The day had grown bright in Durkan, that strange kind of quiet that came only after too much had happened.
When noise seemed exhausted. The wind was soft and warm with dust, carrying soundss of hammering from the distant construction where the last stone of the Elior monument was being placed.
Grace sat beneath a crooked iron awning, her knees drawn up, a thick, worn copy of "Applied Quantum Mechanics: Post-Era Formulas" balanced on her lap.
The pages were ripped at the edges, the ink faded but her eyes were bright and eager. She read as if knowledge could stitch the world back together. Every few moments, though, she glanced up sharply.
That strange, crawling feeling came again like someone was watching her. Somewhere just beyond the edges of what she could see.
She blinked it away and smiled when she saw Azmaik approaching.
He wasn't the same as before. The weight of something deep and old pressed behind his eyes, even when he smiled. He walked slower now, calmer, a shadow of guilt tucked carefully behind his manner. He sat down beside her without a word, brushing the sand from his boots.
"You're still studying that thing?" he said softly.
Grace grinned, turning a page. "Rosario says that like science ever sleeps. I'll understand it one day. I swear, I'm close!"
He chuckled faintly. "You've been saying that since I met you."
"Then why you're still here listening." she teased, looking over the edge of her book.
Azmaik's smirk faded into a small, reflective smile. He didn't reply. The wind shifted. Grace felt that strange prickle again. Sense of eyes, of presence. But ignored it this time.
She was just tired. Who knows, maybe ghosts clung to this land. The world is still adjusting to all the broken rules of reality they had barely survived.
"So…." Grace closed her book, resting it on her lap. "Rosario says we'll have the new water systems running by next week. No more ration lines."
"That's good," Azmaik said quietly. "They need something to build and believe in."
Grace looked at him curiously. "And you? What do you believe in now?"
He paused. His hands clenched briefly, then relaxed. "I….am still learning how to...."
Before he could say any more, Rosario's voice came from behind them, loud as ever, through the melancholy.
"Hey! Sitting here philosophizing again, huh? You two look like old tibetian monks."
Grace rolled her eyes, smiling. "You finished the pipelines already?"
"Halfway. Those idiots at the trench can't tell a valve from a shoe buckle." he muttered, throwing himself onto the sand beside them. "So I left them. Told them the pipes would fix themselves if they prayed hard enough."
Grace laughed. Azmaik gave a small smile. Rosario always managed to bring a strange comfort, loud and human grounding all.
Far in the distance, Vera sat apart from them all, crouched in the sand, tracing patterns with a thin stick. Time to time, he looked up toward the horizon where the clouds shimmered in shapes. His face was detached, lost in a private world.
Grace followed his gaze for a moment, then whispered, "He's still keeping distance from everyone."
"He will," Azmaik murmured. "Some people don't heal by talking. They heal by thinking every future possibilities of themselves so that nothing can hurt them anymore."
Rosario scratched his head. "I think he just hate us."
Grace elbowed him lightly. "You're heartless. In this world, people have their own works and situations to face. Even we don't know when and how we end up hurting someone else unwillinly. Silence is not always meant to be ego."
"However, agree that I am realistic." Rosario said, though a small grin betrayed the edge of warmth behind his words.
The three sat quietly after that, watching the horizon. The laughter of workers drifted across the desert. Smoke rose from cooking fires.
Grace leaned back on her hands, looking up at the sky. "It's strange, isn't it? After everything…. it's just normal again."
Rosario exhaled slowly. "Yeah. But it's not the same normal."
Azmaik didn't speak. He only watched the sun dip low, the way its dying light brushed against Grace's face, the shadows flickered against the wind-worn buildings.
Inside him, something twisted—a very quiet ache, guilt and peace entangled. They were safe now. That was what mattered. Even if the truth, real truth, was something no one would ever know.
Grace hugged her knees and smiled faintly. "We did it, though. Didn't we? We won."
Rosario nodded. "Sure looks like it."
Azmaik finally spoke, his tone soft but distant. "Winning doesn't always feel like victory.".
They stayed there long after the sun dipped behind the dunes. Rosario casually sings horrible songs to annoy everyone. Vera's drawings faded under the shifting sand. Rosario eventually laughed again, pointing out constellations that didn't exist. Grace joined him.
Azmaik observed them.
These fragile, human souls pretending to be whole again. Pretending they weren't broken. Pretending that pretending was enough.
....
Everyone outside were busy in riot.
Grace yawned softly, rubbing her eyes as she walked down the narrow corridor toward the washroom. Her reflection flickered in the dim lanterns lining the wall, her face calm but her mind tangled in something she couldn't quite name.
She had been feeling it for days now. This strange emptiness, as if a part of her had been carved out and replaced with fog. Sometimes, when she closed her eyes, she swore she saw a face she couldn't remember.
She used to know. Someone important. But the harder she tried to recall, the blurrier it became, like a dream dissolving at dawn.
Why does it feel like I'm forgetting someone? she thought, slowing her steps.
A soft sound came from behind her like a footstep. She turned and saw nothing.
Her instincts quickened. The corridor was empty. But then, in the faint shadow spilled through the outer doorway, she saw it. There was something small peeking from the corner, half-hidden in the shadows.
A body of a child.
Grace blinked, startled. "Hey—"
Before she could take another step, the figure turned swiftly and vanished around the outer bend. The movement was so fluid, so eerily calm, that for a second she wondered if it had even been real.
She rushed outside, her bare feet kicking sand as she looked left and right. The desert wind met her, cool and dry carrying the scent flowers from afar.
A small child, wearing a white coat too big for its frame, turning the corner of the outer bunker. The child turned swiftly that she couldn't recognise his face.
Grace's heart pounded. "Wait!"
She ran after it, her steps quick and uneven. But when she turned the same corner…. nothing.
Only the desert was there wide and empty. The air itself seemed to hold its breath.
She stood there in silence, confused, her eyes scanned the wasteland. Was it real?
Then, suddenly, a soft flutter of wings cut through the stillness.
A pigeon soared past her shoulder from behind, circling once before gliding upward. Something dropped from its claws, fluttering down slowly through the sunlight.
Grace reached out instinctively and caught it.
Her eyes widened. It's the same scarf. Tattered at the ends, faintly stained, yet unmistakable. The one Elior had made for her when she was sick.
The fabric trembled in her hands as the desert breeze carried the harmonic scent of ash and metal.
She looked up.
The pigeon was already rising higher, its wings glowing faintly under the sun's last light breaking the horizon. Another night was coming.
The bird circled once more, then began to soar toward the rising sun, climbing until it became a single bright speck against the golden sky.
A voice it left in the nowhere, carrying across the still air like a whisper between worlds.
"Take care of them, sister…. I am.... alri— I am, dead."
Grace stunned as her lips parted. The voice was faint, fading quickly. Yet it carried warmth, strength.... a farewell.
"….Thank you," she whispered, clutching the scarf to her chest in confusion.
The wind picked up. The pigeon vanished into the horizon, swallowed by the golden light.
For a moment, everything was still again. The desert. The sky. The world.
Grace stood there beneath the rays of sunlight, the scarf fluttering in her hands, her heart heavy yet somehow full. She didn't know who she had seen or heard.
He was gone.
But she couldn't remind who.
As the light spread across the sand, the sweet chirp of birds drifted again.
"Farewell…. everyone."
And with that, the dawn of a new age began to rise.
The Story of Tom Greyrat Begins.
END OF VOLUME 1,
THE SUN PRESENCE