The darkness that consumed the candle flame was a living thing. It was a profound, liquid blackness that erased the world, leaving Frics floating in a void with only three anchors to reality: the cold, solid concrete beneath him; the slow, metronomic plink… plink… plink… of water dripping somewhere in the immense chamber; and the faint, warm presence of Zaneraya nearby. He couldn't see her, couldn't hear her breathing, but he knew she was there, a silent partner in this sudden, sightless world.
The echoes of her story filled the void, far more vivid than the memory of the candlelight. He pictured the towers of crystallized sound, the celestial battles of symphony and storm, the stark, silent prison, and the final, cruel act of banishment. The weight of it all was staggering. The problems of his own life—poverty, hunger, the daily grind—felt small and simple in comparison.
His practical nature, honed by years of surviving in Oakhaven, was the first thing to surface from the sea of his thoughts. He cleared his throat, and the small sound was startlingly loud in the oppressive silence.
"I… I don't have another candle," he said, the admission feeling both mundane and monumental. Their tiny bubble of safety had been pierced, not by thunder, but by the simple lack of a flame.
He expected a sigh of exasperation from Zaneraya, a biting comment about mortal unpreparedness. Instead, the silence stretched, and he felt her shift on the jacket he'd given her. When she finally spoke, her voice was different—softer, stripped of its defensive layers, and weary down to its very soul.
"No," she murmured. "Your world's light is fleeting. It eats itself to survive. A fitting metaphor."
They sat in the dark for another long minute. Frics's eyes, straining for any glimmer, saw only swimming spots of black on black. The feeling of helplessness he had just managed to escape began to creep back in.
"Is there… anything you can do?" he asked, the question tentative. He felt foolish asking. She had just explained how her connection to her power was severed.
"My ability to command the Great Symphony is gone," she confirmed, her voice heavy with the familiar ache of that loss. "To create light from nothing… that requires a power I no longer possess. It is like asking a master sculptor with no hands to carve a statue."
Frics's heart sank. He was already planning how they would have to navigate in the pitch black, the dangers of tripping over unseen pipes or stumbling into pools of stagnant water.
"However…" Zaneraya continued, a new, thoughtful cadence in her voice, "…my curse was one of humiliation, not total annihilation. My essence remains, it is merely… deafened. Muted. And I can still feel the resonances around me, faint as they are. The song of your world is a cacophony of noise, but not everything in it is silent."
"What do you mean?" Frics asked, leaning forward, his every sense focused on her voice.
"Some things hold an echo of their own," she explained. "In my world, certain crystals hum with stored starlight. Some deep mosses drink the moonlight and sing it back to the darkness. Even here, in this filth, there must be life that remembers light. I cannot command it. But… perhaps, together, we can coax it."
"Together?"
"My knowledge is useless without a conduit. Your will, your mortal intention, is a raw but focused thing. It is a clear, simple note in the overwhelming noise of your world. If I can guide that note, attune it to a resonance… perhaps we can make a spark."
A sliver of hope, as fragile as a matchstick, ignited in Frics's chest. "What do I do?"
"Listen to me, and do precisely as I say," she commanded, a hint of her old authority returning. "Now, stand up. Move to your left, towards the sound of the dripping water."
Frics rose slowly, his hands outstretched like a blind man's. He shuffled cautiously across the floor, the sound of the dripping growing louder, closer.
"Stop," she ordered. "Kneel down. Reach forward, near the base of the wall. What do you feel?"
He knelt, his knees cracking in protest. He ran his hands over the damp, slimy concrete. "It's wet. And… there's something soft here. It feels like… moss. It's cool to the touch."
"Good," she said, a note of satisfaction in her voice. "That will do. Now, place both of your hands upon it. Close your eyes."
"They're already closed," he quipped, a nervous habit. "It's pitch black."
"Then close the eyes of your mind," she retorted, her voice sharp. "This is not a game. Banish the darkness around you. I want you to remember. Remember the flame of the candle we just lost. See it in your mind. Hold its shape, its dance, its heat. Remember the feeling of the sun on your face on a rare, clear day. Feel its warmth on your eyelids. Do not just think of light, Frics. Feel it. Become the vessel for that feeling."
He did as she said, squeezing his eyes shut and forcing his frantic thoughts to focus. He pictured the small, steady flame of the candle. He remembered a day last spring when the smog had cleared for an afternoon, and he'd felt the real, unfiltered warmth of the sun on his skin. He held onto that sensation, pouring all his concentration into it, a desperate, silent plea for light.
As he focused, he heard her begin to hum.
It was not a tune he recognized. It was a single, pure note, so low it was almost a vibration more than a sound. It was faint, strained, as if it cost her a tremendous effort to produce. But it was undeniably music. It was the sound of her true self, a tiny, wounded fragment of the Great Symphony, reaching out into the darkness.
The note quivered in the air, and he felt a strange tingling sensation under his palms. He focused harder on the memory of warmth, of light, pouring his will into the cool, damp moss.
And then, it happened.
A faint, ghostly light bloomed beneath his hands. He gasped and opened his eyes. The patch of moss was glowing. It was not a bright, harsh light, but a soft, ethereal, blue-green luminescence, like captured moonlight. It pulsed gently, in time with the faint hum that still emanated from Zaneraya. The glow spread, creeping along the veins of moss that spiderwebbed across the damp wall, casting the colossal boiler and their small corner of the room in a cool, otherworldly radiance.
Frics stared at his hands, then at the glowing wall, his mind reeling. He hadn't just found a light source. He had, in some small way, helped create it. He looked over at Zaneraya.
She was bathed in the soft, magical glow. The light caught the terror and exhaustion still lingering in her sapphire eyes, but it also revealed a look of fierce, triumphant pride. It was a pale, pathetic imitation of the power she had once wielded, a mere whisper of her former glory. But it was a victory. It was their victory.
The boiler room was no longer a tomb. It was a grotto, lit by a constellation of their own making. Frics looked at the small, white cat, her form radiating a faint power, and then back at his own hands, still tingling with the echo of the magic they had channeled.
They were no longer just hiding in the dark. They had brought a spark of their own, and in its gentle, impossible light, everything felt different.