HALKAN
THE NIGHT
The Mist Forest had one rule.
Those who entered did not return.
No one knew where the mist began.
No one knew where it ended.
Travelers spoke of people disappearing only a few steps inside.
Soldiers avoided it.
Merchants changed their routes because of it.
Even those who laughed at the stories
never laughed while standing near the mist.
And yet...
someone lived there.
Deep inside the forest,
where the white mist swallowed the trees,
a woman suddenly opened her eyes.
...
A sound.
She remained still.
Another sound.
Branches.
Footsteps.
Then something heavier.
Someone was struggling to walk.
The woman slowly stood.
It had been a long time
since she had heard footsteps that were not her own.
She moved toward the sound.
Quietly.
The mist opened around her
as though she had walked this path
a thousand times before.
Then she saw them.
Two men.
One was older.
Jalatta.
The other...
barely seemed capable of standing.
Safsan.
...
The woman stared at him.
Safsan did not notice her.
His body had survived Odania.
But survival
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was not the same thing
as being unbroken.
Jalatta suddenly stopped.
He had heard something.
A movement between the trees.
He turned.
Nothing.
Only mist.
Then a voice came from somewhere ahead.
"Why did you bring him here?"
Jalatta froze.
...
A woman's voice.
Here?
Impossible.
He looked into the mist.
"Who's there?"
No answer.
The woman stepped forward.
For the first time,
Safsan lifted his eyes.
And saw her.
...
Long before Safsan entered BAAČ...
there was a girl
born beneath a sky filled with stars.
The night of her birth
was unusually dark.
But beautiful.
So beautiful
that her parents looked at the sky
and gave their daughter a name.
HALKAN.
THE NIGHT.
...
She grew with eyes
that people compared to deep wells,
and a voice as calming
as the evening breeze
moving across the highlands.
But Halkan's story
was never hers alone.
Because somewhere beyond the Mist Forest...
in a place known as
THE RED RAVINE
there lived a young man.
...
The first time he saw Halkan
was beside a river.
Nothing extraordinary happened.
No thunder.
No impossible sign.
No Origin.
He simply saw her.
...
And from that moment,
something inside him changed.
He found himself returning to that river,
hoping only to see her again.
Sometimes she was there.
Sometimes she wasn't.
Still...
he returned.
...
And the feelings he could barely understand
slowly found their way into words.
Words became poems.
Poems became verses.
...
He wandered through the forests,
reciting what he could not bring himself
to say directly.
...
He spoke of Halkan so often
that the people of the Citadel
began teasing him.
Whenever he walked toward the river,
"He's looking for the Night again."
...
Whenever another poem appeared,
"Halkan again?"
...
Whenever his verses
found their way back to the Citadel...
they laughed.
...
Eventually,
the young man's real name
became less important
than the name the people gave him.
ISA JAALALAAN MARAATE.
THE ONE DRIVEN MAD BY LOVE.
...
Not because love had destroyed him.
Not because he had abandoned himself.
But because,
to the people watching him,
the young man seemed incapable
of speaking about anything
without somehow finding his way
back to Halkan.
...
And the name stayed.
ISA JAALALAAN MARAATE.
THE ONE DRIVEN MAD BY LOVE.
...
Safsan knew none of this.
He knew nothing about Halkan.
Nothing about the young man
from the Red Ravine.
Nothing about the river.
Nothing about the poems.
Nothing about the verses.
Nothing about why a woman
was living inside a forest
from which no one was supposed to return.
He only knew one thing.
He was exhausted.
...
Halkan looked at him.
Then at Jalatta.
Then back at Safsan.
For a moment,
her calm expression changed.
Not fear.
Not surprise.
Something else.
...
Then she asked:
"Did he choose to enter the mist?"
Jalatta looked at Safsan.
...
Safsan answered for himself.
"Does it matter?"
Halkan stared at him.
"Here?"
...
"Yes."
...
The mist moved between them.
Nobody spoke.
Then...
somewhere far beyond the trees...
a voice was reciting.
...
A man's voice.
Distant.
Almost impossible to hear.
...
Halkan went completely still.
...
Safsan noticed.
He looked toward the sound.
The voice disappeared into the mist.
Then returned.
A poem.
Safsan couldn't understand every word.
But Halkan could.
...
Something changed in her eyes.
Safsan looked back at her.
"Who is that?"
...
Halkan did not answer.
...
The voice continued.
Far away.
As though the forest itself
had remembered an old verse.
...
Safsan looked toward the endless white.
Then back at Halkan.
"Do you know him?"
...
Silence.
...
But there was a name
the people of the Citadel
had once given him.
ISA JAALALAAN MARAATE.
THE ONE DRIVEN MAD BY LOVE.
...
Safsan didn't know that name yet.
He didn't know the story behind it.
He didn't know why Halkan lived
inside the Mist Forest.
He didn't know why hearing that voice
had changed her expression.
And he didn't know
why a man from the Red Ravine
was reciting poetry
somewhere beyond the mist.
...
Safsan had entered BAAČ
carrying the weight of Odania.
His own unanswered questions.
His own past.
His own burden.
But before BAAČ would force him
to face any of them...
it seemed the continent
had another story
waiting for him first.
...
The recitation grew quieter.
...
Halkan finally looked away.
Safsan watched her.
Then looked toward the mist again.
For the first time
since entering BAAČ,
he understood something.
The Mist Forest was not empty.
It had been keeping a story.
A story about the Night.
A story about a man
the people believed
had been driven mad by love.
A story Safsan knew nothing about.
...
And now...
he had walked into it.
...
Far beyond the trees,
the voice recited once more.
...
Halkan closed her eyes.
...
HALKAN.
THE NIGHT.
ISA JAALALAAN MARAATE.
THE ONE DRIVEN MAD BY LOVE.
Their story had already begun.
Safsan had simply arrived
in the middle of it.
...
Today,
the elders of BAAČ
still tell this story
to the young
who gather around the fire.
They say that when night falls
across the savanna,
and the stars begin to shine...
that is Halkan,
spreading her beauty
across the sky.
And when the wind rushes wildly
through the trees...
that is Isa Jaalalaan Maraate,
still whispering
his everlasting love
for her.
...
HALKAN.
THE NIGHT.
ISA JAALALAAN MARAATE.
THE ONE DRIVEN MAD BY LOVE.
Their story has been told
for generations.
But tonight...
for the first time
in a very long time,
someone had entered
the Mist Forest
and heard the poem
for himself.
His name was
SAFSAN.