The stairs leading down looked narrower than yesterday.
Barış stood at the entrance of the underground city of Derinkuyu. The sky above was still bright. The dry wind of Cappadocia, the distant voices—everything remained intact on the surface.
Only the darkness at his feet felt different.
As if it opened into another time.
Yesterday, the dog disappeared on the ridge at Zelve.
The question it left behind stayed through the night.
What is that dog.
And why, each time he moved closer to his father’s memory, did something pull him back underground?
Barış placed a hand on the railing.
Cold metal.
The chill moved quietly from his fingers inward. Footsteps from other visitors passed behind him, then drifted away in another direction.
No one would think he had come back here because something had called him.
That helped. A little.
With each step down, the light thinned.
Stone walls drew closer. The air cooled. Sound softened.
The silence here was not the same as above.
Quiet—
but not empty.
Someone had breathed here once.
Lit fires.
Prayed.
Hidden.
Waited.
That time still seemed to rest inside the stone.
Barış stopped.
The mark in his father’s old notebook.
The line on the floor in Zelve.
The direction the dog had faced before it vanished.
They didn’t clearly connect.
But they didn’t feel separate either.
He took a small piece of paper from his pocket. A copy from his father’s notebook.
The line was uneven.
Not quite a map.
Not quite writing.
He didn’t understand it.
Still, looking at it made something settle heavier in his chest.
„Have you been here?“
He hadn’t meant to speak.
The words dropped into the stone corridor.
Was he asking his father.
Or himself.
Or the dog.
He couldn’t tell.
A cold current of air moved from deeper inside.
Strange.
Underground—and still, there was wind.
He went on.
Small indentations lined the wall, like places where lights had once been set. In the dimness, the stone surface held a faint pale edge.
Then—
a sound.
Not his.
He turned.
No one.
The voices of tourists were gone now. No guide, no echo of explanation. Only his breathing, and the faint drip of water somewhere unseen.
Just imagination.
He told himself that.
But the words didn’t hold the way they used to.
Too many things, these past days, had slipped past that explanation.
He looked at the paper again.
Then something on the wall caught his eye.
A small mark.
Just a scratch, maybe.
But the angle—
it curved like the line in his father’s notebook.
He stepped closer.
Touched it.
Cold stone.
The mark was old. Not fresh. Not something made recently. Whether it was carved by hand or formed by chance, he couldn’t tell.
But inside him, it was no longer just a mark.
Had his father seen this?
Had he stood here—
thinking something he never said?
Or was Barış only collecting meaning where none existed, mistaking coincidence for a path?
The questions layered over each other.
No answers.
Then—
from deeper in the passage,
a faint sound.
Brief.
Like a claw touching stone.
He held his breath.
It came only once.
Still—
he knew.
Not footsteps.
Not wind.
Not water.
He lifted his gaze slowly.
Nothing visible in the dark ahead.
Only the sense of something there.
He didn’t move.
Fear was still there.
But it had changed.
Now, something else sat inside it.
A need to know.
What is that dog？
That question remained.
But another had begun to settle beneath it.
What did my father see here？
Barış tightened his grip on the paper.
The darkness seemed to deepen.
And from the far end of the passage,
once more—
the sound of something stepping on stone.
