The tribe no longer slept soundly. Each night brought odd silences, as if time itself held its breath. Elders whispered prayers in ancient tongues, while children woke screaming from dreams they couldn't explain. Even the animals had fled the woods. Only the brave remained—Ali, Turgut, and a few chosen warriors—bound by duty, chasing a mystery carved in whispers and shadows.
Ali studied the stone every night, turning it over, trying to unlock its meaning. The symbols burned into his memory, yet they refused to reveal their full truth. "The truth sleeps beneath the fourth dawn." Was it a prophecy? A riddle? Turgut believed it was a place.
"There's an old tale," Turgut said one night as they sat near the fire. "A land far east, beyond the Broken Ridge, where dawn comes late. They say the sun rises four times there before it truly rises. My grandfather called it Dört Şafak—the Land of Four Dawns."
That was all Ali needed. By morning, the warriors were packed and moving. The land beyond the Broken Ridge had long been forbidden, cursed since the old wars. But Ali no longer feared curses. He feared what Elias might become. If Baykuş truly lived again, there was no time to lose.
The journey took four days. Each night, the stars above them spun slower, as though they too were watching. On the fifth morning, as they crested the final ridge, they saw it—an ancient valley wrapped in mist, where dawn shimmered strangely, breaking the sky into layers. Turgut fell to his knees. "It's real," he whispered. "We found Dört Şafak."
They entered cautiously, guided by the symbols on the stone. Each step echoed like a memory. The air was thick, not with fog, but with time itself—shifting, stretching, collapsing in slow loops. A bird took flight above them, then reversed midair, then vanished.
In the valley's center stood a tower—so old that trees grew through its stone walls. Vines climbed it like veins. At its base, they found a sealed door. On it was a symbol: a single eye carved into a circle of stars. Meçhul Göz.
Ali pressed the stone into the center of the eye. The door shivered, then opened with a groan older than memory.
Inside, time bent. They walked for minutes and aged by hours. Dust froze mid-fall. Shadows forgot where their owners were. But they pressed forward, guided by a voice—soft, ageless, like wind through reeds.
At the top of the tower, they found a chamber lit by nothing they could name. In the center floated a crystalline shape: half-eye, half-star, pulsing with quiet light. As Ali approached, the voice returned.
"You have seen the edge of time. You have tasted the lie."
Ali felt it, a vision flashing into his mind. Elias had not meant to bring Baykuş back. He had wanted to stop him. But time had its own laws. In trying to seal time's wounds, Elias had torn open the past, and in doing so, awakened the one thing that should have slept forever.
The crystalline eye pulsed again.
"Meçhul Göz is not a weapon. It is a guardian. It cannot be taken. It must choose."
Ali knelt. "Then choose me," he said. "Let me stop this."
Silence. Then, the eye shimmered and vanished—into him. A warm rush filled his chest, and time slowed. His mind expanded. He saw the past like a path behind him, and the future like scattered branches.
He saw Elias.
Standing in a ruined throne room, face streaked with tears, speaking to Baykuş—not in allegiance, but in defiance. Baykuş laughed and wrapped time around him like a cloak. "You are too late," he said. "You opened the path."
Ali understood now. Elias hadn't betrayed them. He had tried to fight the wrong way.
"We must go," Ali told the others. "Baykuş isn't just returning—he's rebuilding time in his image. He wants to become the only memory that ever existed."
Back at the tribe, the signs were worse. People vanished mid-step. Some spoke in languages no longer remembered. A child aged twenty years in a night, then turned to dust. Time was tearing.
That night, Ali dreamed—or perhaps it was more than a dream. He stood in a place outside of time: no stars, no sky, just a great clockwork stretching forever. There, he saw Baykuş—now more shadow than man—pulling pieces from the gears, rewriting the past like a painter over canvas.
Elias stood opposite him, weakened, holding a broken version of the red device. "Ali," he said. "I made a mistake. I thought I could fix what I broke. But only Meçhul Göz can stop him now."
Ali stepped forward. "Then let's do it together."
Elias smiled, truly this time, the first smile Ali had ever believed.
They fought not with swords but with memories—correcting time, sealing rifts, returning moments to where they belonged. The eye inside Ali pulsed each time he chose rightly, each time he restored what Baykuş had twisted.
But as they neared the center of the broken gears, Baykuş unleashed something darker—a void that erased not just time, but meaning. "You do not understand," he said. "Time is not a line. It is a cage. I am freeing us all."
Ali hesitated. Was Baykuş right? Was he simply the only one brave enough to break the chains?
He turned to Elias, who whispered, "There's one truth left. The Eye knows it."
Then the gears began to turn backward, and everything was pulled apart.
**
When Ali woke, he was back in the valley. The tower was gone. So were the others.
Only the stone remained.
And on it, a new message had appeared:
"The Eye has closed—but the Shadow still watches. Seek the Whisper Clock before the fifth echo."
Ali didn't know what the Whisper Clock was.
But he knew one thing.
Baykuş was not finished.
And neither was time.