A Fantasy Series

Four Pieces of Light

When the Sun Keeper is murdered and the sun vanishes, immortal Julien must journey into the afterlife to retrieve the god’s soul. Along the way, he faces ghostly riddles, divine tempers, and ancient secrets in this witty, poignant fantasy of cosmic stakes and quiet moments.

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Chapter 1:

The Sun Keeper

One day, the sun vanished up north. Before long, the news had raced across the three realms. The world was full of people who couldn’t travel far outside their lands, but they could gossip at the speed of light, especially when it came to rumours of the Eclipse’s return.Julien arrived in Varennes within hours. He conjured a fire, the biggest that space would allow, and thousands of people quickly huddled around, their faces flickering in the light. Then, they looked at him, a complete stranger, as though he might have all the answers tucked into his worn-out coat.Of course, he didn’t have any answers. As he took his place among them, Julien tilted his face upward to study the heavens. Above them, the sky was rendered an impenetrable void. It could be midnight, or midday, or some nameless time that never existed before.Around the fire, people were exchanging their recollections of the event. At first, the sun’s gradual disappearance came upon the region with an almost gentle subtlety, like a soft dimming one might assign to a passing cloud briefly blocking that orange orb’s radiance. But the expected return of light never came to pass. Instead, the sky continued its inexorable deepening into a shade far deeper and more total than any twilight hour.People froze mid-stride, right in the street. Some blinked—once, twice—thinking it was just a bit of dust on their eyeballs. Others shielded their eyes with their hands, squinting as if the sun might suddenly reappear if they only strained hard enough. Children tugged at their mothers’ sleeves, while the elderly muttered under their breath, their voices carrying fragments of old legends half-remembered from childhood.The cold snuck in quickly. The children started crying, and the dogs’ fitful and confused barking took on an anxious edge.The immortals, those ageless beings governing the realms, arrived swiftly. They moved calmly among the panicked throng, offering utterances of reassurance that soon, the world would be set right, and order would be restored. Now, “soon” was a wonderfully flexible word, and the northern immortals seemed to have embraced its full elasticity. Was “soon” a matter of hours? Days? Generations? They didn’t specify, so this was an enigmatic problem left for the mortals to solve.Julien, for his part, had settled quietly near the fire. People had started to notice him, not least because he wasn’t shivering like everyone else. It wasn’t long before an old mortal woman shuffled over and gave him a light shove.“Do you want some bread, young man? I haven’t seen you take a bite all day,” she said, her voice as brisk as the wind. She was bundled up in many layers of wool and fur with only her sharp eyes peeking out from under the folds.“I’m good, thanks. Keep the food for yourself,” Julien smiled. In truth, he needed neither food nor warmth for survival.“You should wrap up warmer, even if you’re gifted and you can spark a flame. Power is like matches; you never know when you’ll run out.” The old mortal had a look about her that said she’d seen a few more disasters than Julien. “I could make a campfire with a snap of my fingers, too…” she still mumbled, then launched into some half-muttered story about her back-in-the-day heroics. Julien couldn’t catch all the details, but it was clear she considered this a teachable moment, and Julien a suitable student.He couldn’t help but smile a little. One minute, their whole world had gone dark, but the next, the mortals were already baking bread and telling stories. It seemed silly at first, but that’d always been how it worked with them—fear and hope, living side-by-side.The woman stopped mid-sentence, “When do you think it’ll come back? The sun?” She craned her neck, squinting at the sky as if she could scold it back into existence.Julien shrugged. “Your northern immortals said ‘soon,’ so it could be yesterday, or it could be tomorrow. Probably whenever your Sun Keeper realizes he still has a job, hopefully at around the same time they finish the paperwork to fire him.”“Mind your manners!” She looked faintly scandalized. “Young people these days… You have no respect for anything.” The woman’s mouth pinched tightly. “Claude is our Sun Keeper. He has watched over our sun since before you were born.” Her voice held a local pride that clearly implied that their celestial disasters were more distinguished than anyone else’s.Before I was born? Julien chuckled but didn’t bother to correct her.“Anyway, you’re not from Varennes?” she asked.“I don’t live here anymore. I came here today after the sun vanished.”“Why on earth did you come here?” The woman’s eyes were filled with a mixture of horror and morbid curiosity. “I heard other places were still normal. Or… Oh, oh no, are the other suns missing too?” She gasped, putting a hand to her chest, clearly picturing unspeakable horrors in her mind.“Everywhere else is fine.” Julien tried to sound reassuring.Her brows furrowed. “Then why didn’t you stay put? Where do you live, anyway?”“Because interesting things have a habit of happening in places where the sun goes missing?” Julien offered a smile, but it only earned him another glare. “I currently live in Estérel, but I move around often.”“Oh, Estérel...” Her voice dripped with a bit of envy. “Word is, your Sun Keeper is very reliable. Not a single second off, ever. Ours was too, of course, until today.”“Is that so? I’ve never noticed. Time of sunrise and quality of sunsets aren’t my area of expertise,” Julien said. He briefly imagined the woman staring at the horizon with a watch, checking if the universe was on schedule.The woman’s eyes narrowed. She looked him over more closely—a light-skinned man with dark hair that fell messily across his forehead. There was a sharp edge to her voice now, like she’d swapped pity for condescension. “How old are you, exactly? Seems odd, a grown man not knowing the basics.”Julien just smiled. She rolled her eyes, then turned away with a dismissive air, apparently deeming him unworthy to discuss celestial timetables with. Not so teachable after all.Over by the fire, people gestured wildly. There were words, a whole lot of words. It sounded a lot like the end of the world. The only problem was: Julien wasn’t much of a believer in those sorts of prophecies. He’d had the luck (or misfortune, depending on one’s outlook) to see some proper oddities in his time. After a while, “normal” started to become a relative term. He’d dodged his way through plagues and invading hordes, watched cities crumble and seas rise with fury—messy events, full of too much fire or too much ice, depending on the day. And he was still standing. A few dents here and there, sure, but still standing.This time felt different, however. The sun could not just roll away or take a holiday. Julien knew a thing or two about how the world worked, and this wasn’t in the rulebook.“I hope Sun Keeper Claude is fine. No way he abandoned his duty just like this.” An old man shouted, and everybody around the fire nodded with perhaps too much force. “Do you think he—”“I’m sure he’s okay,” the woman beside him cut him off. She patted her son’s head. “Whatever happened, Alaric will certainly save us. Even if the Eclipse swallows us whole like it once did, Alaric can still set things right.” Her voice was soft and reverent.One by one, others started echoing her. “Alaric… Alaric…” The word morphed into a kind of prayer, like saying it was enough to keep them safe and keep the world spinning right.Julien didn’t pray, but even he understood the comfort in a name. Especially that one.Then, the chanting quieted, bit by bit. High above, a flicker of palest light poked through the darkness. People stopped mid-word, their mouths half-open in prayer or panic; it didn’t matter which now. The sky was shifting, and the inky black was receding.There, unmistakably: golden light, soft and gentle, spilling out over everything. It washed over them, painting the world anew.Julien blinked against the sudden brilliance. He wasn’t alone in his reaction. All around him, the crowd surged. There were cheers, hoarse with relief and a manic sort of joy. Some stretched their hands upward, palms open, like they could grab hold of that light and pull it back down to stay, clutching it to their bosoms possessively.Then, in the heart of the golden blaze, a figure began to coalesce. It was Alaric—how could it be anyone else?—his form that of one who bore the gravity of centuries, etched with lines of struggle and loss.“You have endured,” Alaric’s voice boomed. “The balance is now restored.”The words themselves, Julien figured, didn’t matter nearly as much as who was saying them. Everyone knew the problem was now settled, and even if the world decided to go sideways again tomorrow, Alaric would make things right once more.Alaric stepped down and walked among the mortals. People parted for him. They were quieter now. They whispered instead of shouted.Julien watched them from a hidden corner. He had seen many things, but the return of the sun was not something he could easily dismiss.Then, Alaric stopped, his gaze sweeping the gathered faces before it settled, unsurprisingly, on Julien. He gave Julien a brief nod, and then he left, leaving the sunlight oddly chilly for an instant.The crowd exhaled. It was a long, collective sigh. One could hear it in the silence that followed, in the way shoulders untensed and hands unclenched. Relief had a funny way of warming one up even in the middle of a frozen city.“Can you believe it?” a woman whispered next to Julien, “Alaric came! Alaric himself, right here.”Farther away, a young man looked stunned. “It’s a miracle. I got to see him. And all his might. How lucky I am! How… How lucky…”The woman next to him nodded. “They’ll write songs about this. Someone will. They’ll be terrible songs, like they always are. But people will sing them anyway. We’ll have to…because we were here.”Kids, finally convinced the sun wasn’t going anywhere, were off chasing each other in a flurry of shrieks and giggles.Julien remained still, watching the scene unfold. A question lingered in his mind, loud and persistent, that nobody else seemed to be asking: where was the Steward of Varennes in all this?Up north, Varennes was a region of gleaming cities and soaring spires. The structures here were enormous. Their walls were so thick they easily made mortals feel small in a good way, like a kid looking up at a hero in a storybook. The land itself rolled out gloriously outside the cities, green as far as the eye could see. People here said that their land, all that green and white stone, was about valour and justice. Julien didn’t know if their claim was true—the land had changed significantly since his younger days—but the place certainly looked like a portrait of strength. The kind of strength that stood tall when the storm came, that refused to bend. Or at least, its current Steward had moulded it to feel this way.This northern territory lay within the dominion of Steward Cassius, an immortal whose legend preceded him. He was one of the four Stewards of the mortal realm who answered only to Alaric, the ruler of all three realms. Julien had never crossed paths with the Steward, yet from the farthest reaches of the realms, he had heard stories that he was a leader both revered and trusted, which meant either Cassius was a fine politician, or he was actually good at his job. Probably a bit of both.Julien’s eyes drifted to the far end of the beach. One of the northern immortals was staring out at the sea as waves crashed and fizzled. The others had the situation well under control. Their arrival had been swift. Their actions had been measured and decisive. All appeared as it should.And yet, Cassius himself, their leader, remained unseen.Then there was a shift in the air. Julien sensed the movement before he saw the person. He turned and saw an old figure silhouetted against the shadows of the darkening sea. The man was rail-thin, with a bowed back and knobby hands dappled with age spots and traced with meandering veins. He clasped a walking staff, but he didn’t lean on it.Julien couldn’t place the face. But his intuition prickled. There was a familiarity beneath the outward form.With a flick of his wrist, he wove a veil of silence, hushing their voices from the world. Mortal ears wouldn’t catch this conversation. Then, he gave a small, respectful nod. “Alaric.”The old man smiled, carving new wrinkles into his weathered face. The glorious radiance was gone now, though not the ageless impression of wisdom. “It’s good to see you again, my boy. Though ‘boy’ seems a bit inadequate, these days.”Julien’s smile came out stiff. His customary wit failed him, as it often happened in Alaric’s presence, when he felt like he was back to being just a scrappy kid with too much ambition and not enough sense.Alaric continued, “How have you been? Enjoying your travels through the realms, I hope? Where do you live now?”“I’m staying in a fishing village for the moment,” Julien said.“Sounds peaceful. Peaceful is nice. And thanks for coming so quickly after…” Alaric gestured towards the sky, the sun now a reassuringly familiar sight. “…all that.”“I didn’t do much. I only made a fire. The northern immortals came fast, but…” Julien narrowed his eyes. Immortal squabbles were no longer his concern, but this felt different. Besides, Alaric wasn’t one for casual visits and aimless conversations. “Where’s Steward Cassius?”“Cassius is preoccupied at the moment,” Alaric said, his voice calm.“Preoccupied?” Julien echoed, and his eyes roamed the scene again. “The sun… What happened, if you don’t mind me asking? There were rumours that the Sun Keeper of Varennes has disappeared?”At this, Alaric only sighed, then turned his gaze back over the waters. It was sunset now. The faint light cast his profile in angles and shadows. For the first time since Julien had known him, the ancient one looked weary. It wasn’t the frailty of the mortal form he wore, but true exhaustion that no illusion could mask.At last, Alaric spoke again. “I have a favour to ask, and you’re the only person I trust with this assignment.”Julien didn’t hesitate. “Sure. You know my answer.”“Then, Julien, what do you know of the Eclipse?”Julien weighed his response carefully. This was no casual query.The Eclipse was one of those stories that got passed down through generations, malleable as clay in the hands of whoever held it next. Bits got added, embellished, and stretched so far they finally snapped off from the truth entirely.The stories agreed that, way back before time even kept proper track of itself, there’d been only one sun. Not four, like there were now. Just one. It was always steady and reliable, rising in the east each morning and setting in the west each evening. Days flowed into nights, seasons turned, and life thrived in this predictable rhythm. There was no need for a Keeper to manage the sun then. It just did its thing, a constant in a world that was otherwise full of surprises. Even Alaric held dominion only over a sliver of sky, observer of the world more than ruler.It was in this time of restraint that the dark lord Valenor struck. No one knew how or why. Some said envy. Others said fate. But what was agreed upon was this: the sun vanished. Valenor blotted it out.That day, the day when light failed, came to be known as the Eclipse.Then came the war. Alaric rose, yes, with his banners and his soldiers forged from dream and oath, but the victory that was promised in the first breath did not come in the second. Instead, the war stretched on through years of strife that cracked and blistered the world.There were many stories told of those war-torn years when skies bled black as a bruise, spreading tainted radiance instead of true sunlight. Not a drop of rain fell during that blighted era. Without water, crops withered into brown husks. Farms and villages became graveyards overgrown with dead stems and stalks instead of wheat and berries.

People died. Lots of people. And with all those bodies and no one left alive to dig graves, their corpses were abandoned—piled up in doorways, bloating in dry riverbeds, or rotting beneath the sunless sky. After a while, according to the tales, the living had no choice but to burn them like cordwood and breathe in the stench. Every night, sooty columns of greasy smoke painted the horizon in gray streaks. Those years clawed at the spirit, when the sun faltered and the heavens wept bitter ash.Then, just as the world seemed ready to collapse, Alaric returned. He had finally slain Valenor. And with his victory came restoration. New suns he kindled, and brought the rain back into being. The world, battered but not broken, crawled its way back to life.“Little more than myths and legend,” Julien said at last. “I doubt anyone but you can actually recall those dark days.”Alaric nodded. “The rumours you’ve heard today were true. An immortal vanished—Claude, the Sun Keeper of Varennes.”“Vanished? Have you found him?” Julien asked.Alaric nodded but did not say more with words. Instead, he placed a hand on Julien’s shoulder, and reality flexed and buckled around them. The salty tang of the sea melted away, replaced by a damp mustiness that coated Julien’s mouth and nostrils with that unmistakable mineral scent of buried depths.Alaric had transported them elsewhere. The town had disappeared, replaced by a void of absolute blackness that seemed to consume every stray light ray unlucky enough to stumble its way.The enclosing darkness exerted an almost tangible weight, pressing in from every angle. No matter where Julien turned his head, his eyes found only that same seamless void.Yet it was an ordinary mortal darkness, and darkness in the mortal realm rarely bothered Julien. He could see things as clear as day regardless of light rays, lucky or not. He took in the curved, damp-glistened walls of a cavern that seemed to exist in a state of stillness. Not a mote of dust disturbed the air, nor a single pebble out of place. The smooth stone stretched in all directions, scrubbed insensibly clean. The only disruption on that black continuity was the occasional drip of unseen condensation striking the rocky floor.Drip…drip…drip.The sound was amplified in the subterranean confines, each tiny liquid concussion reverberating through the air with precise regularity.Julien turned his gaze back towards Alaric, but the ancient immortal remained transfixed, his eyes locked onto some indistinct point in the distance. Julien followed his mentor’s gaze, and there, finally, lay something. At first, it appeared to be little more than a crumpled shape, a dim and prone silhouette partially obscured. But as Julien focused his vision, more details began etching themselves from the murk.The formless shape resolved into a dishevelled form, or rather, what derelict fragments still remained of one. Tattered remnants of fabric draped loosely across the bones and hollow ribcage openings.Despite the advanced state of decay—a peculiarity of immortal death, where centuries of suspended time race to catch up in mere hours—two distinctive markings remained to confirm the figure’s identity. Around one spindly wrist, a delicate filigree clasp lay remarkably intact. And surrounding the body in a broken, sheltering embrace were the shards of what seemed to be wings or a corona, now just brittle bone shards fanning out from the body.Julien broke the silence, his voice steady. “This was an immortal. Is that Varennes’ Sun Keeper?”Alaric gave a slow nod without looking away from the corpse as if seeing beyond it to a distant time. “Soon, I think, you will have the chance to pen some new myths and legends yourself.”