Feya opened her eyes on the veil of darkness above her head. She rose and yawned, blinking in the dimness. Shrugging off discouragement, she picked up her walking stick, and fumbled down the road once more.

Fifty days had passed since the sun stopped rising. No one knew what had happened, but one morning, it never appeared. No gentle rays softly pushed away the dark curtains of night. Nor had it returned in weeks. Each morning was as dark as midnight but there were no stars, and no moon. Great was the distress in the kingdom of Calrian, but Feya had taken little part in the ensuing panic.

As a child, her old grandmother recounted a story of the Great Giants in the North, Giants tall enough and strong enough that they even took a star from the heavens before they were banished to the World Underground.

After some time, when the light did not return, Feya decided to go in search of it. Everywhere she went, each town she traveled through, was ransacked with terror. People raced by, taking little notice of a complete stranger. Others slumped on chairs or on porches, staring blankly into the dark. Feya's heart stirred with pity. The further she went, the less panic there was. Silent hopelessness was fast filling her beloved kingdom, a land that once rang with joyful music.

On Feya went, in search of the end of the world, where the dark kingdom of the Giants' Underworld was said to hide.

By the time Feya crossed the last boundary stone of Calrian, the road had narrowed into little more than a memory pressed into the earth. Grass, long untended, brushed against her boots. The air itself felt different here—thinner, colder.

She paused and turned back.

There was nothing to see.

Not even the faint glow of distant hearths marked the kingdom she had left behind. Calrian had become a thought, a fading echo swallowed by endless dark.

Feya tightened her grip on her walking stick.

“Then forward,” she murmured, her voice small but steady. “There is nowhere else.”

The land began to rise in slow, uneven slopes. Stones jutted from the ground like broken teeth, and the wind whispered across them in low, mournful tones. It was the first true sound she had heard in days that did not come from her own footsteps.

At first, she thought it was only the wind.

Then it spoke.

“Turn back…”

Feya froze.

The voice was not loud. It seemed to form directly beside her ear, as though the darkness itself had learned to speak.

“Turn back, child of the fading lands…”

Her breath caught in her throat. She turned quickly, raising her stick as though it might defend her from something she could not see.

“Who’s there?” she demanded.

Silence answered her.

Only the wind again, threading through the stones.

Feya stood still for a long moment, listening. Her heart hammered, but she forced herself to breathe slowly. Fear, she knew, had already conquered the kingdom behind her. She would not let it claim her too.

“It is nothing,” she said aloud, more firmly this time. “Only the dark playing tricks.”

Yet even as she spoke, doubt lingered.

She continued on.

The path steepened as the hours—or what she guessed were hours—passed. Without the sun, time had become a shapeless thing. Her body alone marked its passing: the ache in her legs, the dryness in her throat, the heaviness behind her eyes.

At last, she crested a ridge.

Beyond it, the land fell away sharply into a vast hollow. Feya stepped closer, her breath catching—not in fear this time, but in awe.

Far below, a forest stretched across the valley floor.

But it was not like any forest she had ever seen.

The trees were pale.

Not white like snow, nor silver like frost, but faintly luminous, as if they held a dying memory of light within their bark. Their branches twisted upward, bare of leaves, yet softly glowing against the endless dark.

Feya stared.

“A forest… that remembers the sun,” she whispered.

A fragile hope stirred within her chest.

If such a place could exist—if something in this world still held even the faintest echo of light—then perhaps the sun was not gone forever.

Perhaps it had only been taken.

The thought sent a chill down her spine.

The Giants.

Her grandmother’s stories returned with sudden clarity: vast hands reaching into the sky, laughter that shook mountains, and a stolen star carried beneath the earth.

Feya swallowed.

“Then I am close,” she said.

The wind rose suddenly, sharper now, cutting across the ridge. It carried with it that same whispering voice—fainter this time, but unmistakable.

“Closer… than you should be…”

Feya closed her eyes briefly.

When she opened them again, her fear had settled into something harder. Not gone—but shaped into resolve.

“I didn’t come this far to turn back,” she said quietly.