That light came first.
Not a soft light, like the one that seeps through curtain cracks at dawn. An aggressive, bluish light that pulsed at regular intervals — the rhythm of tired neon fighting against the end of its own life. Ethan blinked, trying to focus his numb eyes. The smell of oxidized metal and cheap alcohol filled his nostrils, mixed with a more subtle, sweeter odor — old perfume, perhaps, or the memory of bodies that had been there.
The cold of the chains against his wrists brought him back to reality.
He was on his knees. His hands were tied above his head to an iron structure that creaked in the wind. His ankles were attached to two hooks embedded in the concrete floor. His body ached — a dull, generalized pain that came from hours, perhaps days, of immobility. He tried to move his fingers. They responded, slow, numb. He wasn't dead yet.
The world before him was a well of neon and stone.
The building he was in was tall — the tallest he could see from his surroundings. Gothic architecture, he thought, recognizing the pointed arches and ribs that disappeared into the darkness of the sky. But the basalt stone walls were covered with copper wires and metal plates, and from the top of each tower hung pale neon signs announcing names in Gothic calligraphy. One of them, the closest, read "Pleasure of Origin." The letters flickered, unstable, as if the word itself was ashamed of itself.
Ethan looked down. The square stretched out like an open wound in the center of the city, circular, flanked by four streets that disappeared into the twilight. The surrounding buildings were tall, dark, with windows that let no light in. Only neon. Always neon. The entire city seemed like a corpse wrapped in party lights.
There were people in the square.
Many. Dozens, perhaps hundreds. They wore dark clothes, with straight, severe lines, and moved with the mechanical precision of those who no longer need to think to walk. Their faces, illuminated by the pale glow of the signs, showed no curiosity. No fear. Nothing. Only the placid emptiness of those who no longer have wrinkles to wrinkle.
In the center of the square, a black iron pole rose against the sky. On it, a flag of thick fabric — and on that flag, a symbol: a hand of bony fingers gripping a shattered skull, from which escaped a brain that looked like smoke. Ethan recognized the drawing from the anatomy books Alice had shown him at the academy, in times that seemed to belong to another life.
A woman was dragged to the center of the square.
The two men holding her — dressed in black, with visors covering half their faces — walked with measured steps, like those performing an ancient ritual. The woman was young, or seemed young; her skin was smooth, without wrinkles, but her hair was of such pure white that it seemed to have been painted by a hand that hated color. She wore a simple gray tunic, and her feet were bare. She did not resist. She did not scream. She only walked, like one who already knows that destiny cannot be denied.
They tied her to the pole.
The ropes were thick, made of hemp, and they tightened around her wrists with a violence that made her shoulders crack. She did not groan. She did not blink. She just stood there, suspended, her eyes fixed on the void.
The carriage arrived from the eastern street.
Ethan had never seen anything like it. It was a mixture of old and new, of rural and electric — the mahogany wood body, polished to a mirror shine, sat on a black iron chassis that emitted a low, continuous hum. The wheels, of rubber and steel, had no horses in front; they moved on their own, propelled by an engine that seemed to breathe instead of roar. From the ceiling, small neon lamps hung, flashing in rhythmic patterns, as if the carriage itself had an artificial heart.
The door opened. A man descended.
He was tall — not Wermilyass's imposing height, but the height that commands respect without needing to look down. He wore a black overcoat, long to his ankles, with a dark fur collar that rose to his chin. His gloved hands held a polished metal staff — not a weapon, Ethan thought, but a symbol. Something used for pointing, not hitting.
The man's face was covered by a white metal mask, smooth, with a single golden circle in the center — where the forehead should be, or the third eye of a forgotten deity. His eyes, behind the mask, were not visible. Only the gleam of the metal, and the echo of his steps on the stone.
The man — the judge, Ethan realized, by the way the crowd moved aside to give him passage — walked slowly to the pole. He stopped a few steps from the woman. He raised his staff. He struck the ground three times.
The sound echoed in the square like a heart beating outside the body.
"This woman," said the judge, his voice amplified by something that was not natural, "displayed strong emotion in public. Not once. Not twice. Three times. Three times she broke the order. Three times she dishonored the void that is our greatest achievement."
The crowd did not applaud. They did not murmur. They only waited.
The judge approached the woman. His gloved hand touched her chin, lifting her face. She did not resist. But her eyes — her eyes, Ethan saw — still shone. Not with tears, but with something rarer.
Hope, he thought. She still has hope.
"Your beloved," said the judge, his voice low, almost intimate, "is dead."
The woman trembled. Not a tremor of fear — a tremor of recognition. As if the phrase had entered her ears and ignited a flame she thought she had extinguished.
"No..." she whispered, the first word Ethan heard from her. "He isn't. I know he isn't."
The judge laughed. It was a dry, mechanical sound, like the slamming of a door that didn't want to open.
"You want proof?" he asked. "You will have proof. But first, you must learn what it means to lose."
He raised his hand. The slap was strong, dry, and the sound echoed in the square like a gunshot. The woman's head turned to the side. Blood ran from her split lip, dark against her pale skin.
She did not cry. She did not scream. She only turned her head back to the front, her eyes still shining.
"Please," she said, her voice failing. "Kill me. I don't want to live without him."
The judge tilted his head, as if considering the request.
"Kill you?" he repeated. "That would be a gift. And you, my dear, do not deserve gifts. You deserve to learn. You deserve to understand what it means to feel nothing."
The judge raised his staff. He struck the ground again. This time, twice.
The carriage door opened again.
The second man descended more slowly than the first. He was not tall. He was not imposing. He wore simple white tunics that dragged on the stone floor like the tail of a tired animal. His face was covered by a white, expressionless mask, with two square openings where his eyes should be. A thin black line divided the mask in half — as if the face itself were a broken landscape.
The man's hands — pale, thin — were raised to chest height. In them, an object covered by a white cloth, also white, that hid the shape of what he carried. The man walked to the judge with slow, dragging steps, as if the weight of what he carried was greater than it seemed.
When he reached the judge's side, he stopped. His hands rose higher. The white cloth slid off the shape it covered.
The dagger was short, with a thin, slightly curved blade. The metal was so clear, so pure, that it seemed to have been forged from moonlight — or, Ethan thought, from the light of a sand that had never been trodden. The blade shone with an intensity that hurt the eyes, even from a distance. As if light itself had been condensed into steel.
The judge took the dagger with both hands. He approached the woman.
She did not look at him. She looked at the sky — the strange, dark sky, where a pale sun shone without warming, where night never ended.
"I forgive you," she whispered, her voice so low Ethan barely heard it.
The dagger entered her skull.
Ethan expected blood. Expected screams. Expected the gore that horror movies had taught him to anticipate.
There was nothing.
The blade passed through the woman's head as if it were a ghost — as if the skull were not bone, but mist. No wound. No blood. Only a glow, a flash of light that came from her eyes and dissipated into the air, like the last ember of a dying fire.
And then, the sun.
The sun shone. Not the pale, sickly glow Ethan had seen since arriving in Orhtid, but a blind, white flash that seemed to come from all directions at once. The light filled the square, filled the city, filled the sky. Ethan closed his eyes, but the light pierced his eyelids, painting the inside of his skull with a painful, impossible dawn.
When he opened his eyes, the sun had returned to its place. Pale. Distant. Indifferent.
The woman was on the ground.
The men who had taken her to the pole untied her with mechanical movements. One of them kicked her in the belly — a casual, almost distracted gesture, like someone shoving a dog that's in the way. The woman's body rolled to the side and lay still.
Her face... her face was no longer the same.
Ethan searched for the shining eyes. He didn't find them. Her expression was smooth, flat, empty. There was no pain in her split lips. No fear in her eyes as they stared at the void. Only... nothing. An absence so absolute it seemed like a hole in the world.
The judge handed the dagger to the man in white vestments. The man wrapped it in the cloth, raised his hands, and returned to the carriage. The judge climbed in behind him. The door closed. The engine hummed, and the carriage drove away down the eastern street, its neon lights flashing like a dying heart.
The crowd slowly dispersed. Without haste. Without curiosity. As if they had watched a play they had seen hundreds of times. Some passed near the woman's body, but no one stopped. No one looked down.
Only one of them — a small, hooded figure — approached and touched the woman's shoulder. The gesture was quick, almost imperceptible. Then, she too walked away.
Ethan was left alone on top of the building, chained, staring at the motionless body in the center of the square.
Anger came first — hot, red, useless. He pulled at the chains with all his strength, his teeth grinding, his wrists bleeding against the metal. The chains did not give.
"Damn it," he whispered, his voice hoarse. "Damn, damn, damn."
He tried to concentrate. Mana. The fire spell Alice had taught him, the simplest one, the one that required nothing but will. He closed his eyes. He felt the heat growing in his chest. He extended his hand.
Nothing.
Mana did not respond. It was as if the air around him was made of thick, opaque glass, that wouldn't let the energy of Endomyar pass through. Every attempt was like banging his head against an invisible wall. Frustration grew, mixed with anger, and Ethan began to tremble — not from cold, but from helplessness.
"You can't."
The voice came from behind him. Soft. Calm. Familiar.
Ethan turned with such violence that the chains stopped him halfway, his shoulders cracking with the effort. The woman stood at the edge of the roof, a few meters from him. The white cloths that covered her almost blended with the pale sky; the porcelain mask, smooth and empty, reflected the neon glow.
"You," Ethan spat the word like poison. "You're going to kill me."
"If I wanted to, I would have done it already," she replied, her voice neutral, like someone talking about the weather. "I didn't kidnap you to kill you, Ethan. I kidnapped you to save you."
"Save me?" He pulled at the chains again, useless. "Save me from what? From Ether? He's the only one who wants to help me!"
The woman tilted her head. The porcelain mask caught the neon light and returned it distorted.
"The man who destroyed a sun to show you who's in charge?" she asked, her voice low, almost maternal. "That is your savior?"
Ethan fell silent. The words hit his chest like stones. But anger was stronger than doubt — for now.
"What do you want from me?" he asked, his teeth clenched.
"Your blood."
The answer was so simple, so direct, that Ethan didn't know how to react. He stared at her, eyes wide.
"My... blood?"
"You are more special than you think, Ethan. Much more. The government of O cannot know what runs in your veins. That's why I kidnapped you. That's why I brought you here. To hide you."
"I'm not special," he replied, his voice trembling. "I'm just a slave. A chosen one who couldn't save anyone."
"No, you're not," she said, and there was something in her voice — a certainty, a sadness — that made Ethan fall silent. "You don't yet know what you are. But you will find out."
She turned to the parapet of the building. The white cloths dragged on the floor, releasing small clouds of dust.
"Where are you going?" asked Ethan, his voice failing. "You can't leave me here."
"I'm going to get the woman. The one who was judged." She looked at him over her shoulder. The porcelain mask shone in the twilight. "She also deserves a second chance."
"Why?" Ethan pulled at the chains again, with less force, more desperation. "Why do you care?"
The woman was silent. Then, she replied with a voice so low Ethan barely heard her:
"Because I was also judged. And no one came for me."
She disappeared over the edge of the roof with a movement that was not human — light, fluid, as if the air had swallowed her.
Ethan was left alone. The chains continued to tighten around his wrists. The cold of the metal against his skin was a constant reminder of his helplessness. He tried to use mana again, but the air of Orhtid remained opaque, silent, useless.
He looked at the square. The woman's body was still on the ground, motionless. No one approached. No one cared.
The kidnapper's warning echoed in his head.
You shouldn't trust people with too much destructive power.
Ether had destroyed a sun. Ether had stopped time. Ether was the only person who had promised him revenge.
Ethan clenched his fists. Blood ran from his wrists, cut by the metal.
It doesn't matter, he thought. Ether never lied to me. Ether saved me. She just wants to separate us.
The seed of doubt died before it could germinate. But the root remained — buried deep, invisible, waiting for a weaker moment.
Ethan raised his head. The sun remained in the sky, pale and distant, but the firmament around him was of a darkness so dense it seemed solid. How was that possible? A sun that shone, a night that never ended? It was as if Orhtid were a world that had forgotten how to illuminate itself.
"What is this?" he murmured to himself. "What world is this?"
The question hung in the air, unanswered.
The wind blew, cold and empty. The neons flickered. The eternal night continued.
Ethan remained chained at the top of the building, staring at a world he did not understand, while the woman who had kidnapped him descended to retrieve the victim no one wanted to save.