Before the First Light
The sun rose at 6:12 a.m.
And the world forgot it had ever loved anyone.
Arin Vale was awake to see it happen.
He stood on the rooftop of a silent building, the city spread beneath him like a sleeping creature. The horizon slowly bled gold into the dark sky, gentle and beautiful—too beautiful for what it stole.
As the first light touched the streets, something invisible broke.
People below paused mid-motion.
A woman who had been crying moments earlier wiped her face, confused by the wetness on her cheeks. A man staring at his phone frowned, unsure why his chest felt heavy for no reason. A couple standing close suddenly stepped apart, smiling politely, like strangers who had stood too near by mistake.
The reset was complete.
Arin felt none of the relief they did.
His head throbbed as memories crashed against one another—yesterday, last year, a lifetime ago. Love. Fear. Rage. Hope. Everything the sunrise erased from everyone else stayed inside him, layered and sharp.
He exhaled slowly.
Another morning, he thought. Another world that doesn't remember.
The café on Ninth Street opened at exactly 6:30 a.m.
She was there, like always.
Lyra sat by the window, sunlight brushing against her hair as if it recognized her. She stirred her coffee absently, eyes distant, empty of yesterday's joy, yesterday's pain, yesterday's promises.
Arin hesitated at the door.
No matter how many times he did this, the first moment never hurt less.
The bell chimed.
Lyra looked up.
Their eyes met.
She smiled—warm, open, unfamiliar.
"Hi," she said. "Sorry, do I know you?"
Arin's chest tightened.
"No," he replied gently. "You don't."
"Oh." She laughed softly, embarrassed. "Then… hi anyway."
He sat across from her, folding his hands so she wouldn't see them shake. Around them, the café hummed with calm voices and meaningless conversations. A peaceful world, cleansed of emotional weight.
Lyra tilted her head. "You look tired."
"I didn't sleep," Arin said.
"Bad dreams?"
He met her eyes. For just a second, something flickered there—an echo that didn't belong.
"No," he said quietly. "Memories."
She frowned, though she didn't know why. "That sounds lonely."
It was.
High above the city, behind glass walls and white light, twelve figures watched the sunrise logs scroll across a massive screen.
EMOTIONAL RESET — SUCCESSFUL
One voice broke the silence.
"The anomaly remains conscious."
Another voice followed, sharper. "How many cycles now?"
"Twenty-one years."
A pause.
The oldest among them—the Dawn Keeper—slowly opened his eyes.
"Then he is no longer an error," he said. "He is a threat."
"What do we do?"
The Dawn Keeper looked at the glowing horizon.
"Before he teaches the world how to remember," he said softly,
"we erase him."
Arin left the café just before seven.
Lyra waved goodbye like it was the first time. Like it always was.
He stepped into the street, the weight of a thousand forgotten lives pressing against his spine. The sun felt warm on his skin, but inside him, something cold and ancient stirred.
He whispered the words he had never forgotten.
"Before the first light…
we were human."
And somewhere deep within Arin Vale, the memory the world feared most
opened its eyes.
Chapter 2 - The echo that fade
Arin knew he was being watched before he saw them.
It was subtle—a pressure behind his eyes, a tightening in the air, like the world itself had grown cautious. He slowed his steps, blending into the morning crowd as the city carried on in its peaceful ignorance.
Laughter sounded normal. Conversations were light.
No one remembered anything worth fearing.
They're close, he thought.
The reflection in a shop window confirmed it.
Two figures, walking too evenly to be ordinary. Their expressions were calm, almost bored, but their eyes tracked him with mechanical patience. Dawn Council observers. Not enforcers—yet.
Arin turned a corner.
Then another.
He ducked into an alley just as the pressure spiked.
"Arin Vale," a voice called out calmly behind him. "Please stop running."
He didn't.
The alley stretched longer than it should have. Garbage bins rattled as he sprinted past them, breath steady, mind racing. He vaulted a fence, landed cleanly, and kept moving. Footsteps followed—too fast, too synchronized.
They've upgraded, he realized. They're not just watching anymore.
A sharp pain struck his skull.
Memories surged.
Not his.
The alley flickered.
For a split second, Arin saw the same place as it had been years ago—blood on the pavement, people screaming, emotions raw and uncontrolled. Then the image snapped away, replaced by the clean, empty present.
He stumbled.
"What was that?" he whispered.
The footsteps stopped.
A man stepped into view, dressed in pale gray, eyes glowing faintly with dawnlight.
"You felt it," the man said. "Didn't you?"
Arin straightened slowly. "You shouldn't be here."
The man smiled. "Neither should you."
The air grew heavy.
"Your existence destabilizes the reset," the man continued. "Emotions are… leaking. Echoes that refuse to fade. You're the source."
Arin clenched his fists.
"I'm just remembering," he said.
"That's the problem."
The man raised his hand.
Pain exploded through Arin's chest—sharp, precise, targeted. He dropped to one knee, gasping, the world blurring. The attack wasn't physical. It was something deeper, something that reached into the part of him that never slept.
"Forget," the man commanded.
Arin laughed weakly.
"I don't know how."
Something broke.
Not around him.
Inside him.
The pain vanished.
The world paused.
Sound died. Light froze mid-glimmer. Even the man's expression locked in place, shock etched into his face.
Arin stood slowly, heart pounding.
"What… did I just do?"
The air vibrated, as if responding to him. Emotions—raw, unfiltered—poured out of Arin like heat. Fear. Grief. Love. Rage. All the things the sunrise tried to erase.
The man staggered back as time resumed.
His calm shattered.
"No—this isn't possible," he whispered, clutching his head. "I can feel—"
Arin didn't wait.
He ran.
By the time he reached the river, his legs were shaking.
He collapsed against the railing, breathing hard, hands trembling—not from exhaustion, but from realization.
I didn't just remember, he thought.
I made him feel.
The city behind him buzzed on, unaware of how close it had come to waking up.
His phone vibrated.
A message.
UNKNOWN CONTACT:
You triggered a local breach. They will escalate.
Another message followed.
If you want to survive, stop meeting the girl.
Arin stared at the screen.
Lyra's smile flashed through his mind—new every morning, fragile as glass.
He closed his eyes.
"I can't," he whispered.
Across the city, alarms only the Dawn Council could hear began to sound.
And for the first time since the sunrise system was created,
the world trembled—not with fear, but with the memory of it.
Chapter 3 — When Peace Starts watching you
Arin stopped sleeping entirely after that morning.
Not because he couldn't—but because every time he closed his eyes, the city remembered him.
It started small.
A man on the bus flinched when Arin sat beside him, hand flying to his chest for no reason he could explain. A woman in a grocery store burst into tears while staring at a row of apples, whispering, "I miss someone," though she didn't know who.
Emotional echoes.
Leaking.
I did this, Arin realized.
The sunrise was losing its grip.
He took longer routes now. Changed cafés. Changed streets. Changed habits.
But the pressure never left.
It followed him like a shadow that didn't care about light.
That afternoon, as clouds dulled the sky into a sickly gray, Arin felt it again—that tightening behind the eyes, sharper than before. Not observers.
Hunters.
He crossed the street.
So did they.
Three this time.
They didn't hide.
They didn't need to.
People instinctively stepped away from them, smiling apologetically, unaware of the fear blooming in their chests. The Dawn Council agents moved through the crowd like knives through water—smooth, silent, inevitable.
Arin's pulse quickened.
Not here, he thought. Too many people.
A child looked up at him as he passed.
"Why do you look sad?" she asked.
Arin froze.
Her mother tugged her away instantly. "Don't bother strangers."
But the damage was done.
The agents stopped walking.
One of them spoke into the air. "Confirmation. Civilian emotional sensitivity detected."
Another replied calmly, "He's destabilizing faster than predicted."
Arin ran.
He burst into an underground station, the echo of his footsteps swallowed by concrete. Trains roared past, wind tearing at his clothes. He vaulted the turnstiles, ignoring shouts behind him.
The agents didn't hurry.
They never did.
A woman stepped into his path at the bottom of the stairs. Mid-thirties. Plain clothes. Gentle face.
"Arin," she said softly. "You're tired."
He skidded to a stop.
"Go away," he said.
She smiled with something close to pity. "You don't want this burden anymore. You're carrying the grief of millions. Let us take it from you."
Behind her, the air shimmered faintly with dawnlight.
A containment field.
Arin's chest tightened.
"You won't feel pain," she continued. "You won't feel love. You'll finally rest."
Lyra's face flashed in his mind.
Her smile.
Her letters.
The way she looked at him like he mattered—even when she didn't know why.
Arin stepped back.
"I don't want peace," he said quietly.
The woman's smile vanished.
"Then you are choosing suffering," she replied.
She raised her hand.
The station screamed.
Not aloud—but inside.
Every suppressed emotion within Arin surged violently, slamming into his ribs like a living thing trying to escape. He collapsed to one knee, vision blurring, teeth clenched to keep from crying out.
Around them, people froze.
Hands trembled. Faces twisted in confusion. Someone dropped to the ground, sobbing without knowing why.
The agents faltered.
"No," one whispered. "He's amplifying—"
Arin didn't understand what he was doing.
He only knew what he felt.
Loneliness.
Anger.
Love that refused to disappear.
Remember, something inside him urged.
Make them remember.
The containment field shattered like glass.
The woman screamed—not in pain, but in terror—as emotions flooded her all at once. She staggered back, clutching her head.
"I—I can feel my sister," she sobbed. "She's dead—why do I remember—?"
Arin staggered to his feet.
The world shook.
Not physically.
Emotionally.
And for the first time since the sunrise system was activated, peace began to crack.
That night, Arin stood on a bridge overlooking the river, rain mixing with the city's reflected lights.
His phone buzzed again.
UNKNOWN CONTACT:
They've moved you to Priority Erasure.
Another message followed.
Next time, they won't try to take you alive.
Arin closed his eyes.
Somewhere across the city, Lyra slept peacefully—empty of fear, empty of love, empty of memory.
He gripped the railing until his hands hurt.
"If this is danger," he whispered,
"then I'll become worse than it."
Above him, clouds parted.
The sunrise system recalibrated.
And the world braced itself—
because the one who remembered had stopped running.
Chapter 4 — The Girl Who Wasn't Supposed to Remember
Arin felt it the moment he woke.
Not pressure.
Not pain.
Fear.
Pure and sharp, cutting through his chest like a warning he didn't have time to understand.
Lyra.
He didn't know how he knew. He only knew that something had shifted—something delicate had been touched by hands that weren't gentle.
The sunrise had already passed.
That made it worse.
Lyra's morning was supposed to be ordinary.
She woke to soft light spilling through her curtains, a calm she couldn't explain, and the faint sense that she'd dreamed of someone important. The feeling faded as she brushed her teeth, as it always did.
But today, something remained.
A word.
A name.
It clung to the edge of her thoughts like a song she almost remembered.
"Ar—" she whispered, frowning at her reflection.
The mirror did not answer.
Arin ran.
He didn't check messages. Didn't plan a route. Didn't care who saw him. The city blurred as he pushed his body past reason, heart pounding harder with every step.
Please be late, he prayed to a sunrise that had never shown him mercy.
Please don't have reached her yet.
Lyra arrived at the café at 6:31 a.m.
Her usual seat by the window felt wrong.
Empty.
The sunlight didn't feel warm.
A man sat two tables away, reading nothing, his coffee untouched. He smiled when she looked at him.
The smile was too careful.
"Good morning," he said pleasantly. "You come here often."
Lyra hesitated. "I… I think so."
He nodded, satisfied. "Do you ever feel like something is missing?"
Her fingers tightened around her cup.
"Yes," she said, surprised by the honesty of it.
The man leaned closer. "Do you ever think that missing thing has a name?"
The word rose again.
Arin.
Her head throbbed.
"I don't know you," she said, standing.
The man sighed. "That's unfortunate."
The air around them shimmered.
Lyra gasped as the café seemed to stretch, sounds dulling, people frozen mid-motion.
"Don't be afraid," the man said softly. "We're just going to help you forget something you were never meant to remember."
Arin burst through the café doors.
The bell rang.
Then shattered.
The world lurched violently, like it had been yanked out of alignment.
Lyra turned.
Their eyes met.
And this time—
she did not smile.
She stared at him like she was looking at the answer to a question she'd been asking her entire life.
"Arin," she whispered.
The man swore under his breath. "That shouldn't be possible."
Arin felt it break inside him.
The barrier.
The rule.
The lie.
"Don't touch her," Arin said, voice shaking with something dangerous.
The man raised his hand.
Arin screamed.
Not aloud.
Inside.
Every memory. Every emotion. Every stolen moment surged outward like a collapsing star.
The café exploded with feeling.
People fell to their knees, crying, laughing, screaming—memories flooding back in fragments they couldn't understand.
The agent staggered, clutching his head.
"No—stop—this is uncontrolled—"
Arin crossed the space between them in a heartbeat and slammed him into the wall.
"You made her remember," Arin whispered, eyes burning.
"So now you remember me."
The agent collapsed, unconscious.
The world snapped back into motion.
Silence followed.
Lyra was shaking.
Arin turned to her, fear choking his voice. "Lyra, I'm sorry. I never wanted you involved."
She stepped toward him.
Tears streamed down her face—real tears, heavy with meaning.
"You keep leaving," she said softly. "Every morning, I lose you. I don't know why—but I know it hurts."
Arin froze.
She reached into her bag and pulled out a folded paper.
A letter.
Written in her handwriting.
"I found this today," she said. "It says… If you remember him, it means the world is ending. And if you don't—he'll still love you."
Arin's knees nearly gave out.
Outside, sirens wailed—not from the city, but from the sky.
The Dawn Council had escalated.
Lyra looked up at him, terrified—but awake.
"What are they afraid of?" she asked.
Arin took her hand.
"Us," he said.
And far above the city, the sunrise system flagged its first irreversible error.