Ilhan Barutcu — 999 By

Elias turned his back to the door and looked out the final, circular window. For the first time, he didn't see a version of himself. He saw Ilhan Barutcu standing on a distant rooftop, holding a sketchpad. Ilhan looked up, smiled, and closed the book.

Ilhan Barutcu, the man who had given Elias the key, had told him only one thing: "The truth isn't at the top. The truth is the climb." Elias took the first step. One.

Elias’s lungs burned. The air grew thinner, smelling of ancient dust and the salt of the Marmara Sea. He passed the small windows that looked out over the city. Each time he reached this height, he saw a different version of himself in the glass. Sometimes he was a child holding a red balloon; sometimes he was an old man with eyes like clouded marbles. Six hundred and sixty-six. 999 By Ilhan Barutcu

His mind drifted to the first time he met Ilhan in a dim café in Kadıköy. Ilhan had been sketching a circle that never quite closed—a series of 9s that looked like falling tears or curling smoke. "Most people live in the decimals," Ilhan had whispered, sliding a tarnished brass key across the table. "They live in the almosts and the not-quites. If you want to see the whole, you have to count the cycle." Three hundred and thirty-three.

Elias took the key out of his pocket and let it drop into the darkness of the stairwell. He didn't open the door. He simply sat on the 999th step and watched the sun finally break through the clouds over the Bosporus. The loop was broken because he stopped trying to finish it. Elias turned his back to the door and

The rain in Istanbul didn’t fall; it hung in the air like a damp curtain, blurring the edges of the Galata Tower. Elias stood at the base of the spiraling stone stairs, his hand resting on the cold, sweat-slicked railing. He had been here before—exactly nine hundred and ninety-eight times.

The air grew silent. The city sounds—the ferry horns, the shouting vendors, the hum of traffic—faded into a singular, vibrating drone. Ilhan looked up, smiled, and closed the book

Elias reached the final landing. Before him stood a heavy wooden door, carved with the numeral . It was the same door he had reached nine hundred and ninety-eight times before. Every other time, he had turned the key, walked through, and found himself standing back at the base of the tower, the rain still hanging in the air, the count reset to zero.