Days had passed for Sohan since his departure from the gray hut. His heart was heavy, and his eyes could not sleep. Behind him, the fire in which the strange man's body was buried still glowed in his memory. Before his eyes, a gray world breathed as if it were dying... everything was still, except for an inner call that pulled him toward something he did not know.
As he walked across the extinguished plains, where no tree grew and no wind blew, he glimpsed a distant glow on the horizon. A rare place where sunlight still filtered through, albeit barely.
This was the village of Niram—one of the cities still within the bounds of light, surrounded by fields of ash and guarded by a massive iron gate. As he approached, the village guards saw him and drew their bows.
"No one enters without a test of purity!"
One of the guards shouted, while the second produced a small, silver-colored crystal. Sohan recognized this crystal... it was similar to the one the strange man had in the hut. As she approached him, the crystal's light suddenly dimmed—then returned dimly, as if he had hesitated to read it.
"It's... tainted, but not entirely."
The guard said confusedly, while the other looked at him suspiciously. "Are you human... or something else?"
Sohan was silent for a moment. Ever since that night, he felt something change within him. In his veins, something other than blood was stirring. When he became angry, he exploded with a power he'd never known before... and his eyes—sometimes they could see more clearly in the dark than they should.
"I am...Sohan. I don't know what I've become, but I'm not an enemy."
He spoke with a heavy voice, as if his voice had emerged from the ashes of his own self.
They reluctantly let him in. In Niram, he encountered a kind of people he'd never seen before: hunters fighting the Withered in the shadows, explorers digging through the ruins of ancient cities in search of "Shards of Light," and priests of Light trying to preserve the remaining rays of the sun.
But he met one person who would change his fate...
Erin, a sharp-witted girl, belonged to the Wither Hunters. She saw something in Sohan different from everyone else, something akin to... fear.
"You carry something of the Withered in you, don't you?" she asked him one night in the abandoned temple. He didn't answer, but she smiled as if she already knew the answer.
Sohan sat on a stone windowsill overlooking Niram's main square. The city, though small, was strangely alive, surrounded by fear but not suffocating. There was something steely in the people's faces... something rare. A will to survive.
He decided to explore further.
He began walking through the winding alleys, littered with the remains of arson and makeshift construction. Along the way, he spotted an elderly man with a cross of light hanging around his neck, sitting before a decayed statue of an ancient solar inscription.
He approached him and asked, "How did you survive the catastrophe? From the Withered?"
The old man looked at him with sullen but wise eyes.
"We didn't really survive, boy... we just didn't die yet. First, half the sun went down, then the ash started falling. Some of us died within the first week. Others... burned from the inside."
"And what about the withered? How do you avoid them?"
Sohan asked, staring at the ash falling lightly from the sky, even though they were within the confines of the light.
"Niram is protected by a sliver of light... a piece of the ancient sun. It doesn't burn them, but it keeps them away."
He then pointed to a stone dome in the center of the city, inside which a faint beam slowly pulsed.
Sohan continued on, entering the market area—and saw a few wares, mostly tools made from remnants of ancient metals and the hides of unknown animals. He saw a muscular young man staring at him, then approached him.
"You're new here, right?"
The young man said in a non-hostile, but cautious tone.
"My name is Sohan."
He replied, extending his hand.
"I'm Kirs. I was a Withered Hunter... until I lost my arm on a mission beyond the Light. I've returned, but I still smell the ash in my sleep."
He half laughed, then pointed to the city's eastern entrance.
"There, the first city fell. It was called Urdal. It was filled with light. It disappeared in just three nights. No one knows why... or how."
Sohan began to sense that his survival was no accident.
In their eyes, he was a stranger... but deep down, they saw something familiar in him—something that might be able to do what they couldn't.
One night, he sat by a stone wall, contemplating the gray sky.
Erin approached him and sat silently.
"We've all lost someone, Sohan. But only a few find their way out of the ashes."
She said quietly.
"I'm not just looking for a way..."
He whispered, staring into the refracted sunlight.
"I'm looking for a reason for what happened... and something that can bring it back."
She looked up at him.
"You want to bring back the sun?"
Sohan didn't answer.
But in his heart... he began to believe that something in his blood, in his past, in the strange man's death, in his sister's disappearance—none of this was random.
Within the walls of Niram, the deepest chapter of his journey began: not just fighting, but understanding.