Erdal and Natalie’s escape from the royal palace marks the point at which their private flight becomes an open act of treason against King Zutaar. Natalie is not merely a companion seeking freedom: she is pregnant with Erdal’s child, and her blood has become medically valuable. Their attempt to leave therefore threatens the king’s control over both a royal guard who has disobeyed him and a human woman whose body is being treated as a resource.

Causes and Stakes

Erdal rushes back toward the palace with Natalie at his side, already aware that what he is doing can be punished by death. Natalie conceals her face beneath a hooded robe, while Erdal tries to move quickly without attracting attention. The urgency is sharpened by the danger surrounding her pregnancy. He believes that, if King Zutaar learns that Dr. Barca has discovered a cure connected to Natalie’s blood, the king will kill her rather than allow that knowledge to escape his control.

The escape also exposes the difference between Erdal’s official identity and his moral choice. As a royal guard, he is expected to enforce the palace order; as Natalie’s ally and the father of her unborn child, he chooses to violate it. His decision is not presented as a safe rebellion. He knows the legal consequence in advance, yet continues because remaining inside the palace would leave Natalie and the child at the king’s mercy.

The First Attempt and Capture

Erdal guides Natalie across the palace gardens, keeping away from guards who patrol the broad lawns. Still holding her hand, he circles the outer wall and reaches doors leading to the basement parking area. He enters the elevator, checks his Light-Shard, and prepares to move through the concealed route. The escape collapses as soon as the elevator doors open.

Gezek is waiting with a sinister smile, accompanied by armed guards. One guard holds a crossbow ready to fire, while another seizes Natalie, twists her arms behind her back, and covers her mouth before she can scream. Erdal demands that Gezek release her, but Gezek calls him a traitor for defying the king’s orders and commands that both of them be taken away.

The guards drag Erdal and Natalie back toward the elevators and imprison Erdal in the Dark Cells. These dungeons hold death-row prisoners who are tortured before execution, and the setting makes the political meaning of the failed escape unmistakable: Erdal has been stripped of his royal guard uniform and reduced, in the palace’s judgment, to a condemned traitor. Shackled by the wrists and ankles, with rusty metal cutting into his skin, he fears not only for himself but also for Natalie and their unborn child. His regret that he brought her into danger does not erase the decision that caused it; it confirms the personal cost of his defiance.

Barca’s Intervention and the Mountain Flight

The escape succeeds only after Dr. Barca intervenes. Barca explains that Natalie cannot remain in the palace because her life is in danger, and that King Zutaar would kill her if he discovered both the cure and the doctor’s knowledge of it. Barca has already taken enough samples of Natalie’s blood to last a lifetime, removing the immediate need to keep her as a captive medical source. He therefore orders Erdal to get her out at once.

Barca supplies a precise route rather than a vague promise of rescue. Erdal and Natalie must use the back gate of the fifth garden, which opens into the Clapwood forest, where a car is waiting. Natalie runs after the doctor, trusting the man who earlier saved her life. His explanation that her blood saved his daughter’s life alters her understanding of her own vulnerability: although she considers herself an ordinary human, her blood has extraordinary value in this alien society.

Once reunited with Erdal, Natalie sits beside him as the vehicle silently levitates and moves through the forest toward the mountains. The image reverses the earlier elevator scene. The elevator had carried them deeper into the palace’s machinery of surveillance and punishment; the levitating car carries them outward, past the trees and into uncertain freedom. Erdal knows of a cabin high in the mountains where they can remain safe for a while, making the destination a temporary refuge rather than a final deliverance.

Consequences and Significance

The flight changes Erdal and Natalie’s status from palace subjects to fugitives. Erdal’s capture proves that the royal system can close its corridors and weaponize its guards against one of its own officers. Barca’s assistance demonstrates a competing network of care, in which medical knowledge and personal loyalty can interrupt royal power, although even that rescue depends on secrecy, speed, and the knowledge that the palace is searching for them.

The event also links bodily autonomy to political rebellion. Natalie’s pregnancy makes her a target, while her blood makes her valuable; neither fact protects her. The king’s authority reaches into reproduction, medicine, and movement, so escaping the palace is simultaneously an attempt to protect a relationship, an unborn child, and the possibility that Natalie’s body will no longer be controlled by the crown.

As the car carries them toward the mountain cabin, the escape remains incomplete. The pair have left the palace, but mercenaries are searching for them, and the cabin offers safety only temporarily. Its importance lies in the transition it permits: Erdal is no longer merely a guard who has broken an order, and Natalie is no longer simply a hidden captive within the palace. Together they become fugitives whose survival depends on mutual trust, Barca’s sacrifice of official safety, and their ability to remain beyond Zutaar’s reach.