"Sunlight warning: 12% higher than normal. Stay in the shade, use external heat protection..."
The news was blaring in the background as Sohan opened the bag of cheap cookies he'd just bought at the grocery store.
The hotel he was staying in looked as if it were about to breathe its last. With almost no electricity, no light, no visitors. Just him and his room overlooking a deserted street.
He looked up at the TV. The picture cut out. A reporter stood under a strange sun, pointing skyward. "There's... something strange happening. The sun doesn't... doesn't look normal today."
Sohan smiled sarcastically. "Of course. As if there weren't enough troubles in the world."
But he didn't know... that night would be the last one he knew.
Because the sun... wasn't just boiling. It was dying.
The sound of the broken fan was slowly turning, making a staccato sound in the room, as if it were breathing its last breaths.
Sohan sat on the edge of the metal bed, staring at the small screen in front of him. The old TV he'd bought at a junkyard only showed local channels that barely worked, and the news was on for the third time in an hour.
"An unprecedented rise in the sun's temperature... Partial ice melt recorded in the Arctic... Disturbance in the Earth's magnetic field..."
He took a sip of cold instant coffee, sighed, and placed the cup back on the rusty metal table beside him.
Sohan, a young man in his mid-twenties, was completely ordinary. Not a hero, not a genius, not rich. Just someone who had escaped his old life to settle in this cheap hotel in the middle of an unknown city, trying to live quietly... or at least, not be noticed.
Darkness slowly fell over the city, and although the sun was still in the sky, it looked... strange.
It wasn't yellow. It wasn't orange. It was more like white. Brighter than usual, as if it were about to explode.
He went up to the hotel rooftop as he usually did at sunset. He sat on the old plastic chair, stretching his legs out over the edge. The air was warmer than usual, and people in the streets moved slowly, as if something heavy was pressing down on their bodies.
He heard a voice next to him.
The old neighbor, the owner of room 306, was standing a few meters away, staring at the sun with half-closed eyes.
He said in a hoarse voice, "Do you see that? The sun...breathing."
Sohan didn't reply, just looked up at the big star in the sky. For a moment, he felt something strange...
It was as if the sun was, in fact, flickering. It was as if its heart was beating slowly... then quickly.
At night, he returned to his room.
He ate some canned food, opened his old notebooks, scribbled some meaningless words, then turned off the lights and lay down.
There was a slight ringing in his ears. Maybe from the heat, maybe from fatigue.
And then...
A jolt.
It wasn't just a simple tremor.
It was as if the ground had stretched... then bounced back.
Everything in the room shuddered. The lamp fell from the ceiling. The chair tipped over. The glass shook and nearly shattered.
Sohan jumped to his feet, his heart pounding, his ears ringing.
He ran to the window. He swung it open, and... froze.
The sky was split.
Yes. Not metaphorically.
A long, stretching band of white light crossed the sky in the west.
But the real horror... was the sun.
It wasn't as he knew it.
Half of it was there, glowing, exploding from within, sending fiery shards into space.
The other half... wasn't there.
It was as if someone had cut it with a knife.
The city began to scream.
The sounds of cars, shattering glass, calls, crying, children's cries.
The air grew heavy... gray... as if ash was falling from the sky, even though there was no fire.
Then...
The sirens went off.
They hadn't been used for decades.
Nuclear emergency sirens.
But this wasn't a nuclear explosion.
It was bigger.
Sohan went down the stairs, stepped past the terrified people, went out into the street, and raised his head.
The sun wasn't just burning... it was dying.
In less than a minute, the light began to dim.
The day began to turn into something else.
Gray.
The streets began to lose their color.
The sky grew dark, as if night were falling slowly, but without stars.
People were running, stumbling, calling with no answer.
The phones weren't working.
The electricity was going out.
The temperature was dropping at an eerie rate.
And suddenly...
The first blue flash appeared amidst the dust.
On the horizon, something... moving amidst the swirling ash.
It wasn't a human.
A tall creature, feeding on light, creeping toward the darkness.
But Sohan hadn't seen it yet.
He just stood there, in the middle of the street, among people running aimlessly, as the sky collapsed and the lights went out.
He looked up.
He said to himself,
"The world has ended... and I've done nothing of note in my life."
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Thank you for reading the first chapter.