All of their efforts brought them to this moment where they could stand side by side with each other. They stood united and eagerly waited for the moment when the sun would finally rise.

Yet neither he nor them could deny the doubts that lingered within. A part of him whispered within his mind that the sun would not ever come. Such glorious illumination would not dare reveal itself ever again to such a depraved domain. Darkness would be all that they shall see.

These doubts running through his mind were entirely misplaced.

In fact, they were so wrong, that they withered away and fled from his mind entirely the moment a faint glow appeared across the eastern horizon.

It’s finally happening. The sun is returning to this domain!

He looked over to Lar who couldn’t keep her eyes away from that direction. Her eyes were wide in anticipation and the slightest sign of a smile began to appear. Kiran took her hand and grasped it tightly.

How silly of us to have ever doubted our efforts. The mind was a strange thing. Even up to the point of clear objective success, it would try its hardest to bring a person down. Just accept defeat. Lay down and grovel in misery. Those were the kind of things these thoughts wished to be accepted by one such as himself.

But here upon this dark domain, the darkness itself surrendered itself. Shadows from faraway mountains began to stretch across the barren lands. Places that hadn’t seen light in years began to feel the slightest bit of it for the first time.

Abigail who was easily the shortest amongst their gathered group, found herself leaping up onto Frederek’s back. Her feet found themselves dangling over his shoulders as she kept her palms placed gently atop his head. She overcame her shortness by doing this no matter how silly it might’ve appeared to the rest of them. And, she simply sat there with the most evil grin imaginable while Frederek sighed to himself.

The glow in the sky became brighter taking on a warm color. Minute by minute, second by second, more light began to reveal the cloudy sky above and reveal places he hadn’t traversed through on foot or horseback.

All of this anticipation began to wear him down. The sun chose to take its time as it always did. It didn’t care that they were so eager to witness it in its full glory for the first time in a long while. It was just doing what it always did. It rose of its own accord, not theirs.

Regardless of him wanting it to fully reveal itself already, he exercised a bit of patience. If he could be without it for all of these months, he could survive another few minutes.

In due time, their desires became granted.

Sunlight poured from above the mountains from afar assaulting each and every one of their eyeballs. It was no longer some faint glow towards the eastern horizon, it was now covering this domain in overwhelming illumination.

Abigail—who had the advantage of being taller than all of them currently—shielded her eyes first. Kiran directed his focus away from the direct sun along with many others.

“It’s beautiful isn’t it?” Juna said whilst holding her hands together.

“That word doesn’t quite capture it well enough,” Kiran said in response. He eyed her as she kept smiling. He hadn’t seen Juna look so happy in a long time.

“You know Kiran, I have to admit.”

His eyebrows went up.

“You proved yourself right. After…after everything we’ve all been through, things are truly starting to get better.”

“This is just the start,” he said happily. “Just you wait.”

He began to stretch out both of his arms and examine the paleness of his skin. He had gotten quite pale like everyone else, but that would be a problem fixed in no time at all.

The warmth of the sunlight covered him from top to bottom. He had forgotten how it felt to have a powerful celestial entity provide its magnificent power freely of its own accord.

“Now how’s that for a sunrise?” he asked loudly to everyone.

“Quite glorious indeed!” Abigail proclaimed whilst still sitting on Frederek’s shoulders.

“What do you think?” he said over towards Lar.

She squinted a little. “It’s a little bright, but I am satisfied to see its return. I hope that we never have to be without it ever again.”

That was his hope as well. It would be a real bummer if it were for one reason or another to end up gone once more, but he had a feeling that they didn’t have to worry about that. The source of the interference with their reality had been entirely resolved as far as he could tell—at least in regards to the darkness itself. The miasma still existed of course, but that was a problem to potentially solve another day from now.

Frederek marched forward with Abigail carefully holding on for dear life. “I admit, I am not so fond of the sun. I found this environment—while troublesome for others—to be quite compatible with my way of being. However, while it appeals to someone like me, I would never wish for others to be forced to live under it, especially given the complications that it causes.”

“All of those years living in the underground must’ve messed with your head,” Abigail said. “How could you ever prefer that life down there compared to this?”

“Who knows,” he said with a smile. “But I’ll gladly admit, that this is a truly auspicious moment and one that should be remembered by each of us until the day we die.”

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For someone who found the sun quite unappealing to admit that spoke volumes at least to him.

Meanwhile, a person who had not been with them began to walk up the hill to greet them. “I imagine you’re all quite enjoying this.” The sun hit up against the right side of Alanora’s face. The shadows disappeared from her face when she gazed over towards the east. “I’m happy to see that things are returning to normal.”

Her walking ended as soon as she neared Kiran. She kept both hands clasped together in front of herself. She wore a light blue colored dress that he hadn’t seen her wear before. Behind those brightly lit eyes of hers, was someone who he thought had many thoughts to reveal. For now, at least, she simply joined them so that they could continue to watch the sunrise.

More and more of the lands became brightly lit. Their surroundings were far from perfect admittedly. The lands all around were barren and dead. But there was so much potential now that the sun had returned. These lands could be recovered and revitalized. It didn’t have to remain desolate any longer.

He imagined a day when he looked towards the north where all the trees existed. He imagined every tree full of leaves. He imagined the lands to the west or the east being covered in grass and animals given a chance to freely graze those same lands. Restoring everything would be a lot of hard work, but it was entirely within their capabilities to do so.

When everyone eventually got all they wanted to experience from this moment, people began to head back towards the tents directly to their north. The only ones that remained were himself and Alanora who wanted to speak with him privately.

For a while, she chose to not say anything. Everyone was gone now, so he figured she would speak up soon enough. She simply chose not to and simply stared off towards the east.

He supposed he could initiate the conversation she showed an interest in pursuing, but he felt that perhaps she just needed to get her thoughts arranged in the right way.

After a bit of silence, she chose to speak at last whilst they observed the sun together.

“I haven’t yet thanked you, have I? Well,” she said before he could respond, “I am immensely thankful for your audacious efforts. I doubt I can truly explain to you how thankful I am.”

“Ah, don’t worry about it.”

“I thought you’d say something like that. But alas, I imagine you must have many questions to ask me.”

“I might have a few,” he said grinning a little. “I suppose I should ask why you waited so long to reveal yourself to everyone and properly communicate. You could’ve prevented a lot of strife had you revealed yourself to everyone a lot earlier.”

“That was not a decision I wished to make. I tried to do so earlier, but it turns out that figuring the process out on your own is next to impossible. I did end up figuring it out, but I wish I had been able to do so sooner.”

That was all that mattered. He could be angry or upset that things couldn’t have been resolved sooner to spare more lives and so on, but he wasn’t about to look at this success and begin to tarnish it with what could’ve been as opposed to what ended up happening.

“Why was I able to perceive you then before everyone else?”

“Because you are not like the rest of these mortals.” She said it so matter of factly, that he didn’t doubt it even a little bit especially given his unique circumstances.“I believe you already know that considering this isn’t your first life.”

“How do you know that?” Kiran wasn’t that tightly lipped about him having died and coming back in a new body, but he also didn’t go out of his way to tell people out of the blue. He also knew for a fact that he hadn’t informed her specifically about this either which made this odd to him. “Did someone tell you about my circumstances?”

“No,” she said, “I merely have seen the essence of your soul. You are one intricately linked to the root much like how I was when connected to that altar. I believe that to be the reason why you could perceive me when everyone else couldn’t. And if you’ll recall when I first stumbled upon you, I was taken aback by you noticing me.”

“I wondered why you seemed so startled when we first encountered each other. Is that why you flew away from me initially?”

“It’s a little embarrassing to admit, but yes. Little did I know, you’d end up accomplishing all of this. I’m glad my inner intuition led me back to help you back then.”

He was glad as well for obvious reasons. It appeared to him, that despite the precarious position she had been put into, she had taken advantage of her circumstances to do some good, which made him wonder what she thought in regards to her mother.

“This might be a hard question to answer, but I’m dying to know. What exactly are your thoughts in regards to—“

“My mother?” she said interrupting him. “I’m quite unhappy with her. I am troubled in regards to how far she was willing to act all for my sake. I tried telling her countless times that I did not wish for her to do this, but she would never hear me. I was just a helpless ghost in many ways begging for her to stop, and yet she wouldn’t.”

She began to press a palm to her heart. “I must also inform you Kiran that I initially led you to that cave with the hopes that you might either kill me or remove me from that altar. I wished to die then. I desired nothing more than that. Although I think in hindsight, that might’ve been a bad decision.”

“What makes you say that?”

Her eyes darted around a little. “It’s hard to describe exactly. When I was in that out-of-body state, I would receive information sometimes not knowing where it came from.”

“Someone or something gave it to you?”

“I don’t know whether an entity is responsible, but I received an understanding of things nonetheless like when it came to forcing myself to awaken and reconnect to my body.”

When it came to these arcane matters, his head struggled to comprehend it all. The mechanics and understanding behind it all was just completely unknown to him and she didn’t appear cognizant of it either.

“All I know,” she went on to say, “is that if I hadn’t done what I did back there, it’s possible that the altar might’ve still interfered with this reality even if I had been removed from it. There’s no real way of knowing, however.”

“You’re in the same position I’m in then,” he said. “It feels nice to not be the only one around here unsure about things.”

“It’s not particularly pleasant I admit. But that is the way of things, isn’t it?”

She began to sit down on the ground as the sun managed to reach higher into the sky. He sat down beside her. She kept her hands neatly placed atop her lap with her legs crossed.

“Well now that you’re here, what exactly are your plans going forward?”

Her gaze went from the ground towards the brightly lit eastern horizon. “I wish I had the time to make plans. I really do. I fear my time is quite limited.” Her voice became soft and regretful. “Kiran, the reason why my mother took me to that altar originally, was to try to fix an otherwise dying soul.” She took notice of him being a bit unsure of what exactly that meant. “I see that you’re not sure exactly what I mean. It’s different than someone just dying normally. When someone dies, their soul returns to the Root. My body is perfectly healthy by all measures. That altar made sure of that. But my soul is not. I am regretfully going to experience a fate worse than death itself.”

A chill ran down his spine. “Your soul is going to become extinguished.”

She nodded her head.