Chapter 1621: Story 1621: A Dawn That Remembered
The world exhaled.
Not all at once—softly, uncertainly, like a wounded thing testing its lungs. The shattered light folded into clouds, rain began to fall in slow, silvery threads, and from the cracks of the mirror-ground sprouted the first traces of green. Not life as it had been, but something new, uncertain of its own name.
Zara lay upon the edge of a newborn field. The earth was damp, breathing faint warmth. For the first time in what felt like eternity, she could feel the pulse of something living beneath her fingers. It was faint, fragile—but real.
Her eyes opened to a sky that glowed pale gold. No sun, only light. The air smelled faintly of rain and ash. She sat up slowly, clutching the faint pendant at her neck—the last piece of the world before.
“Damien...” she whispered. The sound barely carried, yet somewhere, she thought she heard the faintest echo—like a heartbeat inside the clouds.
She rose to her feet. Around her stretched the remains of the abyss, now frozen in place—giant silhouettes of what had once been tendrils or towers, turned to black stone. Between them, rivers of light cut through the land, winding like veins. She followed one, unsure why, only knowing that it pulsed faintly when she walked near, as if recognizing her.
Every few steps, she saw reflections in the light—moments that weren’t hers: a hand reaching for another, a fire burning in the dark, the Keeper’s staff rising against the storm. Memories of the fallen world. The dawn did remember, just as Damien said.
But with remembrance came sorrow.
She stopped when she reached what might once have been a hill—or perhaps a grave. The light pooled here, spiraling upward into a slow-turning pillar that shimmered faintly with voices. At its base, half-buried in earth, lay a single black shard of glass. Damien’s reflection flickered faintly within it.
Her breath caught. She knelt, brushing soil from its surface. “You’re still here,” she whispered. “Aren’t you?”
The shard pulsed once, softly—like a heartbeat.
“Always,” came his voice, distant but unmistakable. “In the roots. In the rivers. In what you’ll build next.”
Zara’s tears fell again, but this time they didn’t crack the ground—they nourished it. Around her hands, small white flowers began to bloom, their petals faintly luminous.
She smiled through the grief. “Then this world... it’s both of us.”
“No,” Damien’s voice whispered, fading gently. “It’s yours. That’s how I stay.”
The pillar of light swelled one final time, and then dispersed into the sky, dissolving like breath into dawn.
Zara stood alone in the quiet field, her reflection gone from the rivers around her. Only the sound of wind remained—soft, patient, alive.
And somewhere beyond sight, beneath this remade world, the Hollow Sun pulsed once... as if sleeping.
The dawn held.
But it remembered the dark.