When The Sun Died

Chapter 14

Dr. Kane Malric’s POV

Asher hit the ground so hard the entire aisle shuddered.

For a second, none of us moved.

None of us breathed.

Serena’s gun hung uselessly at her side now, her arms shaking too much to aim even if she wanted to.

Elara just stared at his collapsed body, hands trembling.

Nia whimpered into my shirt, hiding her face.

And me…

I stared at him like he was the final page of a book I had spent my whole life trying and failing to write.

Immune.

Transforming.

But not turning.

Asher’s body lay crumpled against the cracked tiles, chest rising and falling in uneven, shallow breaths. The red-black shadows of the ruined supermarket still flickered through the broken windows, and the smell of burnt blood and sweat clung to everything.

I swallowed hard. Years of lab experience didn’t prepare me for this not the Eclipseborn, not the Eclipse, and certainly not someone like Asher. He was… an anomaly.

A walking, breathing unknown variable, a puzzle I had no frame of reference for.

Elara’s hand hovered over him, hesitating. “He’s… he’s alive,” she whispered.

“Yes, for now,” I murmured, my voice lower than I intended. The temptation was immediate, irresistible to test, to analyze, to quantify the impossible.

But looking at the others, the fear, the trust, the desperate hope. I swallowed that impulse. For now.

We couldn’t stay. The supermarket was exposed, unstable, dangerous. Supplies were scarce, and the last thing we needed was for more Eclipseborn to appear, drawn by Asher or whatever he was.

“Elara,” I said, moving with careful precision, “we need food. Water.

“ Anything that can help us survive the next few days.”

Her nod was sharp, efficient. “We’ll split up. Take what you can carry, bring it to the carts.”

I started scanning the aisles, my scientific mind still ticking despite the chaos. Cans, bottled water, protein bars, anything.

Elara and Serena moved quickly, methodically. Kane, my inner voice chastised. Kane, the scientist, is noting everything. My fingers brushed against a half-empty first aid kit. I snagged it.

I tossed the first aid kit into the metal cart with a clang.

The sound echoed too loudly in the ruined supermarket, and all four of us froze for a heartbeat, listening.

Nothing.

Just the soft hum of the red sky bleeding through the shattered windows and Asher’s uneven breathing scraping against the silence.

We worked faster after that.

Elara moved like she was on the edge of breaking her eyes never leaving Asher for more than a few seconds at a time. Every item she grabbed, every bottle she shoved into the cart, was done with frantic precision as if she could outrun whatever was happening to him.

Serena, on the other hand, moved stiffly. Calculated. Her hands shook, but her mind was sharp. She grabbed tools, ropes, batteries, knives anything useful beyond just food. She was clearly preparing for travel. For danger. For everything that was coming after this moment.

Nia helped in the only way a terrified child could pointing out shelves we missed, handing us things with her tiny trembling fingers.

Her eyes flicked constantly toward Asher’s collapsed body. Not out of fear.

Out of worry, Out of hope.

And me?

I filled the cart, but every movement of my hands was secondary.

My mind was spinning around Asher like a planet trapped in the gravity of a star.

A new kind of Eclipseborn.

No something adjacent. Something unheard of. Something the files in my backpack didn’t prepare me for.

He wasn’t turning.

He wasn’t remaining fully human either.

He was… changing.

Adapting. Surviving. Evolving.

The Eclipse had created monsters but Asher, somehow, was not falling into the categories outlined in the earlier discoveries. Not Stage One’s mindless thrashing hunger. Not Stage Two’s primal cunning. Not Stage Three’s intelligence driven predation.

And certainly not Stage Four the Apex class that defied biology entirely.

No… Asher’s transformation didn’t match any known pattern.

He was something new.

Something the Eclipse hadn’t produced until now.

Something no one had ever studied.

And it terrified me how much I wanted to study it.

When the carts were heavy enough to squeak under the weight, Elara exhaled shakily.

“That’s everything,” she whispered, wiping the back of her hand across her forehead, smearing dust. “We can’t carry more.”

“Then we wait,” Serena said firmly.

Elara blinked at her. “Wait?”

Serena’s gaze went to Asher still motionless on the floor, except for the rise and fall of his chest.

“We can’t move him like this,” Serena said. “And we’re not leaving him. So we wait.”

Elara nodded, her eyes softening.

We made a temporary camp near the back of the store, dragging shelves and carts around us like makeshift barricades. Serena stood guard.

Nia curled up beside Elara. I knelt next to Asher, my thoughts racing with every twitch in his muscles.

He was burning up. Heat radiated from his skin like a fever, but this wasn’t illness it was metamorphosis. His blood was in a war with something ancient, something connected to the sky itself.

I pulled my notebook from my bag.

Not to test him.

Just to write.

To document.

To try to understand.

Hours passed.

The red glow outside dimmed to a deep maroon.

Nia slept. Serena paced. Elara whispered prayers under her breath.

And finally, Asher moved. A sharp inhale.

A twitch of his fingers.

His jaw clenched, teeth grinding. Another breath, rough and gravelly, dragged into his lungs like someone pulling air into a dying fire.

Elara dropped to her knees beside him instantly.

His eyelids fluttered, then cracked open.

His eyes were different, darker, sharper, almost glowing beneath the last traces of the red eclipse-light.

He looked from Elara to me to Serena then winced, gripping his head.

“What… happened?” he rasped.

“You passed out,” Serena answered, crossing her arms not cold, but steady. “And you scared the hell out of everyone.”

He tried to push himself up, but his arms trembled like they weren’t fully his.

I reached out instinctively to steady him, and for a moment, his skin was so hot I nearly jerked my hand back.

He was stabilizing, but the transformation wasn’t over.

Not even close.

Elara cupped his face gently. “You’re okay. You’re here.”

He swallowed hard, leaning into her touch before breathing out shakily. “How long?”

“A few hours,” Serena said. “Long enough for us to gather supplies.”

Her eyes darted to the loaded carts behind her.

“Which brings us to the next problem.”

Asher’s brow furrowed. “What problem?”

“We can’t stay here,” Serena said simply. “This place is too open, too obvious.

If more Eclipseborn come, especially the types that came here earlier”.

Asher stiffened at the word Eclipseborn, but Serena continued.

“We need other survivors. A fortified area. A place with walls, weapons, people who can fight with us.

The camp north of town those emergency shelters the government built before everything went to hell? That’s our best shot.”

Elara hesitated. “Shouldn’t we wait? Asher’s still”

“No,” Serena cut in gently but firmly. “If we wait here, we’re sitting targets.”

She looked at Asher.

“You can walk, right?”

He nodded, though he still looked unsteady. “Yeah. I’ll manage.”

Serena’s voice softened, not something she did often. “Then we move at first light.”

I felt my pulse quicken not from fear, but from calculation.

Survivor camp meant people.

People meant other Eclipseborn encounters.

Encounters meant data.

And data meant answers.

For Asher.

For the Eclipse.

For the world falling apart under that red-black sky.

Asher exhaled, long and weary, nodding again.

“Okay,” he murmured. “We go.”