The city of Blackwall was a titan dying in the mud. For decades, the "Order" of the Great Academy and the "Wealth" of the Willer Merchant Guild had been the two pillars of the kingdom, a symbiotic relationship built on the exploitation of the "Sun-Blooded" and the silence of the slums. Now, those pillars had been pulled down by the very boy they had intended to use as a battery.
A week had passed since the explosion at the Gilded Manor, and the fires in the High District were finally being extinguished, leaving behind blackened skeletons of marble and iron. But the fires in the "Gut" were just beginning. The "Little Suns"—the thousands Kael had healed—had formed a decentralized militia. They didn't have spells, but they had the sheer numbers of the desperate, and they were systematically dismantling the Guild's infrastructure.
In the sub-levels of the Great Academy's central spire, the Council of Sages sat in a chamber that felt like a tomb. The air was cold, the mana-lamps flickering as the city's power grid—no longer anchored by the Golden Heart—began to fail.
High Overseer Alaric stood before the Council. He looked older, his robes singed and his white-ash staff replaced by a utilitarian iron rod. Across from him sat the three Grand Sages, their faces hidden behind masks of polished silver.
"The ledgers are a nightmare," Grand Sage Valerius said, his voice a dry rasp that echoed through the circular chamber. "Sam Willer didn't just hoard gold. He leveraged the 'Perpetual Dawn' energy to secure loans from the neighboring empires. We have debts to the Iron Sultanate and the Frost Lords that we cannot pay without the core."
"The core is gone," Alaric said flatly. "And the 'Anomaly'—Kael Light—has decimated our primary Search-Tower in the wastes. He is moving toward Site-One."
The chamber went silent. Site-One, the Frozen Peak, was the oldest of the Cradles. It held the "Source-Vessel," a Sun-Blooded child who had been in stasis for eighty years, providing the baseline frequency for the entire kingdom's communications network. If Kael reached it, the kingdom wouldn't just be poor; it would be deaf and blind.
"We cannot send the Harvesters," Sage Myra said, her silver mask reflecting the dim blue light. "They are too slow, and their Soul-Steel is clearly no match for the boy's iridescence. He has learned to invert the siphon. He is eating our magic, Alaric."
Alaric leaned heavily on his iron rod. "Then we have no choice. We must activate the Eclipse-Guard."
The Grand Sages shifted in their seats. The Eclipse-Guard—more commonly known in the whispers of the underworld as the "Sun-Eaters"—were a dark secret the Academy had hoped never to reveal. They were not mages. They were the opposite. They were children born with a rare "Void-Cell" mutation, a biological defect that made them immune to mana, but also incapable of generating it. The Academy had "refined" them, replacing their bones with Void-Metal and their eyes with sensors that could track the specific frequency of a Sun-Blooded core.
"They are unstable," Myra warned. "They have no empathy. They are hunters of their own kind."
"Kael Light is not their kind," Alaric countered. "He is the sun. They are the night. It is a natural law that the night eventually swallows the sun."
"Do it," Valerius commanded. "Unchain the Sun-Eaters. And find Sam Willer. He may be a mortal husk, but he still knows the boy's psychological weaknesses. A man who has lost everything is a man who will do anything for a drop of hope."
While the Academy plotted in the dark, the object of their fear was currently sitting in a damp, flea-ridden cell in the Royal Prison.
Sam Willer didn't look like a merchant king. He looked like a pile of laundry. His skin was translucent and wrinkled like old parchment, draped over a frame that was little more than brittle bone. He shivered constantly, his cataracts making the world a blurry, terrifying fog of grey and shadow.
He clutched a small, leather-bound ledger to his chest—the one thing the guards hadn't taken. It wasn't a ledger of gold. it was a list of names. Every person he had betrayed to get to the top. Every person he had used as a stepping stone.
And at the very top of the list, written in a shaky, faded hand, was Kael.
The cell door creaked open. The sound of heavy, armored boots echoed against the stone.
"Get up, old man," a voice barked.
Sam squinted through the gloom. He saw the silhouette of a man in Academy robes. He didn't see Alaric; he saw a younger mage, one whose eyes were bright with ambition.
"The... the Guild..." Sam wheezed, his voice a dry rattle. "My... my gold... where is... the gold?"
"Your gold is black sludge, Sam," the mage said, reaching down and grabbing the old man by the collar. He hauled Sam to his feet, the brittle joints of the merchant's knees popping with a painful sound. "But you still have something we want. You spent months traveling with the boy. You know the way he thinks. You know what makes him hesitate."
Sam coughed, a wet sound that sprayed blood onto his own white beard. "He... he is kind. Too... too kind. He... he loves... the broken... things."
"Good," the mage said, dragging Sam toward the door. "Because we are going to give him a world of broken things to heal. And while he is busy mending them, the Sun-Eaters will take his heart."
"My... my youth?" Sam gasped, his hand clutching the mage's sleeve with a desperate, pathetic strength. "You... you promised... Alaric promised..."
"If the boy is caught, you'll get your youth," the mage lied, his voice dripping with a contempt that Sam was too far gone to hear. "If not... well, eighty years is a long life for a beggar."
Three hundred miles to the north, Kael Light was finally leaving the salt of the Western Wastes and entering the foothills of the Frost-Spine Mountains.
The air here was a physical blade. It was cold enough to freeze the blood in his eyes before it could even weep. The mist of the wastes had been replaced by a biting, swirling snow that sought out every gap in his tattered grey cloak.
Kael stopped by a frozen stream, his breathing a rhythmic, metallic whistle in the silence of the woods. He looked at his hands. The 'Reforged Sun' was glowing a steady, icy white, the Star-Core acting as a heater for his internal mana-veins.
THEY ARE COMING, KAEL, the God whispered, its voice sounding strangely sharp, as if it were sharpening itself on the cold. NOT THE ARCHITECTS. NOT THE HARVESTERS. SOMETHING... EMPTY. I CANNOT FEEL THEIR MANA. I CAN ONLY FEEL THEIR HUNGER.
"I feel it too," Kael said, his voice a low thrum.
He looked toward the high peaks. The "Frozen Peak" was a jagged, white fang that pierced the clouds. He could feel the resonance of the Cradle there—a heartbeat that was slower than his own, but carried the same unmistakable frequency of the "White Sun."
He knelt by the stream and shattered the ice with his fist. He dipped his face into the freezing water, washing away the salt and the dried blood of the Search-Tower battle. When he looked at his reflection in the water, he saw the silver-grey scars on his face—the mark of the "Stable Agony."
He was no longer a boy from a jungle. He was a relic of a dead city, carrying the weight of a revolution he hadn't asked for and a lineage he hadn't known he possessed.
He reached into his pack and pulled out the coordinates he had stolen from Inquisitor Vane. There were four sites left. Four children being used as lightbulbs for a kingdom that didn't deserve them.
"I'm coming for you," Kael whispered to the mountains.
He didn't know that behind him, moving through the snow without leaving a single footprint, were three figures in suits of matte-black Void-Metal. They didn't have mana-signatures. They didn't have heartbeats. They only had a directive: Consume the Sun.
The Sun-Eaters were on the trail.
As Kael began the steep climb toward the first Cradle, the first moon of his nineteenth year reached its quarter-phase. The pressure in his chest began to build—the "Stable Agony" reacting to the coming cycle. He was tired, he was alone, and he was heading into a trap that had been set a hundred years ago.