The sun did not set that evening.
It was swallowed.
Kaito Ren was nine years old when the sky cracked open.
He was chasing a paper windmill his mother made for him when the light above flickered — once… twice… then turned crimson.
People stopped walking.
Birds fell from the sky.
The air became heavy.
Then the eclipse formed — not black.
Red.
A deep, bleeding red.
"Kaito!" his mother shouted from their wooden house. "Come inside!"
But it was too late.
The shadows on the ground began to move.
Not stretch.
Move.
A man screamed across the street.
His shadow rose from beneath him like liquid smoke… and tore into his body.
Blood sprayed across the stone road.
Kaito froze.
His mother ran to him, grabbing his small hand. Her fingers were shaking.
"Don't look," she whispered.
But he already had.
The entire village descended into chaos. Shadows twisted into monsters — long claws, hollow eyes, bodies shaped like nightmares.
The sky pulsed like a beating heart.
And then…
Something moved behind them.
A shadow taller than any building.
It looked down at Kaito.
And smiled.
Darkness swallowed everything.