The sun rose pale and uncertain, bleeding through the cracks of a ruined skyline.
Once, this place was called Sector 9 — a city of laughter, noise, and ordinary dreams.
Now it was a graveyard, half buried under its own silence.
Ash drifted through the air like dying snowflakes. The scent of burnt metal and rain lingered, heavy and sour.
Every gust of wind carried echoes — a creak of a collapsed tower, a door swinging somewhere far away, a faint metallic clang.
The city breathed in broken sighs.
And walking through it… was a boy.
His name was Kai.
Fifteen, maybe sixteen — though he'd stopped counting birthdays long ago.
His hair, once black, now carried streaks of dust. His clothes were torn, sun-bleached, and patched with whatever fabric he could find.
In his right hand, he carried a rusted baseball bat — the only thing in this world that still listened when he swung.
He walked carefully, each step soft, deliberate. The ground was littered with broken glass and bones — some human, some not.
He wasn't afraid, but he wasn't careless either. Fear didn't help you live. Only attention did.
Kai's eyes moved constantly — scanning windows, corners, shadows.
"No movement," he whispered to himself.
"Good."
His voice sounded strange to his own ears — like it belonged to someone else. He hadn't spoken to another person in weeks.
He stopped near an overturned bus. Its sides were blackened from an explosion, half melted into the concrete. Inside, flies buzzed lazily around what used to be people.
Kai didn't look for long. You learned not to.
He scavenged what he could — a half-empty bottle of water, a lighter, a few canned beans that had expired years ago.
He didn't care. Expiration dates didn't mean much when the world was already dead.
He leaned against the bus and stared up at the sky. It looked bruised — streaks of grey and crimson cloud, like a wound that never healed.
"Another day survived," he muttered. "Guess that's worth something."
But survival had its cost.
When the sun fell, they came.
The monsters — the Nightborn.
Once human, now twisted by the virus.
They hid in people's shadows by day, invisible, waiting. When darkness arrived, they crawled free — hungry for flesh, starving for brains.
Each one that fed grew stronger, evolved, adapted.
And strangely… they never attacked women. No one knew why. Maybe mercy. Maybe madness.
Kai's mother used to tell him, "The sun is our shield."
But she'd been gone three years now — swallowed by her own shadow one evening when she thought she was safe.
Since then, Kai hadn't trusted sunlight either.
By afternoon, he reached what used to be a bookstore. Its front was crushed under fallen bricks, but the interior still smelled faintly of paper and dust.
Books lay scattered like corpses — torn pages fluttering softly in the wind.
Kai crouched down, rummaging for anything useful — a map, a candle, something not soaked in rainwater.
Then, he saw it.
Beneath a shelf, half-buried under debris, something shimmered.
A golden locket. Small. Circular. Etched with strange runes along the rim.
It shouldn't have been glowing.
But it was — faintly pulsing, like a heartbeat trying not to die.
Kai frowned. "The hell is this?"
He brushed off the dust and picked it up. The metal was warm — too warm.
The moment his skin touched it, a faint voice echoed in his mind.
"Light… found…"
Kai stumbled, dropping it instinctively. His pulse thundered in his ears.
"Who's there?!"
Silence.
The locket lay still, its glow dimming again — as if pretending it had done nothing.
Kai stared at it for a long moment, then sighed.
"I'm talking to metal now. Great. Guess loneliness finally caught up."
Still… something about it felt alive.
And that terrified him more than the monsters.
By nightfall, the city changed.
The wind died. The air turned heavy, sticky.
The sunlight slipped away behind cracked towers — and with it, safety.
Kai found shelter in an old apartment, second floor, windows barricaded with planks and wire.
He sat by the window, clutching his bat.
Outside, darkness began to crawl — thick and slow, like liquid ink spreading across the world.
And then…
A whisper.
"Hu…man…"
Kai's eyes shot open. His breath froze.
From the wall beside him, his shadow moved.
Another shape peeled itself out of it — tall, thin, grey-skinned. Its face was a blur of twitching flesh and glassy eyes.
"Hu…man… found…"
The creature lunged.
Kai swung his bat — hard.
Metal met bone with a sickening crack. The creature shrieked, clawing wildly.
Its skin smoked, oozing black liquid that hissed against the floor.
"Stay down!" Kai yelled, striking again. "Stay down!"
With a final swing, the monster's skull collapsed — and it dissolved into its own shadow, leaving behind only silence and a faint smell of rot.
Kai stood there, chest heaving, staring at the empty floor.
Then… he noticed it.
The golden locket — glowing brighter than before, as if it had witnessed everything.
Slowly, he picked it up. The light pulsed once. Twice. Then, a whisper brushed his thoughts again.
"Hope… awakens…"
Kai exhaled shakily, half laughing.
"Hope, huh? Bit late for that."
But for the first time in years, something inside him stirred — a spark he thought had died long ago.
He slipped the locket around his neck.
Its warmth spread through his chest — soft, comforting, real.
"Alright," he said quietly. "Let's see what you can do."
Outside, the monsters howled across the ruined streets —
but this time, when Kai looked out into the night, he didn't feel small.
He felt ready.
That night, for the first time since the fall, a light moved through the darkness — faint but unyielding.
A boy with a bat.
A golden glow at his throat.
And eyes that refused to look away.
The war between light and shadow had claimed countless lives.
But tonight, it gained its first true fighter.
Kai of the Eclipse — the first bearer of the light.