The beast's body had begun to dissolve into mist, leaving no scent, no decay—only a faint shimmer where its chest had last risen. Kim Jisoo stared at the place where it had died, then finally turned his gaze back to the massive tree standing like a monument of some forgotten god.
Its bark was streaked with silver, but veins of faint blue pulsed underneath, as though it carried a living current. Branches twisted high into the canopy, each one tipped with glowing leaves that gave off that soft, star-like light.
Jisoo walked forward slowly.
Haru followed beside him, still hugging his arms to himself, his wide eyes locked on the glowing bark. The child was quiet now. Not because he wasn't afraid, but because the weight of everything was finally settling on his tiny shoulders.
Jisoo reached up to the nearest low branch.
The leaf was cool to the touch. Smooth like silk, but stiff and sharp at the edges. He snapped one off, turned it over in his fingers, and slipped it carefully into a side pouch of his pack.
"Can I take one?" Haru asked, staring at a leaf that pulsed gently with greenish-silver light.
Jisoo nodded. "Just one. Carefully."
Haru reached up and plucked a smaller leaf. He held it in both hands like a piece of magic.
They stood there in the glow of the tree for a while, listening to nothing but the slow pulse of the forest, the beat of a heart that wasn't human.
After some time, Haru asked quietly, "Why do you think it let us in?"
Jisoo didn't answer immediately.
He walked around the base of the tree, eyes tracing the patterns carved deep into the trunk. Symbols. Spirals. Wounds. Stories.
He stopped in front of one—a marking shaped like a circle broken in half by a jagged line.
Then he sat on the mossy ground and gestured for Haru to do the same.
The boy obeyed, sitting cross-legged beside him, still clutching the leaf.
Jisoo looked up at the glowing branches, his voice low. "A long time ago, before all this... someone told me that humans were parasites. That we just take, destroy, consume."
"Were they wrong?" Haru asked.
Jisoo didn't speak right away.
"No," he said finally. "But that's not the whole story."
He reached into his pack, pulled out a small notebook—creased, weathered, ink smudged—and opened it to a hand-drawn sketch of the solar spectrum.
"Humans," he said, "are also the only species that ever tried to understand the stars. Not just reach them. Understand them."
He flipped to another page. Diagrams of ancient ruins. Equations about decay and energy flow.
"We mess things up, yeah. But we also fix them. We build, we burn, we rebuild. We make mistakes, but we try again. And again. Even now, when the world's falling apart."
Haru blinked. "But why are you telling me this?"
Jisoo's hand froze on the page.
He looked at the boy.
At his wide, bruised eyes. At his small, thin frame. At the way he sat perfectly still, listening to every word with his heart open and raw.
Jisoo felt something strange in his chest.
He looked away. But not before his lips curved, just slightly.
A smile.
Small. Faint.
But real.
The first in over a decade.
The first since his mother had run.
Since his sister had vanished.
Since his soul had locked itself inside a fortress made of silence.
And Haru saw it.
The boy gasped.
Then said, with utter sincerity:
"You're beautiful when you smile."
Jisoo blinked.
His smile faded slowly, but not completely. He turned his head to hide the sudden rush of emotion, like a tide rising too fast.
"I don't smile often," he said.
"I know," Haru whispered. "That's why it's special."
Jisoo looked at him again. Saw a child who had lost everything. Who had survived monsters, fire, betrayal. Who still carried a locket with his parents' photo like it could anchor him to life itself.
And that child was looking at him like he was the one worth holding onto.
Jisoo looked down.
"Maybe you should remember this," he said softly. "Not the monsters. Not the fire. Just this. The light. The quiet. The way it feels to… breathe."
Haru nodded.
The tree swayed gently behind them. The pulse of light slowed.
For a few minutes, the world felt… distant.
The sun might still be dying.
The monsters might still be hunting.
But here, in this place that glowed without heat, that whispered without sound, they were something more than survivors.
They were still human.
.
The underground stronghold known as Facility Theta hummed with filtered air and power it didn't have to spare. Built beneath what used to be a pharmaceutical development complex, it had been repurposed as a last bastion of scientific coordination after the solar collapse began. The halls were tight, clean, and quiet. No windows. No wasted light.
Inside the central briefing room, the air was not so calm.
A flickering table-sized projection screen displayed a constantly-updating spread of solar activity, infection zone maps, and psychological deterioration data from the last remaining human colonies.
On one side of the table stood Dr. Elihan Seo, pale, angular, and sharp in both mind and tongue. His long white coat dragged slightly as he moved, and his expression, though exhausted, was precise—like every word he spoke had already been measured in his head before it touched the air.
Beside him, silent but imposing, stood Ryu Saeyoung.
Clad in a matte black overcoat with subtle armor laced beneath, he looked as if he had been carved from obsidian. His black eyes scanned the room constantly, resting on every person just long enough to remind them he wasn't there to discuss safety—he was there to enforce it.
Across the room sat Minister Hwan Jeong, the last acting Minister of Global Health & Stabilization. Once a renowned policymaker, his face was now lined with fear and hard compromises. Around him, four military officials and two scientists tapped at data pads nervously.
"You're asking me," Hwan began, voice hard, "to approve the construction of a new base—outside the current secure zone—at the edge of known volatile territory, near an active infection corridor?"
"Yes," Elihan replied flatly.
"Are you out of your mind?" Hwan snapped. "You want us to divert power, materials, and personnel—what little we have left—for a suicide mission?"
"It's not a suicide mission," Elihan said, folding his arms. "It's the only plan we have."
Ryu remained silent, standing at Elihan's right like a shadow given form.
Hwan scoffed. "You've seen the numbers, Doctor. You've seen the psychological reports. Half the survivors are barely functional. The other half are infected or close to it. You're asking us to—"
"—Build something we should have built a year ago," Elihan cut in.
He stepped forward, activating a new projection: the world map, most of it washed in red and black. Pockets of pale green showed the few remaining settlements.
He zoomed in on a blinking yellow icon, isolated in a greyed-out forest region, labeled: "Candidate Site: Eclipse Outpost"
Elihan continued, voice lower now. "This location shows unusual solar resilience. Our scans indicate the space distortion is thinner there. Residual solar radiation clings to the area even during high-dim events. It's the only place showing signs of spectral retention outside the polar caps."
Minister Hwan waved a hand. "A 'glowing forest'? What is this, a fantasy novel? You want to risk hundreds of lives chasing after magical trees?"
Elihan didn't blink. "One of our field drones found something there last week. Then we lost the signal. A heartbeat pattern in the terrain's EM emissions. A tree—yes—but not natural. Bioengineered. Possibly pre-cataclysm. Possibly not even human in origin."
Ryu finally spoke.
"We've intercepted something else," he said, his voice smooth and quiet, but cutting like a knife. "A transmission. Weak, but repeating. From the same area."
He turned and tapped his wrist interface. A static-heavy audio file began to play.
"...mirror... light... resistance... encoded..."
The signal repeated, barely audible under the distortion.
Ryu turned off the feed. "This is not random interference."
Hwan stared at them, eyes narrowing. "So what? You think this tree—this forest—this signal—it's hope? It's your miracle?"
"No," Elihan said. "It's a tool. Maybe the last one we'll ever get."
He turned again, opening a side file. Video footage from two weeks ago. A lab test showing a creature—a former human—exposed to an experimental full-spectrum solar-emission device.
The result: rapid decay. Panic. Death.
"We've confirmed what others have guessed," Elihan said. "The monsters—the Others—hate true solar light. Not heat. Not flame. The spectrum. The purity. Something in their cells unravels under it."
Minister Hwan looked pale. "You want to rebuild the sun?"
"No," Elihan said. "But we can replicate pieces of it. Amplify it. Weaponize it. But only from a site with a natural emission point—like Eclipse."
"And if it's a trap?" one general asked.
"Then we die in the dark," Ryu answered.
The room fell into silence.
Only the quiet hum of the base systems remained, a mechanical heartbeat.
Minister Hwan leaned forward slowly. "Even if I approve it… we don't have the people. The materials. The morale."
"You do," Ryu said.
He slid a file across the table.
It showed a list of personnel marked "Red-Level Clearance," including three names that had not been seen for months. Survivors of Lab G-Delta. Engineers who had designed portable solar field reactors. A child marked "anomalous," with partial resistance. And one name circled twice:
Kim Jisoo.
"The survivor who burned a transformed human with a handheld light spectrum device," Ryu said. "Confirmed to be alive. Traveling with the anomaly child."
Hwan blinked. "Kim Jisoo is real?"
"He is," Elihan said.
"He's your starting point," Ryu continued. "Find him. Bring him in. Build the base around him if you have to. But we need to act now. Before the sun dies completely."
Hwan looked tired. Older than his years. But he looked at the map again.
The red growing.
The green shrinking.
The yellow blinking like a heartbeat on the edge of extinction.
"I'll authorize it," he said at last, voice low. "But if you fail…"
Ryu leaned forward, black eyes boring into the Minister's soul.
"We won't."
And with that, the first step toward Eclipse Outpost was made.
And the war for the last light began.