“I saw her again.”

Her father is on his phone now, standing by the window as he pulls the curtains closed.

“The orange-eyed lady? Covered in blood?”

“Yeah.”

He laughs.

“You’ve got to let me try whatever they’re giving you.”

“She isn’t from now, though. It feels like she’s from a long time ago.”

“How long?”

“Three… four centuries.”

“And what do you know about two or three centuries ago?”

“I know movies and stuff.”

He laughs again. He sits beside Gonca, gently tucking a loose strand back into her bandages.

Gonca looks down at the wrappings on her arms, then touches her face with the hand that’s free of the IV.

“How did I look when they brought me here?”

His smile falters. He keeps stroking her hair.

“I don’t know, honey. I came after they’d wrapped you up.”

“How do I look now?”

“Like a mummy.”

Gonca tries to laugh, but the sound catches in her throat.

“A cool one?”

“The coolest.”

He kisses her forehead.

“Just rest now. We’ll go out when it’s a bit cooler.”

Gonca does. She listens to his footsteps fading and feels suddenly, quietly sad. Then she drifts into sleep.

This time, it feels as though she’s been dropped straight into that distant century she mentioned. She’s lying on a bed—not the hospital bed, but one that feels like hers all the same. She rises to find her feet already covered in socks and shoes. She drapes a purple silk over her head.

Was that a vision? My own future?

It is dark outside. She descends the stairs to find her mother stirring something in a pot. The woman doesn’t look at her.

“Slept the day away again.”

She turns when Gonca doesn’t respond. Gonca’s fingers twist the edge of her skirt. Her mother shakes her head and returns to the pot.

“Spoiled. Lazy. Still a child. I wouldn’t be surprised if you asked me to wash you, too.”

Gonca stares at her mother’s bony back, guilt prickling in her chest.

“I am going outside, Mother.”

Leave you alone. Maybe you will be better.

Her mother says nothing. Gonca steps out.

She drifts through the market, glancing at whatever the merchants are selling. Her feet follow a path she doesn’t recognize. Music floats on the air. She finds herself among silk sellers. She touches a length of it—smooth as water beneath her fingertips.

Mother likes silk.

Dogs gnaw at scraps nearby. She feels eyes watching her as she leaves the market.

Women forbidden where men walk.

Dogs bark. Gonca brushes her hand along the cool stone wall of the house beside her, leaving those eyes behind. Her other hand clutches her headscarf.

Dogs at night. Birds at morning. A timeline for themselves.

Where Gonca walks is dark. There is light far ahead.

What’s your timeline? When are you… you?

Gonca doesn’t know. She doesn’t recognize the voice in her mind either.

A purgatory between barking dogs and morning birds.

She loosens the silk around her neck to feel the rising wind. The sky is nearly black. The stars shine so beautifully.

Why not a bat? So alike—you and bats.

Gonca agrees.

You will become a bat when you die. A dark, beautiful timeline to choose. You will leave the eyes, the noise, the mother. You will become something she cannot hurt. Then you may sleep as long as you wish.

Gonca wants to be a bat.

A light beside her bursts into red flame. She screams. For a moment she stands on unsteady legs, waiting for something—anything—to happen. Then other lights flare to life, one by one, leading toward a distant yellow glow.

Music. Men laughing. Mother would kill me for even walking toward the place that path leads to.

The yellow light belongs to a building that does not belong to daylight. It rises at the far edge of the market, half-hidden between leaning wooden houses, its smoke-darkened walls sinking deeper into shadow. A single lantern hangs above the door, its glow trembling like a warning.

Silk curtains—deep red, bruised purple—hang behind wooden lattice windows, their colors almost black in the night. From within comes the muffled thrum of lutes and drums, laughter too loud to be honest, and the low rumble of men drowning their names in drink.

The air around the place is thick: rose oil, sweat, incense, and the faint metallic scent of old blood that even rain cannot erase. Stray cats linger on the threshold, weaving between the boots of men who vanish inside as though swallowed whole.

The brothel feels older than the rest of the street, its beams warped with age, its doorway bowed under the weight of time. A house meant for pleasure, yet steeped in something colder—a place where voices do not echo right, where shadows tilt forward as if listening.

Find me. You will walk out of here a bat. You want that, don’t you?

Gonca realizes the thought wasn’t hers.

How?

Come find out, yarasa.

She sees HER—dressed like a nurse—feeding her blood to Gonca in the hospital.

Gonca wakes.

 “Morning, hun. Feeling a bit better now?”

She nods.

“Let’s go get some fresh air.”

Her father lifts her into a wheelchair and they head outside.

Am I still dreaming?

Gonca is still afraid. She enters the building, without needing her dad. The strange woman is there. The moment Gonca steps inside, she falls under her spell. Music plays, and the woman dances in a way that holds Gonca’s gaze captive.

Get closer.

Gonca moves, though she isn’t the one guiding her body. The silk slips from her head, hanging over her shoulders.

A man reaches for the woman; she moves to him, spins him, and locks eyes with Gonca. Then she bites.

The music cuts off. Screams erupt as the woman lifts her head, blood spraying.

She kills the two men who rush her. Gonca backs away, slow and shaking. Her spine hits the stone wall. She cannot run. The woman grabs the hilt of the curved sword that had pierced her stomach two seconds earlier. She pulls out the sword and flings it to the side.

“You must be Gonca.”

Gonca sees her father dressed like a sixteenth-century Ottoman man.

Kamer.

When she snaps back, she’s outside with her father again. She’s in the wheelchair; he’s talking about how warm the nights are this season.

Gonca slips from the chair, tries to run away. But she ends up falling on the concrete garden of the hospital.

“Gonca!”