The sun is gone. The stars shine bright. I seek revenge.

 

Fragile cuts of coal line the shelves, marking the warped wood with black scratches. Already grey and flaking, I place them within a circle of Bleakstone and Palewood I collected from the outside. I take a chip of flint and a rusted blade from my belt, and after a few strikes—

 

Fire.

 

The fuel departs with every stoking heave of the gasping fire. I watch the pitiful flames fight with themselves, sitting in front of the smoke, eyes darting around this husk. 

 

What was this place? I think, staring into the cracks of warmth. How could people want to be here? It’s nothing but a shack in nowhere, surrounded by danger and loneliness. The closest homes have to be by—

 

A draft of air pierces the doorway, releasing the door from its hinges and unleashing the might of the sky onto the weak fire. I don’t make an effort to stand; the winds have already taken what was precious. The fire; as well, is gone. The world cannot be made of color anymore. Its time has passed. I rise after the smoke falls, and leave.

 

With every cloud that migrates overhead, a darkness; thicker than water but faster than the wind, inhales the fragile beacons of pale silver from the stars above. There is still light in the sky, but it is only a memory of a well-loved blanket now ragged with dust and fraying, weakly keeping us warm as we travel. We travel searching for someone to knit us a new blanket. 

 

The Sunblighted. 

 

He shall relight the Vassal of Warmth, the prophecy says. But for now, we are trapped with this fleeting imperfect substance. Yet a new future is sure to arrive one day. And yet I hope it never comes.

 

I draw my spear in my left hand; supporting it in my right hand, letting my fingers fall softly into the wooden grooves smoothed from years and years of use. So many years of jabbing, stabbing, blocking, parrying, sidestepping dragging slicing running leaping throwing for years and years and years and years and—

 

A crash. A flash of light—

 

I wake up on my back, lying on nothing but air. 

 

I must be dead, I think. I begin to open my eyes, expecting the nothingness that every flame goes to when put out, but what faces my eyes could not be anything less than true beauty. The stars; every single one, beaming silver pillars into the barrier of clouds that lay out above me. I stand up carefully and look down at my feet.

 

I can see the North Plains and its thorny mazes overrunning the gravel-filled snowy ruins, now with those pillars of cold steel sticking out of caved-in rooftops. I look forward and the Sforil Forest is now a spread of treetops, glistening with silver spears. I slowly look around me, and a breathtaking world, full of silver cylinders, fills my vision. They stab like spears from beneath the grounds far below me and rise into the Heavens above.

 

I look straight down to see the shed I once stood in. It is now a ruin of charred wood already beginning to dissipate. But in the center of the ruins, there is a sort of thin dust that reaches straight into the sky. I try to follow it with my eyes, but it starts to curve and disappear the closer it gets to the invisible plane below me.

 

I reach behind me for my spear, but it is not there. The only thing I can feel is a thin thread through the sling where my weapon should be. I unclasp the sling and look at it. Coated by storm and dust, beaten by bramble and beast, I’ve had it through everything. I gently feel the silver string as it slacks from being pulled on my back. I clasp my hands around the string and pull, hoping to get what is rightfully mine back, but all it does is slacken even more. The thin dust stretching from the shed shifts in the corner of my eye. 

 

Curious, I think as I put the sling on my back, still holding onto the string of silver that reaches to the ground. It takes the place where my spear belongs. Perhaps I should walk the Earth from here, maybe then I’ll find the Sunblighted one, to free the world of this false hope. Or maybe find what was taken from—:

 

“Find me! Find me, now!”

 

I fall to my knees as the piercing shriek erodes my balance on the invisible ground I stand on. I try to support myself on the palms of my hands, as if to will the voice to cease its cries and let me rise. But just as I am able to lift my eyes, I see a silver pillar, in all its imposing stature, crack. From the center down to the Earth and up to the Heavens it begins to erode with fast and sharp crunches. But through the chaos I hear the voice; in a shallow breath, call out once more:

 

“Please….save her.”

End of Chapter One