Before the lie, there were two suns.
One to see with.
And one to remember with.
We kept the wrong one.
⸻
The village of Nareth was a place too small to matter, too quiet to remember. It sat near the edge of the Silver Expanse, a lifeless, reflective desert where the sun always set but never quite left.
In Nareth, time didn't pass. It looped.
The same goats bleated in the same direction. The same bells rang. The same rains came, then forgot to return. People whispered without listening, moved without knowing why — a town of clockwork hearts and dust-filled lungs.
But there was one thing that didn't belong.
A boy.
Hair like ash.
Eyes like burnt gold.
Azur Tayn.
⸻
On the day everything began, Azur stood barefoot in the Expanse, staring at the sky. Not the sun — but the space beside it. The place where something used to be. Where something still ached.
His pendant — an old brass circle shaped like a sun with thirteen jagged rays — was warm against his chest.
He whispered:
"You're late again."
The space beside the sun said nothing, of course.
⸻
Behind him, a voice snapped like dry reeds.
"Azur! You're not supposed to be out here!"
Calre, the baker's daughter — the only other person in the village who spoke like she wasn't asleep.
Azur turned, smiling faintly. "I was watching it."
She squinted. "The sun?"
He pointed next to it. "No. The empty part."
"…There's nothing there."
He paused.
"There used to be. Another sun."
⸻
She looked at him like he was broken.
Everyone did.
Because Azur remembered things he wasn't supposed to.
A tower of glass in the desert.
A second sun, red like blood, low in the sky.
People whose names made his throat burn to say.
But worst of all — he remembered dying. A woman's voice calling him by a name he didn't know. A silver blade through his chest. A promise. "Don't forget."
He was only fifteen.
⸻
Back in the village, the old man at the archives clutched his ink-stained robes and muttered when he saw Azur.
"That boy… carries Echoes. Dangerous. Should've never been born."
He was right.
But it was already too late.
⸻
That night, Azur dreamt of a world upside-down.
A sun beneath the earth, blazing brighter than fire, pulsing like a heart.
He stood on a mountain of keys — none of which fit any lock.
In front of him, a figure made of flame and mourning held out a hand.
"Do you want to remember?"
"Yes," Azur said.
"Then you must burn."
And when he opened his eyes, the world was on fire.
⸻
The village had no reason to burn. There were no enemies. No lightning. No war.
But the moment Azur spoke the word "Sunfall" — a word he'd never heard before — the sky cracked open like glass hit by thunder.
A ring of flame and memory spiraled above the Silver Expanse.
Time stopped.
Literally — the raindrops in the air froze like glass beads.
The bells rang backwards.
And a thing stepped through the sky.
A Vessel of the First Edict — robed in blinding gold, face covered by a mask of perfect symmetry.
It spoke in a voice layered in a thousand others:
"THE OATHLESS HAS AWAKENED."
"SEVERANCE BEGINS."
⸻
The being moved toward him.
Each step melted the world beneath its feet.
Not fire — but truth. A collapsing illusion.
Azur backed away.
He could feel his chest — burning from inside.
The pendant on his neck began to pulse.
"You were not supposed to exist," the being said.
"Your soul carries forbidden echoes."
"You are the Second Sun's heir. And for that… you must be silenced."
Azur screamed as the heat filled his veins.
He remembered something:
A woman's voice.
A promise broken.
A war he never fought.
His hand rose instinctively.
The First Flame burst from him — not like fire, but like a rupture in reality.
It struck the Vessel, carving through its mask — revealing not a face beneath, but a void full of screaming names.
The world exploded into light, sound, and silence.
And when it ended, Azur was alone.
The crater where the village once was… formed a perfect eye.
And the sky?
The sky now had two suns — one real.
One remembered.
⸻
The Second Sun had blinked open for the first time in a thousand years.
And the gods would burn to shut it again.