When Hazar opened his eyes, the sun hadn't yet risen.
What woke him wasn't the bell; it was the sound of the hammer. Feron's forge was the earliest-waking thing in the village now.
The clang of metal on metal echoed thinly in the morning cold, seeping between the stone walls and filling the room.
For a while he watched the ceiling without moving. In the beds beside him, Tekin slept with one arm thrown over his face, murmuring, while Yavuz's bed had long since emptied and been made.
'Up early again.'
A week ago this would have bothered him. Yavuz, Sevda, everyone waking before him, adapting faster than him. Now it didn't bother him. It just tired him.
He got up, pulled on his clothes. He'd grown used to the stiffness of the medieval garments by now; at least they kept out the cold.
When he stepped outside, the village was already awake.
Since the night Yalaz said "those I choose," something had settled over the village; it wasn't joy, nor was it fear. Something between the two. Everyone was busy with some task, but every task faced the same direction: west of the mountains.
There was a pile of iron in front of the forge. Feron's anvil never fell silent. Each day the pile of iron shrank a little more.
The village was arming itself. But it wasn't enough.
They hadn't said so, but deep down Hazar had understood that what they had wouldn't be enough for an escape.
As he crossed the square he noticed he was gripping his own spear tightly. He didn't remember when he'd picked it up; he carried it like a limb now. A week ago it had been the wooden shaft that broke in his hand. Now he found the right angle before Garrun could correct him.
He was changing. All of them were changing.
But in the mornings, in that brief instant before the hammer's sound, he still searched for his home. His mother's voice, the smell of his own bed, the steam of something hot drunk in a café. Too far to grasp if he reached out his hand, but too close to forget.
As he walked toward the training ground, he stopped.
Up ahead, in front of Miren's house, there was a dark figure. It was Garrun. He hadn't gone in, just stood in front of the door. In the first light of morning his shoulders looked lower than usual.
Hazar turned his head away. Some things were easier not to see.
He kept walking. There was training today, training tomorrow, and at the week's end the names Yalaz would choose.
And inside him, a question he'd suppressed for a week was slowly rising to the surface—the question someone would ask aloud when they gathered in the evening.
'What are we actually doing here? Are we trying to survive, or to get home?'
It was the first time that morning he'd thought the two weren't the same thing.
The day passed with training as every day did. Running, breathing, the spear. That familiar ache the Erk left in his arms.
By evening every part of Hazar hurt, but this was no longer yesterday's pain; it was a settled, familiar fatigue.
The inn was empty this evening.
Since the night of the celebration, the villagers had withdrawn into their own preparations; some sharpened weapons, some gathered supplies, some kept watch over Miren.
For the first time, the thirteen of them were alone together.
They'd lit a small fire at the edge of the square.
It wasn't big; just enough to warm the ever-colder night a little and show their faces to one another.
Hazar sank onto a stone. He set his spear down beside him, somewhere within easy reach. This habit too had come in a week.
Everyone was around the fire. Sevda and Tekin were bickering over something as usual, and Aylin was stepping in to soothe them both.
Esen leaned on Sedef's shoulder; Yavuz sat right beside them, hugging his knees.
Poyraz and Hak were a little behind, where the firelight barely reached. Tunay sat closest to the fire, watching the flames.
Duru was turning something skewered on a branch over the fire. Veda ruffled Devran's hair, and the boy pulled his head away as if he didn't like it, but he was smiling.
For a moment, Hazar almost forgot this place was the Ruined Lands.
"I bet," said Tekin, grinning, "Yalaz picks Sevda for the expedition for sure. So that crazy energy of hers can be good for something."
"If he picks me, at least I'll be useful," said Sevda. "If they pick you, they'll use you as bait."
"I run fast. I wouldn't be bait, I'd be a trap."
"Same thing."
A few people laughed. Even Esen let out a short laugh for the first time in a long while.
Sevda threw a branch onto the fire.
"Let him pick me, and they'll see," she said. "I've come this far in a week. I don't care what's out there."
"You should." It was Yavuz. His voice was low, but everyone turned. He was the one who'd seen the grove; he was the one who knew what it was like. "Outside is worse than here. Yalaz said so."
"So what?" said Sevda. "Don't we die here too?"
"At least outside we're going somewhere," Tekin cut in. "Escape means a way out."
From the back, from where the firelight barely reached, a voice came.
"A way out to where?"
It was Hak. He rarely joined the conversation; when he did, he usually said something worth hearing.
"Yalaz said 'escape journey,'" he went on. "Escape from the Ruined Lands. Fine. But once we're outside? Those kingdoms, those cities… what business do we have there?"
There was a brief silence.
"We look for a way home," Aylin said at last. In a calm voice. As if she were saying the most obvious thing.
But the moment she said it, the word turned strange in the air.
Hazar's chest tightened. That thing he'd suppressed since morning—for a week, even—had surfaced again.
Because no one knew how or why they'd come. Not even Yalaz.
Escaping was one thing. Getting home… was something else entirely.
"We'll get back, won't we?" Sedef said at last. Her voice was low as always, but this time everyone heard.
No one said "yes" to her.
It was Esen who broke the silence.
"We'll get back," she said. The cheer in her voice was a little forced, but it was real.
"We got here somehow, didn't we? If we got here somehow, then there's a way back too. Every door has two directions."
Sedef looked at her, a thin hope appearing in her eyes. Yavuz raised his head slightly too.
Hazar wanted to believe it too. For a moment, that simple sentence eased the pressure in his chest.
"How did we get here, though?" said Tunay.
He hadn't taken his eyes off the flames. His voice wasn't harsh, in fact it was calm; that was the most unsettling part.
"We were in a café. Then branches, thrones. Then we were here. Does anyone among us know how we came?"
No one answered.
"Yalaz doesn't know. Togan doesn't know. Even a man who's lived a hundred and forty years shrugged." Tunay finally raised his head. "We didn't see a door open. We just woke up on this side."
"Meaning?" said Sevda. Her voice was hard, but there was unease in her eyes.
"Meaning maybe there's no such thing as a way back." Tunay turned back to the fire.
"I don't know. I just know that no one knows. But there is one thing I do know."
Every head turned to him.
"The 'holders of the thrones' written in the tunnel, and the thrones we saw. If there's a reason we came here, it has to do with them. And we don't have a clue about them either."
The fire crackled. Esen's lips moved, but she said nothing.
Hazar felt something sink inside him. Tunay wasn't lying; it would have been easier if he were.
"Then forget about going back." Sevda hugged her knees and rested her chin on them.
"Right now, going back is nothing but a dream. The only thing we have is this place. I'll focus on getting stronger. Even if there is a door, it won't open for the weak."
"You turn everything into a fight," said Aylin. For the first time her voice was a little hard.
Sevda turned to her. "And you turn everything into home. But you don't even know where your home is."
Aylin didn't answer. Her hands locked together on her knees. Hazar knew she was thinking of her family; she'd talked about them since the first day.
"I want to go back," Aylin said at last, in a low voice. "It's that simple. Getting stronger, surviving… it's all for that."
"Not for everyone."
It was Poyraz.
He'd spoken from the back, from outside the firelight. Everyone turned to him.
For a moment he said nothing. Then he shrugged.
"You all want to go back, but what would I go back for? Was there a place waiting for me on Earth? A door? No one."
There was no bitterness in his voice. He was stating a fact, like reporting the weather.
"Here, at least, everyone's as lost as I am. For the first time, a place doesn't feel more foreign to me than it does to everyone else."
Beside him Hak said nothing. But he nodded slightly. That was all. For the two of them, that was enough.
No one could say anything for a moment.
Hazar understood the thing underneath what Poyraz had said: they didn't all want to return to the same place. For some, "home" was a goal. For others, something that had never existed.
Tekin stretched his hands toward the fire and cut in with that familiar grin.
"You know what I want? A bed. A proper bed. If I sleep on these stones one more week, even if I get home my back won't straighten out."
A few people laughed, but the laughter was short. Hazar could hear the thing beneath the joke: Tekin was afraid too, he'd just found another way of showing it.
Duru lowered the thing she'd been turning over the fire.
"Does it matter what we want?" she said quietly. "Yalaz is the one choosing. He'll pick who goes."
No one disputed that.
And in that moment, Hazar looked around the fire once more.
On the surface they were still a single group; thirteen people around the same fire. But underneath, something had changed. No one had said "I'm on this side," no one had drawn a line. And yet the line was there.
Those who had to go back. Those with nowhere to return to. And those who didn't even care whether a return existed and only wanted to stay alive.
The same fire. Three separate directions.