Darkness...
...Then Light
When I was born, I could have sworn I saw light—pure, unbroken, and endless light. A brilliance so intense that not a single shadow dared exist within it. For the briefest, most fleeting moment, it was as if the world had never known darkness. Although though it was the very first memory of my feeble life, it remains the most vivid, as if it had been burned into the deepest part of me.
Then...the light was gone.
Darkness swallowed me whole, an emptiness so vast it felt like I had been cast adrift in a void with no beginning and no end. I could see nothing, feel nothing but an overwhelming loneliness. Fear gripped me, small and fragile as I was, and I cried—helpless, lost, desperate for something, anything.
And then, warmth.
It wrapped around me, enfolding me in its gentle embrace—not crushing, not suffocating, but firm and steady. It held me close, whispered comfort into the silence, and in that moment, I was no longer alone. I was safe. I was wanted. And even in the absence of light, I knew I was alive...
...Growing up in the slums, I was raised by a man I call my uncle. He isn't really my uncle—at least, not by blood—but he took me in, fed me, and kept me alive ever since the night he found me at his door. Or so, that's how he tells the story angrily every time I ask him.
He says he had found me as a baby, I was wrapped in a tattered blindfold—frayed at the edges, stained with time, and barely holding together. It wasn't just a scrap of cloth to me; It was something that tied me to my birth, and something that will forever be apart of me.
Along with the blindfold, I was left with nothing but a tarnished metal cross, its edges worn smooth by time. On the back, a single name was etched in rough, uneven letters: Samael.
I don't know if it's truly mine or if it belonged to someone long forgotten, but I've claimed it all the same. There's a weight to it, a sharpness in its sound—like something meant to cut through the darkness. And in a world where light is a dream, having even a name to hold onto feels as if some light was brought back into my being...
The slums where are a maze of crumbling structures, stitched together from rusted metal sheets, cracked concrete, and scavenged debris. The air is thick with the stench of sweat, decay, and the faint acrid tang of burning fuel—one of the few sources of warmth in the eternal darkness. Narrow alleyways twist between the makeshift homes, slick with moisture from unseen leaks above, and the only sounds are the muffled whispers of the desperate and the occasional crack of a whip from enforcers keeping order.
High above in the clouds in unseen towers, hoard their own endless glow, rumored to never suffer darkness. They are called "The Length District or simply Length." They are filled with the most powerful and richest people in the world. They control everything that happens in the slums, they even control the amount of light we are able to see. Here in the depths of the slums, light is a fleeting visitor, and hope is as fragile as the brittle bones of those who have given up. We are nothing but lesser beings that are meant to be obedient and serve those in power.
The people of the slums don't truly live—they merely exist, stumbling through the dark, clinging to the fragments of a world they can never fully see. Even their loved ones remain incomplete, their faces revealed only in fleeting glimpses, Length itself decides how much they are allowed to see. Length is cruel, they ration light like a miser hoarding gold, granting them just enough illumination to remind them of what we lack.
They might as well be blind...
Not just to the faces of those they cherish, but to the truth of the world itself.
Since light is rationed through the oppressive system of Length, the slums remain in an almost perpetual gloom. Only when Wave pulses through the district does illumination, reveal the filth and suffering, if only for a short time. That fleeting brightness exposes the hollow-eyed children scavenging for scraps, the hunched figures of the exhausted returning from labor, and the makeshift shrines where the desperate pray for salvation—whether through rebellion or death.
However, I was different...
Living in the slums is like being trapped in a world that was never meant for me. Even when Length grants light, even when they use Wave to allow color to return for a fleeting moment, it means nothing to me. I hear the gasps of wonder around me, the murmurs of people marveling at the sky, at their loved ones, at the world they only get to see in pieces for most of their life. But to me, it's all the same. Shadows and shapes. Black and white. Nothing more. I cannot see color even if the powerful and rich force it upon me.
I walk these streets by memory, by sound, by the feel of uneven ground beneath my feet. The air is thick with sweat, smoke, and the filth of too many people crammed into too little space. I hear children laughing, crying, calling out in awe at colors they barely remember. I hear neighbors whispering about the beauty and filth around them—words like crimson, emerald, golden—but to me, they mean nothing. Just sounds. Just ideas. I will never understand them the way they do.
My blindfold stays on. What's the point in taking it off? Whether I look or not, the world is still drained, empty, lifeless. A hollow reflection of something greater that I will never—can never—experience.
So I don't look. I don't ask. I don't submit to the "gift" of the rich.
Because in the end, color is just another meaningless existence. Another trivial thing that I know I will never be able to see. It's all pointless.
This is where Samael has grown up. This is where he has learned that survival and knowledge is an act of defiance. And this is where he will begin his fight to restore light to the people that hold it so dear...
He will become—The Lightbringer