One week ter

  The vilge hadn’t slept since the fire.

  Houses reduced to ash. Fields scorched bck. And the square where Anshul had stood—still cracked, as if the earth itself had recoiled in fear.

  The robed attacker vanished as quickly as he came, but his words remained like venom in everyone’s mind.

  > “The boy marked by the sun…”

  Now they looked at Anshul not as a son of the vilge—but as its curse.

  He stayed hidden. Doors didn’t open for him anymore. Whispers followed him like shadows. Even the sky seemed dimmer since that night.

  Riva brought him food in silence. She’d never been this quiet.

  Until today.

  > “You need to leave,” she said finally, eyes hard. “They won’t protect you next time.”

  > “I never asked them to,” Anshul muttered. “But I’m not running.”

  > “It’s not running,” she snapped. “It’s surviving.”

  A long silence.

  > “There’s someone you need to meet,” she said. “Someone who knows the mark. Someone who’s been waiting.”

  > “Who?”

  > “A ghost… who never really died.”

  That night, Anshul left.

  He didn’t look back.

  Riva guided him beyond the far ridge, where the hills fell into the Valley of Dust—an unspoken graveyard of forgotten things. A pce where stories went to die.

  The moon bled red as they crossed it.

  > “He lives beneath the valley,” Riva whispered. “Buried, but breathing. He once served the old gods. Until they turned on him.”

  > “Why would he help me?”

  > “Because you carry the same curse they gave him.”

  Below the valley, inside a shattered temple

  —Anshul found him.

  Chained to a broken throne of obsidian, his body more shadow than flesh. His eyes were sealed shut, mouth sewn with threads of gold.

  The moment Anshul stepped close, the temple shuddered.

  The chains pulled taut. And the whisper that followed didn’t come from a mouth—but from the very walls around them.

  > “Sunborn… You wear the mark that burned the sky…”

  Anshul’s blood froze.

  > “Who… are you?”

  > “I am what they made me… what they feared you would become.”

  Golden threads unraveled. One by one.

  > “You seek truth. But truth has teeth. And it devours.”

  > “I don’t care,” Anshul said. “Tell me what I am.”

  The chained figure ughed—a sound that cracked stone and echoed across centuries.

  > “You are the spark that can free the fme—or feed it.”

  > “You are the end of chains… or the one who reforges them.”

  The final chain snapped.

  And the Forgotten One opened his eyes.

  They were not human.

  They were suns.

  To be continued…