The sun grew weary of seeing men squander its light.

It had watched for millennia—rising dutifully each morning, spilling warmth onto battlefields, into boardrooms, across broken streets. It had painted gold across lovers’ backs, warmed infants’ cheeks, fed the soil, and kissed the sea. But always, always, man found a way to misuse the gift.

So one day, the sun simply stopped rising.

At first, people called it an eclipse. A fluke. A trick of orbit or atmosphere. But when the second morning came cloaked in ink, and the third followed without even a blush of dawn, the world began to unravel.

Crops wilted. Moods soured. Clocks became meaningless. Lightbulbs and lanterns hummed, but the glow was artificial, and the absence of true day gnawed at humanity’s spine.

Some went mad.

Some built temples and begged forgiveness.

Others, like Elian, simply wandered.

He had always felt out of place in the sun. Too bright, too exposed. But in this endless twilight, he thrived—quiet, observant, untethered. He roamed the abandoned edges of cities, sketching ruins in charcoal, leaving poems on lamp posts like breadcrumbs.

One night, he heard humming.

It was faint, laced with sorrow and something older than grief. He followed it through the trees and found her—a woman draped in fabric like shadow, skin aglow with a warmth that didn’t belong in this dark world.

“You’re not afraid of the dark?” she asked, without turning.

Elian shook his head. “I think I was born in it.”

She smiled, sad and secret. “Then you’re the kind of man he might listen to.”

“El Sol?”

She nodded once. “He didn’t leave because he hated us. He left because he was tired of watching beauty die.”

Elian sat beside her. “How do you speak for him?”

“I don’t,” she said. “But I loved him once. And he loved us. All of us. Even in our ruin.”

In the weeks that followed, they walked together—Elian and the girl who smelled like sunflowers. Her name was Liora, and she had stories that wrapped around him like firelight: of starlit wars, of forgotten gods, of a time when people still believed in awe.

And in the last chapter of winter, when the earth threatened to sleep forever, Elian did what no one else had dared.

He climbed the highest peak, barefoot and breathless, and whispered a poem to the sky. Not a plea. Not a promise. Just a truth.

“You are missed. Not by the loud, not by the blind. But by those who saw you all along.”

And for the first time in one hundred days, the horizon blushed.

Not much.

Just a breath.

Just enough.

Liora looked up from the base of the mountain and smiled.

Because sometimes, it only takes one gentle voice to wake the sun.