BELOW THE FIRST LIGHT
The situation was getting worse.
It was not just children anymore; adults were disappearing, too. The beggar Sun had encountered on the street was gone, his usual spot empty for four days. He was not the only one. People were vanishing from the floor in numbers that could no longer be explained away as coincidence or Nullspawn activity. The Nullspawn population in the area was far too small for this scale, and everyone with any sense knew it, even if no one said it directly.
Eli joined the investigation. A group of residents organized themselves and started searching—checking empty buildings, talking to witnesses, and mapping where people were last seen. They came back every evening with the same result: nothing. No bodies, no signs of struggle, no trail leading anywhere useful. Just empty spaces where people used to be.
Eli came home one night rubbing his temples with the specific exhaustion of a man who had worked hard and found nothing. Sun had observed that this was more draining than not working at all; at least doing nothing did not come with the feeling that you *should* have found something.
Sun watched him sit down and made a decision. He could not investigate the abandoned building yet—he was not strong enough, and the Seed's reaction warned him that whatever was inside was not something he could walk into unprepared. But he could give Eli something useful without explaining how he knew it.
"Check for people who arrived on this floor recently," Sun said. "Anyone who came here around the time the disappearances started."
Eli looked at him. "How did you—"
"It is a reasonable starting point," Sun interrupted.
Eli stared at him for a moment with that expression he got when Sun said something that sounded too precise for a four-year-old. Then, he nodded and wrote it down.
***
Sun returned to the window. Outside, the panic was visible now. It had moved past quiet tension into something more open. People gathered in doorways talking in low voices, children were kept strictly inside, and the prayers had increased significantly.
The God of Light's temple was full from morning to evening with people who had run out of practical options and turned to faith as the final one. Sun watched them and thought about something he knew from his time as a god.
A god could only help you when you took a step yourself. They did not interfere with lives directly; they worked through the gaps that action created—the space between what you did and what happened next. Prayer without movement was just noise directed upward, and the beings receiving it were not listening as carefully as the people sending it believed.
He had received thousands of prayers himself. He knew exactly how much attention a lesser god paid to an individual mortal, which was roughly the same attention a person paid to a single ant in a city full of them. The mortals trusted faith when they should have been moving.
He filed this away when Mary sat down nearby. He remembered another inconsistency he had been meaning to examine.
"Mary."
"Yes?"
"Why do humans change how they behave around older people?"
Mary glanced at him. "What do you mean?"
"They speak more quietly. They listen more. They show deference."
Mary nodded. "It is respect. You are supposed to respect your elders."
Sun went quiet. "Define 'elder.'"
"Someone older than you."
"By how much?"
Mary shrugged. "Depends. Just... older."
Sun's thoughts slowed, processed, and rearranged. "So, the longer a human has existed, the more authority they are given?"
"It is not about authority; it is about respect."
"Those are closely related," Sun replied.
Mary opened her mouth, then paused. "Just... yeah, sure."
Sun looked ahead, silent. "I see."
Mary narrowed her eyes slightly. "What do you see?"
Sun turned to her. "Then I should be the most respected."
Silence. Mary blinked. "What?"
Sun's expression did not change. "I have existed longer than any human present," he said calmly. "Significantly longer."
"You cannot just—"
"By your definition," Sun continued, "respect is proportional to how long someone has existed."
"That is not—"
"Therefore," he said, "I am at the top of this system."
Mary covered her face. "Sun."
"This explains several things I could not make sense of before."
"It does not!"
"You give respect based on time," he continued, "but you never actually check how old anyone is."
"That is because we are all human!"
Sun paused. "So the system only works because everyone assumes they started from the same point?"
"Yes!"
"Which means it is not based on truth," Sun concluded, "but on what people can see."
Mary exhaled slowly. "You are overthinking it again."
"No, I am following the rule."
"You are twisting it," Mary shook her head.
Sun was quiet for a moment. "If I told people my actual age, would my level of respect increase accordingly?"
"No."
"Then the system is flawed."
"It is not flawed!"
"It is inconsistent," Sun corrected.
Mary crossed her arms. "Respect is not just about age."
"Then your rule is incomplete."
Mary paused. "Yeah. It is."
Sun looked ahead again. "Humans create rules and then rely on things nobody said out loud to make them work."
"That is called common sense," Mary sighed.
Sun nodded once. "An invisible variable," he said.
***
He looked back out the window at the people filing into the temple, heads down, hands clasped, sending prayers upward to a being Sun knew personally. He thought about the beggar's empty spot on the street.
The invisible variable in the disappearances was also something nobody had said out loud yet. He intended to find it before it found someone else.
He needed to get inside that abandoned building, but he could not do it with Kael nearby. The Seed's reaction suggested that whatever was inside that place was connected to Kael. That meant Kael needed to be somewhere else when Sun went looking.
He needed a distraction. He needed his parents to keep Kael occupied long enough for him to slip out, see what was inside, and return before anyone noticed he was gone.
The only question was what reason to give them.
He thought about it carefully. He looked at his hands, then at the door, and then, slowly, he smiled—an expression he used rarely and which his parents had learned to treat as a warning sign.
He had a reason.