The History of Karaliman

On the night of 9 November 1986 the sky split in three. In the middle stood the stars we knew. On the left was a copper-coloured sky like the ones in fairy tales; on the right, a darkness no name could describe. People poured into the streets and watched the sky until morning.

By morning Karaliman woke inside a wall of fog. The radios and two-way radios fell silent. The trucks, boats and convoys on foot that entered the fog to reach loved ones outside never came back.

The city learned to fend for itself. The garrison commander, Colonel Rauf Demirsoy, opened the barracks gates to the people and handed out provisions on ration cards. Hatice Kalaycı set up the neighbourhood soup kitchens. Haşim the Teacher took orphaned children into his orphanage in the valley. And Selvi Hatun, a former truck driver, began running supply caravans between the towns.

In the spring of 1987, creatures from folk tales began emerging from the Copper Marsh: the gulyabani, the al karısı, the hortlak. Villagers abandoned their homes and fled to the city. The sentries opened fire, but ordinary bullets did nothing to them.

In 1988 other things began arriving from the Mist Coast. These resembled no tale at all: some were motionless as stone, some transparent as glass. Fishermen saw them walk up out of the water.

Leyla Arıkan, the garrison hospital’s doctor, found an amber-coloured core in the chest of a slain gulyabani. The core was still warm hours after death. They called it essence.

The gunsmith, Master Sergeant Kâzım Sert, mixed essence into gunpowder and made the first essence bullet. It soon became clear that patterns engraved into the metal made the weapon stronger. Leyla realised the patterns came from within the essence itself. That is how the rune was born.

But runes were dangerous: a rune drawn wrong could do far worse than simply fail. In the same years, talismans and the Anvil were born in Bakırhan, and healing in Akpınar.

In a secret report, Leyla wrote that runes could be inscribed not only on metal but on living flesh. There was only one copy of the report. But someone was determined to learn what it said.

No one knows exactly what was done in the old mine in the Blind Hills. The records say a company was “lost in the fog curtain”, and note that no search was made.

Shepherds still say they see figures in the hills. The place is now called the Cave of the Dead.

In 1992 the first beings from the Dark Sky that could speak were seen in the Bone Forest. They were tall, pale-skinned, with eyes like glass. They spoke not in words but in echoes. People called them the Pale Ones.

The eldest of the Pale Ones, Broken Bell, struck an agreement with Bakırhan: the Pale Ones would live in the forest, and in return they would teach the finer points of refining essence. With that knowledge, Bakırhan’s workshops doubled within two years. The garrison never trusted the agreement. Akpınar sent the Pale Ones water and provisions, but never let them into the valley.

In the same years, Selvi Hatun’s caravans became the only artery linking the towns. The old inn where the roads met grew into the town we now call Yolağzı.

The essence mines on the Burnt Plain set the army and the neighbourhoods against each other. The army laid siege to Bakırhan. In the winter of 1996, a caravan carrying bread into the town was fired upon and eleven people died.

On 3 March 1996 the Innkeepers’ Oath was signed at the inn in Yolağzı: no hand is raised against an innkeeper, no blood is spilled in a town, and war is waged only on the Red Line. The oath was sealed with a rune.

In 1999, on the morning of the vote that would have united everyone under a single command, the assembly building beneath the Clock Tower collapsed in an explosion. The factions blamed one another. In the rubble lay a rune no one had ever used.

Then everyone withdrew to their own town: the Iron Regiment, the Union, the Covenant, and the Innkeepers who keep the roads open. The fog swallowed the roads between the regions. What remained were thresholds woven with runes. Since that day, war has been waged only on the Red Lines.

After the disaster, the Iron Regiment blamed the Pale Ones as well, and in 2000 it marched on the Bone Forest. Broken Bell died in that campaign. The Pale Ones withdrew into the depths of the forest; some of their households have been hostile to humans ever since.

The Union took up arms under Nermin Kalaycı, daughter of Hatice Kalaycı. Neighbourhood watchmen became militias, and workshops became arms factories. In 2001 the Regiment tried to conscript Akpınar’s young people by force; the community resisted, and two of them died. In 2003 an essence-smuggling gang tied to the Union dragged a swarm of creatures that was hunting it into Akpınar. A wing of the orphanage burned, and nineteen people died.

That winter, Haşim the Teacher opened the gates and announced that the community would now bear arms against those who misuse essence. That is how the Covenant went to war. The blood feud between the three factions has gone on ever since.

In the Regiment, Colonel Rauf was succeeded by Major Cemal Sert, son of Master Sergeant Kâzım Sert. Every enemy felled on the Red Line was entered in a book of glory, and rank was granted by that book. Before long the Union and the Covenant kept books of their own; glory became Karaliman’s second currency.

In these years people also noticed that the density of essence shifts from season to season and from region to region. They call it the Sky Shift. Colonel Rauf died in 2012, Haşim the Teacher in 2019. Haşim’s last will was never read to the community; it is kept in a sealed envelope in Akpınar.

On 14 April 2023 the first stranger walked out of the sea onto the Silent Shore. They did not remember their name. No one recognised the cloth they wore.

Others followed. They were all the same: they did not know their names, and they absorbed essence far faster than ordinary people. People called them the Entrusted, as if the sea had entrusted them to the city.

The Innkeepers welcome them at the caravanserai on the Silent Shore. This morning, another one washed ashore. It’s you.