There was no night. Not here. Not anywhere.
The world was an ocean of light—endless, merciless, inescapable. It flooded the streets, the cities, the skies. It filled every hollow, every crevice. It clung to the skin like sweat. It pressed against the eyelids even when closed. It burned behind the eyes, a silent scream that never ceased.
Above, the towers rose like spears of glass and metal, etched with veins of radiance. The air itself shimmered with the hum of photonic currents. Oceans glowed beneath the surface, shot through with cables of molten brightness. The people, if they could still be called that, walked bathed in that ceaseless glare, their faces pale masks beneath the watchful eyes of a thousand invisible sensors.
And beneath it all—beneath the weight of stone and metal and memory—Erya Sol stood alone in her chamber of exile, carved into the bones of the world.
Here, at last, the light did not reign.
Not yet.
---
The chamber was small, raw, unfinished. The walls were rough stone, cold and damp. The air tasted of earth and rust, of old metal and older fears. Her breath came fast, white in the chill. The faint glow of her suit's indicators made her stomach turn. Even here, even now, the light found her.
At the center of the room stood the pedestal. And upon it—a sphere.
Small. Smooth. Darker than anything she had ever seen. So dark it seemed to devour the very idea of light. No reflection touched it. No outline betrayed its edge. It was as if someone had cut a hole in reality and shaped it into a perfect orb.
Her hands shook as she reached for the calibration ring. The metal felt warm beneath her fingers, warm from her own fear. She turned it slowly, the soft clicks loud in the hush.
The dark bulb.
Her life's work. Her greatest sin.
Her salvation.
She hated it. She loved it. She needed it.
It had no right to exist. And yet—here it was. Here she was.
She closed her eyes. Tried to slow her breath. But the memories came, as they always did. The stories her mother whispered in stolen moments. The songs of night, of stars, of dreams. The lullabies of a world that no longer was. A world she had never seen, except in the aching hollow behind her ribs.
A world where darkness was not a crime.
---
"Log entry," she said softly, though she did not want to hear her own voice. "Sol, Erya. Cycle twelve-hundred. Project Umbra One. Null-lumen ignition. First live test."
A chime answered. A mote of light, small and cruel, floated before her visor. She hated it. Hated its watchful presence, its silent judgement.
Her finger hovered over the activation switch. Such a small thing. A breath of pressure, and the world would change.
Or end.
---
She thought of the light above. The endless glare. The unblinking eyes of the Assembly. The way even grief was cataloged, archived, stored. The way no thought was private, no love unobserved.
Her thumb pressed down.
---
And the light died.
It did not dim. It did not fade.
It ceased.
One moment, she stood in the chamber. The next, she stood in nothing.
No walls. No floor. No ceiling. No air. No self.
Gone.
The light was not hidden. It was erased.
Erya felt herself fall—not through space, but through certainty. Through all she had ever known. The dark wrapped around her, perfect and whole. And in it, she felt—
Not fear.
Not loneliness.
Presence.
It did not move. It did not speak. It simply was.
It saw her.
Not with eyes. Not with malice. Not with mercy.
With knowing.
-
Her heartbeat was a drum in the silence. Her breath a storm in the stillness. And the dark—oh, the dark—was vast beyond measure. It was not empty. It was full. Full of what, she could not name. Full of what had been waiting, patient and still, all these bright, blinded centuries.
And then—the light returned.
It roared back, a flood, a fury. It seared her skin, her eyes, her soul. The vault's alarms shrieked. Consoles blinked and wailed. The AI stammered in confusion.
—recording failure—data loss—quantum breach detected—
Erya fell to her knees, weeping without knowing she wept.
The bulb sat silent, innocent, as if it had done nothing at all.
She turned, dazed, and in the glass of the console she saw her face.
And beside it—another.
A shape. A shadow.
A silhouette.
She spun. But the chamber was empty.
And yet—the knowing remained.
She had killed the light.
And in that death, something had opened its eyes.