"Drip! Drip! Drip!"
The dripping of the water echoed in the courtyard. Still, no one wanted to speak.
I turned to them and spoke up.
"Let's head back to the group now. They must be hungry too, and Tekin and Yavuz should have arrived by now. Maybe they've already started moving toward the pool. We should get going too."
Hak stood up. "All right," was all he said. Then he started walking toward the tunnel. Poyraz followed after him.
Duru spoke shakily, "What are we going to do about this message?"
"We'll think about it once we meet up with the group. Standing here thinking won't get us anywhere." When she heard my answer, Duru gave in too and began to move.
Last of all, Sevda, still looking at the writing, turned to us and, without saying anything, started to follow.
When we reached the box, we couldn't find anything to carry the food in. So we stuffed our pockets with as much food as we could.
When we got back to the head of the tunnel, the intense light dazzled my eyes. The flying rocks, the wide valley, and the glowing stones came into view again.
This time no one looked at the rocks or the tunnel.
These had become normal to us now.
We'd gotten used to the strangeness.
Our return was faster. As we went, we studied the surroundings, searching for anything useful.
We'd given that up now, no longer straying from the path we'd come by.
We just wanted to get back.
A few hours passed and we'd covered most of the way.
By my reckoning, after a separation of ten to twelve hours, we were about to meet up with the group again.
Of course, that was if they'd come toward the pool—they might not have arrived yet, or even set out. Maybe Yavuz and Tekin had never made it back at all.
I realized only now that this choice could have been a mistake; back then it had seemed like the right thing.
When I recognized the rocks around the pool, I paused.
"We're about to reach the pool. I hope the group's there."
Duru said only, "I hope so."
She was probably thinking the same things going through my mind; her gaze was empty.
When we cleared the last rock I stopped again, and what I saw erased my worry.
The group had arrived. Some were sitting, some standing, some busy with the water.
From a distance I picked out three people. They were Hazar, Aylin, and Tekin. Hazar was up and walking, with Tekin and Aylin supporting him.
My eyes caught three other people behind them: a blond boy of around twelve or thirteen, another man in his twenties holding a stick and an old man whose long gray hair made me think he was quite old. The old man was holding a sword and looking at us?
'Three people we don't know? With a sword in hand? And he's looking at me?'
The next moment the old man vanished. Before I could understand what happened:
"You must be the ones they mentioned who went off on their own."
The voice was coming from my right. I turned and looked. The old man was scratching his neck. He went on:
"No need to be on edge. I won't do anything to you."
Behind me, Hak and Poyraz were clenching their teeth and looking at the man.
Sevda's mouth hung open.
Duru still couldn't make sense of what had happened.
"I'm Yalaz, a Corebearer Erk master." He stopped abruptly.
"Right—those words meant nothing where you come from. Just think of me as a powerful swordmaster.
For now, come on over to the others and let them help me explain the situation to you." He gestured toward the group.
There were many questions I wanted to ask, but the words wouldn't leave my tongue; all I could manage was "All right."
The others, like me, were forced into a brief acceptance.
We didn't know whether to be glad or afraid that we'd seen another person.
"So we're in a place called the Ruined Lands, on a planet called Iskar. And we're also in a place where there are magical powers?"
The campfire crackled, giving off a sweet warmth. The air had grown cold. The old man named Yalaz answered my question:
"You've mostly understood it right. You've got a few misunderstandings about the magical powers, but that doesn't much matter for now."
After his answer I sank into thought, staring at the campfire. The smell of cooked meat filled the air. The wind moaned, leaves drifted past in front of us.
I asked one more question:
"What's outside this Ruined Region? Is the world beyond it just as barren and foul as here?"
"The world isn't only this filth," the old man answered.
"Beyond here there are rising cities, kingdoms and clans ablaze with the struggle for thrones. Anything you can imagine…
But reaching there is far harder than surviving the creatures here."
Poyraz asked. "Why?"
Yalaz leaned over the campfire; the orange light of the flames made the deep scars on his face stand out more sharply.
"Because the Ruined Lands are not a border," he said, his voice coming out like a whisper but cold as ice.
"This is a prison. And the walls of this prison are built not of stone alone, but of things that breathe, that hunger, and that hunt."
He drove the sword in his hand into the ground.
"The roads to those bright cities outside pass through the lairs of monsters you haven't even seen in your dreams. Getting out of here alive is a miracle; crossing those roads is madness."
There was a moment of silence. Only the crackle of the fire and the moan of the wind could be heard.
Sevda, still unable to shake off her astonishment, cut in.
"And you? If you're such a powerful 'master,' why are you here? Why are you in this prison?"
The crazy girl's blunt way of speaking unsettled many of us, myself included, for a moment. Whatever an unfamiliar swordmaster might do in anger to thirteen people from a modern world wouldn't be pleasant.
Thankfully Yalaz didn't get angry at Sevda's question; on the contrary, he paused for a moment, his gaze fixed on the wild flames of the campfire.
"Why am I here?" he murmured, his voice as rough as the cracks on a gravestone.
"Out there, too many shining swords end up cutting off the necks of their owners one day, little girl. My crime was placing my loyalty in the wrong hands. A single whisper, a sealed letter, and a forged signature beneath it… Sometimes the price of a whole lifetime is exile to the dusty borders of the Ruined Lands."
He gripped the hilt of his sword so hard that his knuckles went white.
"It's easy to fight with the sword of an enemy who wants to kill you; but you cannot fight the plots laid by those who smile at you. This is a dump where those who've become 'surplus,' like me, are swept away. But remember; throwing someone onto a dump doesn't destroy them, it only makes them more dangerous and more patient."
"So they sent you here to die?" I asked.
Yalaz looked at me with a bitter smile.
"They sent me here to die, but the Ruined Lands wouldn't accept me. And now this place is not a prison, but the only refuge those rotten thrones and treachery-filled palaces out there cannot reach."
He stood and adjusted the sword on his shoulder.
"There's no end to the plots, child. When you pass through the magnificent gates of the cities, every golden goblet held out to you may carry poison. Don't fear the creatures here; they're only hungry. Fear the 'people' out there instead; all they want is power."
After these heavy words hung in the night, he thrust his sword sharply back into its sheath.
"But we can't wait any longer here, out in this open plain," he said, his voice shedding its earlier sorrow and taking on an authoritative tone.
"Youngsters like you are no different from signal flares to the hungry eyes of the Ruined Lands. Leaving you here would be the same as abandoning you to death."
He swept his gaze over the group one by one. "I'll take you to the Village of the Exiled."
Poyraz asked curiously: "The Village of the Exiled? Where's that?"
"A refuge hidden deep within these lands, tucked away in a recess of the mountains, where a handful of people 'no longer wanted'—like me—live," Yalaz answered.
"The road there is dangerous; even the village itself may hold more risk than this plain. But the valley we're in right now, the mountains you came from, the empty circle you saw on the way—all of them are more unknown and more ill-omened than even the bloody soil of the Ruined Lands."
What he said shook once more the feeble sense of trust within us.
"Ill-omened?" I asked, the curiosity in my voice trying to suppress the fear. "Why?"
"How many flesh-and-blood creatures did you see on the way to this valley? How many plants, trees, or even a single blade of grass did you notice?"
He went on without waiting for us to answer; we all knew the answer anyway.
"Zero. This place is so eerie, so cursed, that the monsters of the Ruined Lands, the wild animals, even those shameless plants that cling to any filth to survive, won't live here. Not even a starving scavenger chooses to enter this valley.
And this valley is an exception even among the things I've named. This ceiling that lights us, the ground we tread on, the rocks flying in the air… do you think any of these is natural compared to the world outside the valley?
That's what I mean by ill-omened."
He stood up, his shadow casting an enormous dark shape before the fire.
"At least in the heart of the Ruined Lands you have a roof, a fire, and a few friends to show you the way. There, your enemy has a body; you can swing a sword at it. But here… here your enemy is this land itself."
The drift of the conversation was growing darker and darker. Those who had at first watched the old man with curious eyes were now trembling as they looked at the stones that lit our valley, at the running water.
My eyes went on watching the others.
Poyraz and Hak, like me, were listening to the old man's words with rapt attention.
Yavuz and the two girls beside him—Sedef and Esen—had gripped each other's hands tightly. I even thought I saw one of the girls' eyes welling up.
Hazar was sleeping on a bed made of shrubs and leaves. Sevda, Tekin, and Aylin sat beside him. Sevda had fixed her eyes on the distance, while Tekin and Aylin were watching Hazar.
The little boy and his sister—Devran and Veda—had moved off to a corner with Duru, not speaking. In their silence, their eyes were utterly empty.
No one had imagined that this place we'd come to could be so frightening, so ill-omened.
And we still didn't know how ill-omened it could be…