"Beautiful," she said. "And cruel. Often at the same time."
"The purification ceremonies," Kaan said. Not a question.
"You know about those?"
"Everyone in the Shadow Realm knows. It's the reason half-bloods flee here." His jaw tightened. "How many did you witness?"
Ada was quiet for a moment. "Enough. I was never part of the court officially — my father kept me at a distance from most of it. I think he was protecting me from seeing the worst."
"Or protecting himself from you seeing it," Kaan said, not unkindly. "Gün Ata is many things, but he isn’t the one driving the purification campaigns. That was Serkan and the faction lords. Your father has been diminishing for a while, Ada. The Light Realm has been running on the lords' authority for longer than most people realise."
"You're saying my father didn't?—"
"I'm saying the system was rotten long before your father's health started falling. Serkan and his allies built the purification framework. Your father let it happen — whether through weakness or complicity, I won't pretend to know. But the machinery of it? That's the lords. It always has been."
Ada absorbed this in silence. I reached for her hand under the table and she gripped it hard.
"The Light Realm has seven factions," Kaan continued, looking between us. "So does the Shadow Realm. The difference is, my faction lords answer to me, and I don't allow them to burn children in public squares and call it divine mercy."
The door opened and Yaman and Eda entered, still half-asleep. The conversation shifted immediately — Kaan's face softening, the honey jar pushed toward Yaman before he'd even sat down, Eda stealing bread from her father's plate with the exact same shameless expression Kaan had been wearing for a thousand years.
"You're a thousand years old, Father. That's literally ancient," Eda informed him when he protested being called old.
"I prefer 'experienced.'"
"That's what antiques say."
After breakfast, the children dragged Ada off to see the library, with Banu and Sarp trailing behind. Nesilhan followed at a distance — always watching, always aware.
Kaan caught my arm. "Training courtyard. Now."
* * *
The courtyard was a massive circular space carved from black stone, open to the sky, enclosed by walls etched with containment runes that glowed faintly purple.
"The runes keep our magic contained," Kaan said, pulling off his coat and rolling his sleeves back over scarred forearms. "Learned that the hard way when I accidentally leveled the eastern tower."
"How often does that happen?"
"You'd be surprised." He gestured to the center. "Show me what you can do. And don't hold back — I want to see everything."
I let my power rise, feeling my shadows coil around my hands — eager, responsive, darker in this place where shadow magic was accepted rather than feared. I shaped them into a blade and struck without warning.
Kaan deflected it with a casual flick of his wrist, his own shadows absorbing the blow like water swallowing a stone.
"That's it?" He looked genuinely disappointed. "I've seen Eda hit harder than that, and she's still a child."
Something hot and competitive flared in my chest. I struck again — faster, harder, a combination I'd used against other training opponents. Kaan blocked, parried, and countered with a shadow-blade that would have taken my head off if I hadn't ducked.
"Better," he said. "But you're still thinking too much. You're holding your power on a leash when you should be running with it."
"Last time I let it run freely, I killed twelve people."
"Then you weren't running. You were hemorrhaging." He adjusted my wrist, repositioning my stance. "A warrior controls his blade. A butcher just swings. Which are you?"
"Try me and find out."
Kaan's grin was sharp. "There it is. There's the Erlik blood."
