Chapter 2: The City That Forgot The Sun
1248 Words
Chapter Two
The City That Forgot the Sun
The echo of the great bell did not die.
It seeped into the mountains, travelled beneath rivers, and trembled through the foundations of every city and village across the kingdom. Windows cracked without being touched. Ancient trees bent as though bowing before an unseen king. Even the wind seemed afraid to breathe.
Then...
Silence.
Not ordinary silence, but a terrifying emptiness, as if the world itself had forgotten how to make a sound.
Elias Varen slowly opened his eyes.
His body ached as though he had fallen from a great height. He lay on the cold stone floor of the Royal Archive, surrounded by towering shelves of books. Everything appeared normal.
The shattered relic was gone.
The mysterious shadow had vanished.
The impossible eye had disappeared.
For a fleeting moment, he convinced himself it had all been a nightmare.
Then he looked at the clock.
His heart stopped.
Its hands were frozen at 12:31.
That minute did not exist.
His trembling fingers reached into his coat. He removed his pocket watch.
12:31.
He searched the room in disbelief.
Every clock...
Every timepiece...
Every hourglass...
Had stopped at the same impossible moment.
A minute the world had never known.
---
Unable to calm the storm inside him, Elias rushed into the streets of Aranth.
The city was awake.
Yet something was terribly wrong.
Market stalls were open, but no one bargained.
Blacksmiths stood motionless beside cold furnaces.
Children stared blankly into empty space.
Soldiers remained perfectly still, gripping their spears without blinking.
It was as though life continued...
But every soul had been quietly hollowed out.
Elias looked upward.
His breath caught in his throat.
The sky glowed with a pale, colourless light.
There was no sunrise.
No golden dawn.
No blazing sun.
Only an endless grey emptiness stretching beyond imagination.
---
He hurried to an elderly baker arranging fresh loaves outside his shop.
"Sir," Elias asked anxiously, "what happened to the sun?"
The old man frowned.
"The... what?"
"The sun."
"I don't understand."
"The great light that rises every morning."
The baker stared at him with genuine confusion.
"I have lived for seventy years," he replied softly. "There has never been such a thing."
He returned to his bread without another word.
Cold fear settled deep inside Elias.
---
He questioned everyone he met.
A soldier.
A merchant.
A teacher.
A mother carrying her infant.
Each gave the same bewildered response.
"What is the sun?"
Some laughed nervously.
Others became frightened by the strange question.
One elderly woman suddenly burst into tears, unable to explain why the unfamiliar word filled her heart with unbearable grief.
It was as though the memory of the sun had been erased from every living mind...
Except Elias's.
---
Desperate for answers, he hurried into the city's central square.
There he stopped so suddenly that his knees nearly gave way.
The enormous marble statue of King Alaric—the founder of Aranth—had changed.
Yesterday, the king proudly held his sword toward the heavens.
Now...
His hands covered his own eyes.
Beneath the statue, a new inscription had appeared, carved so deeply into the stone that it seemed older than the monument itself.
DO NOT LOOK WHEN THE THIRTY-FIRST MIDNIGHT RETURNS.
Elias felt his blood turn to ice.
He had studied this monument for years.
Those words had never existed.
---
Without warning, every cathedral bell across the city began ringing.
One after another.
Until thirteen bells echoed together like a funeral hymn.
Citizens poured into the Grand Cathedral, their faces pale with fear.
Elias followed.
The vast sanctuary was overflowing within minutes.
Candles flickered beneath towering stained-glass windows.
The High Priest stepped before the altar, his hands trembling.
"My brothers and sisters..." he began.
His voice faltered.
He stared at the sacred Scriptures resting before him.
His eyes widened.
The pages were empty.
Every word...
Every verse...
Every promise...
Gone.
A gasp swept through the congregation.
A woman screamed.
Several people collapsed to their knees.
The priest fell weeping before the altar.
"Who has stolen the Word?" he cried.
---
At that very moment...
Every candle died.
Darkness swallowed the cathedral.
Children clung to their mothers.
Men whispered desperate prayers.
Then a little voice broke the silence.
"He's awake."
Another child's voice answered from somewhere unseen.
"No..."
"They're awake."
The darkness flowed across the floor like living ink.
It gathered beside the altar, twisting and rising until it formed the shape of a young girl.
She looked no older than twelve.
She wore a simple white dress dusted with ash.
Long black hair framed a face both innocent and impossibly ancient.
Yet one detail made Elias's heart pound.
She cast no shadow.
Not even in the faint light creeping through the shattered windows.
She looked directly at him.
"You remember."
Her voice was gentle, carrying a sadness far older than the world.
Elias struggled to speak.
"Who... are you?"
"My true name was stolen long ago," she whispered.
"So now I borrow names from forgotten dreams."
She offered a faint smile.
"You may call me Mara."
"You know what happened?"
"I remember everything the world has forgotten."
She stepped closer.
"You crossed the Thirty-First Midnight."
"Yes."
"Then the man who entered the Archive last night no longer belongs to this world."
Elias stared at her in disbelief.
"What do you mean?"
She lowered her eyes.
"The world simply hasn't realised you're already missing."
---
A thunderous roar suddenly shook the cathedral.
The magnificent stained-glass windows exploded inward.
Shards of coloured glass rained across the floor.
Outside...
Thousands screamed.
Elias rushed to the entrance.
The sky itself was breaking apart.
Enormous cracks spread across the heavens like fractures in a giant mirror.
Beyond those impossible fractures...
An eye opened.
Its golden iris was larger than mountains.
Its gaze swept slowly across the city.
Everyone who looked into it instantly forgot someone they loved.
Mothers stared helplessly at their own children.
Husbands looked upon their wives as strangers.
Friends passed one another without recognition.
The streets filled with cries of confusion and heartbreak.
Only Elias and Mara remembered.
Tears welled in Mara's eyes.
"It has begun."
---
Far beyond the broken sky, where neither time nor death could enter, thirteen colossal thrones stood in silent darkness.
Twelve were occupied.
The thirteenth remained empty.
An ancient voice echoed through eternity.
"The Witness has crossed the forbidden hour."
Another answered,
"The Seal is broken."
The first voice spoke once more.
"Release the Collector."
From the darkness emerged a towering figure draped in robes woven from the pages of forgotten books.
Its face was hidden behind a mask of black stone.
In its skeletal hand burned a blue lantern.
Inside that lantern floated thousands of tiny lights.
Each one was a stolen memory.
The Collector slowly raised its head.
It had heard the name...
Elias Varen.
And it smiled.
---
Later, beneath the colourless sky, Elias stood upon the cathedral steps beside Mara.
The city had become a kingdom of frightened strangers.
Mara's voice barely rose above a whisper.
"The Collector is coming."
"What will it do to me?"
She looked at him with profound sorrow.
"It will not take your life."
"It will erase every memory that proves you ever existed."
Far beyond the horizon, a faint blue light flickered once.
Then again.
Closer.
Elias's breath caught.
The lantern was not travelling across the land.
It was walking through the sky.
And it was coming for him.
- Writer
