't have and power you can't access."
She pauses, letting that sink in. "Tell me—what would you sacrifice to save them all?"
CHAPTER 23
THE PRICE OF SURVIVAL
Kaan
The question hangs in the air between us, heavy with implications. Behind us, I hear footsteps—but not from the passage we used. The dimensional fold must have created a shortcut, because Nesilhan and Elçin emerge through a different opening entirely, one that hadn't existed when we descended.
"Your shadows," Nesilhan gasps, leaning heavily on Elçin. "They're everywhere in this cave system—we followed them like breadcrumbs. When that power surge happened, they all oriented toward this chamber." She looks around the room, taking in the altar, the lamp, the smoke-form beauty before us. "What did you find?"
