After breakfast the old man gathered the group and laid out his plan. Having someone to show the way amid the unknown let everyone breathe a little.
For the first time, faint smiles appeared on the lips of those whose faces had been grim ever since they fell into this world. The heavy weight of uncertainty had lifted from their shoulders, giving way to cheerful conversations, half-hearted as they were.
Hazar watched this scene from a distance for a while but couldn't make sense of what he saw.
That people could adapt so quickly to this nightmare felt unreal to him. It made no sense that these people, who only a few days ago had been dealing with everyday troubles within the safe walls of their homes, were now behaving as if those lives lay centuries away.
Maybe all of them felt the same dread deep down.
Maybe it was just a mask they wore to keep themselves and those around them standing; they were struggling to keep up a game of false cheer.
Hazar didn't want to be crushed further under the weight of these thoughts. Realizing he couldn't unravel the truth, he let his mind go and let everything take its course.
What pulled Hazar out of those heavy thoughts was the old man's authoritative voice:
"Erlin and I will be at the very front, and Togan will stay at the very back as your rear guard. The thirteen of you, gather in the middle and, no matter what happens, don't break away from one another."
After he spoke, the group, drawn together by an invisible bond, formed a narrow file.
Hazar quietly surveyed the group.
At the very front, Poyraz, Hak, and Tunay walked along, debating something in low voices.
A few steps behind them, the trio of Sevda, Tekin, and Aylin had withdrawn into their own world. Sevda had flared up at something again and was hurling insults aimed at Tekin; Tekin and Aylin, instead of minding her anger, contented themselves with chuckling.
"Classic Sevda," Hazar thought to himself.
This irritability was the most familiar thing he could find in an alien world; so he didn't dwell on it and went on his way.
He passed by them and came up to Poyraz and the others. He started to listen. Hak was telling something:
"The graveyard was small, maybe for twenty or thirty people." As he spoke he noticed Hazar and looked at him.
Seeing Hak lock onto a spot, Poyraz and Tunay followed his gaze and turned around. When they met Hazar's eyes, Poyraz broke the silence and spoke up:
"Welcome, Hazar!" There was a strange happiness in his voice. He went on, "In this thing they call the 'awakening,' some people saw odd things. The old man said it was normal, that during the awakening some could have visions like that. Hak was telling us about his."
"A graveyard?" asked Hazar, unable to hide the surprise in his voice.
Taking over, Hak drifted off into the distance and murmured.
"Yeah, I was sitting in the middle of a graveyard, looking up. I don't remember the rest; it was like a dream. Did you see anything?"
Even Hak, who normally didn't talk much, had opened up. 'It really must be something fascinating, even unsettling,' Hazar thought to himself as he spoke.
"No, this is the first I'm hearing of it."
Poyraz, as if to break up the tension between them, spoke up again:
"Don't let it bother you, I'm in that unlucky group that saw nothing too. Anyway, never mind; Tunay, what about you, what did you see? Tell us, broaden our horizons a little."
Tunay's answer was cold, his gaze, like Hak's, fixed on the distance.
"A ghost with long, blood-red hair and snow-white armor." Then he stopped and thought, but didn't go on.
"Was it a woman or a man?" asked Poyraz, giving in to his curiosity.
Tunay was thrown for a moment; the question had caught him unprepared.
"What does it matter, a ghost's a ghost," he said, cutting it short.
But Poyraz had no intention of stopping; he pressed on with a mischievous manner.
"It matters a lot, my friend! Maybe she was a beautiful woman's ghost and your destiny. How would you know?"
"No thanks, I'll pass," said Tunay, raising his hands as if surrendering and shuddering with a put-on shiver. "I'm not interested in ghosts, they're too scary."
After this last remark, the two of them burst out laughing. Hazar and Hak merely watched in silence the absurd, far-from-serious banter of this odd pair walking beside them.
They were in a place that looked like the end of the world, yet these two could joke around as if they were still sitting in that café.
The cheerful laughter was cut off like a knife by the old man's authoritative voice:
"If you're ready, we're starting to move. Reaching the pass will take about twelve hours. We'll stop only once along the way; after we leave the rest stop there's no stopping until we cross the pass. Plan accordingly. When the gap between you and us reaches a hundred meters, get moving, and never let it widen any further."
Then he began to move. Ahead of the old man walked the boy named Erlin. The old man followed behind him.
"Strange… Why is he following the boy?" Hazar wondered for a moment, but then decided not to think too much about it. It wasn't the only thing here that wasn't normal.
When the old man began to walk, the group's cheerful murmur gave way to steady footsteps. As they advanced into the depths of the valley, the shadows of the rocks began to look longer and more misshapen than usual.
As he walked, Hazar turned around for a moment. Sevda, Tekin, and Aylin were still whispering among themselves, but that angry expression on Sevda's face had given way to a strange distractedness.
Hazar slipped quietly back among his friends and, falling into the rhythm of their conversation, went on walking.
In this alien and eerie world, just being among familiar voices was enough. Walking side by side with them had eased, if only a little, the homesickness gnawing at Hazar, and become a thin comfort reminding him of where he belonged.
When the walk came to an end a while later at the mouth of a tunnel in the distance, the group paused.
As Hazar looked at the shattered heaps of rock, he remembered that moment.
This must be the tunnel where the others had taken shelter before the awakening, where they'd discovered those mysterious foods and the ancient writing on the wall.
Yalaz stopped at the tunnel entrance and called out in an echoing voice.
"I'll examine for myself those fresh foods you found here and that message you mentioned. Anyone curious can come with me; the rest, wait outside."
Hazar looked at the others. Many seemed to want to go in.
Hazar fixed his eyes on the dark mouth of the tunnel and turned to Sevda right beside him:
"Do you think we should go in?"
Sevda answered with a shrug.
"I think we should. Seeing it might do you good."
The four of them—Hazar, Tekin, Aylin, and Sevda—slipped in through the mouth of the tunnel, following the rest of the group. The stifling heat outside had given way to the tunnel's damp, heavy air.
The moment Hazar stepped into the tunnel, the sight before him left him speechless.
The tunnel… Contrary to what he'd expected, it wasn't just a dark hollow; this place was magnificent. Hazar hadn't visited many historical places in his life, but even compared with the limited memories he had, this place remained mesmerizing. In some ways it was more flawless than anywhere he'd ever seen.
His mind went for a moment to the past, to the ancient Roman cities he'd visited with his family. The toppled columns, the fallen stones he'd seen back then had struck him as very impressive. But there everything had been crushed and crumbled under the weight of time.
Here it was different. Hazar felt as if he'd traveled through time and dropped right into the heart of an ancient age. Because this tunnel, unlike those ruins he'd toured, stood firm as if centuries hadn't passed over it.
The stones still had sharp edges, and the craftsmanship looked so fresh that for a moment he had the feeling this wasn't an abandoned place but a living structure. That unshakable solidity in most of it was proof that time hadn't dared to touch this place.
As Hazar studied the mesmerizing walls, the flawless floor, and the ceiling in awe, they finally came to the head of that old chest where the others had found the fresh food. Yalaz raised his hand and halted the group where they stood.
The old man called Togan—that young man waiting with a wooden stick in hand—to the front.
Togan focused for a while on the chest and that faint glimmer spreading through the air around it. As his examination deepened, the expression on his face grew strange; his brows knit, his color faded a little. The words seemed to knot in his throat.
"Master…" said Togan, his voice trembling. "This magic… This magic is beyond me. I fear even a Corebearer couldn't perform something like this. In fact…"
He paused without finishing his sentence. His lips were as if sealed; he was afraid even to say more, to put that thought into words.
Yalaz asked no further questions; he had already understood the dread Togan was hiding in that unfinished sentence, that impossible possibility.
They crossed the rest of the tunnel in deep silence; but when they reached the end of the tunnel, the sight they met froze them all where they stood.
When Hazar saw that mesmerizing cherry tree and the stillness around it, he was all but transported. With every breath he drew the fresh scent of leaves hanging in the air, the ancient smell of the earth, and the crystalline ring of the water deep into his lungs.
The sunlight streaming through the opening above lit the courtyard as if it were a sacred temple.
Hazar, enraptured within this dream, surveyed those around him.
Even Yalaz—who had passed a hundred years and seen many winters and many wars—had let his guard drop before this beauty, his mouth hanging open. But the two young ones beside the old man, Togan and Erlin, were in a far more shaken state.
When he saw the two of them go weak at the knees, Hazar thought for a moment they'd fainted. But no—they were only feeling such an intense emotion toward life for the first time.
For these young ones, born and raised amid the ashes and darkness of the Ruined Lands, what they saw was more than a view; it was the impossible made flesh. Along with a few drops of tears trickling from their eyes, their hands trembled with excitement.
Even down Yalaz's cheeks a single tear slid. Though he'd seen countless splendid lands before his exile, after the gray world he'd been imprisoned in for years, this oasis had melted his frozen heart.
The group slowly began to gather at a single spot. Just then Hazar met Sevda's eyes. Sevda's voice was lower than ever.
"That writing we saw… it's right there."
When Hazar took a step toward the ancient writing on the wall, his whole body tensed. His breath caught, his eyes opened wide, and then filled with hot tears.
The writing… The letters before him were so familiar that it was as if a string inside him had trembled. He couldn't read them, but his eyes knew them.
This writing belonged to that distant world he'd once called "home," the world he'd come from.
After that mesmerizing rest in the courtyard, Yalaz, noting that he'd reached no concrete conclusion from his examinations, set the group on the road again. After a long walk of about seven or eight hours that left their legs numb, the old man finally gave the order to stop.
It was time for a break.
With the fatigue of seven hours of unbroken travel, everyone collapsed wherever they could; some sank onto the stones and nibbled at something, some just tried to catch their breath.
Tekin, Aylin, Sevda, and Hazar too leaned their backs against a few rocks and formed their own little circle.
"I know, but what can I do… I miss my family so much," Aylin whispered. Her voice trembled under the weight of helplessness.
Then Sevda hugged her tightly.
"I miss mine too, Aylin. We all miss them, and we all want to go back," said Sevda, her voice softening with a rare tenderness.
"But first we have to survive. Only if we survive can we find a way back."
Tekin tried to break up this emotional air with his usual needling manner.
"Wow, Sevda, you're more understanding than anyone would've expected. Your performance surprised me. I would've expected you to grab a stick and roar, 'I'll tear all those creatures apart!'"
Sevda's fist clenched in a momentary reflex, her veins standing out; but a moment later she gave up and loosened her hand. Hazar's and Aylin's chuckles echoed off the valley's rocks.
Hazar wanted to join them and tell them how much he missed his home too, but the words knotted in his throat.
He didn't want the others, especially this group, to see him as weak. Even though he knew Sevda, Tekin, and Aylin wouldn't judge him, that relentless pride inside him wouldn't allow it.
"There are eyes seeping out around us! Don't you dare look at them, and gather together at once!" Yalaz's voice was what woke them.
Hazar flinched for a moment. "Eyes? Those eyes again?" he thought to himself.
As his unease grew he looked around; Yalaz was leading with great composure, gathering everyone in one place.
It was Tunay who first noticed the eyes and, wasting no time, alerted the master. "A reliable man," Hazar thought.
Giving in to his curiosity and stealing a quick glance, he saw those pitch-black, eerie eyes on a rock about fifty meters ahead. The instant he saw them, he turned his head away.
For a few minutes everyone made for a strange sight; some looking at their toes, some at the shoulder of the person beside them, some at empty air. Those eerie beings that had terrified them that first morning had now, with the right knowledge, become merely a nuisance.
Yalaz explained the situation in his deep voice.
"These are called 'Seeping Eyes.' As long as you don't look directly into them, they can't touch you. If you do look, they multiply and make you feel a deep pain within. They can be on the rocks, on the ground, anywhere; but don't be afraid, they do no other harm."
This explanation lightened the weight on everyone's shoulders. The group began to murmur among themselves again.
"I told you there was nothing to be afraid of, Sedef," said a girl who scattered light around her when she smiled. For a moment Hazar couldn't recall her name, but with Yavuz's reply the pieces fell into place in his mind.
"Esen's right. The master's with us, we're safe now," said Yavuz.
A confirming voice rose from Esen too: "The master's with us, there's nothing to fear."
As Hazar watched the group's newfound confidence, deep down he made a decision: he needed to get used to this place.
With the old man's command, "Get ready, we're continuing," the group pulled itself together and the march toward the pass began again.