People are afraid of the dark because they can’t see anything in it. But for Velyn, the scariest thing isn’t the shadow – it’s the fact that there’s no one around to share the light.

The house on the edge of Elera village is now just a pile of smoldering wood, its walls tilted, ash covering every memory. In the remaining corner, Velyn sits there – silently, holding a piece of charcoal, drawing invisible shadows on the wall. Her father, her mother, her younger brother, and even the old lady who lives in the corner of the village who pushes sticky rice cakes into her hand every morning. The shadows have no faces, no voices, just dark human figures, but for Velyn, that’s the only way they can survive – in their memories, and in the smudged charcoal light on the wall.

People say that night, darkness swallowed the whole village. Not the wind, not monsters. It was something that couldn’t be named – Shadow Spirits born of resentment. When a person dies in despair, their soul crumbles, turning into eyeless, voiceless shadows that wander between what was once home. They cannot be killed. Not by fire, not by steel. They whisper in the ears of the living, spreading madness and oblivion. They are hungry, but they do not eat flesh – they want others to suffer as they have suffered.

Velyn did not die that night. No – they did not kill her. When the Shadows rushed in like a black storm, they did not tear her apart as they had done to everyone else. They paused, then melted into her – like smoke breathing into the heart. From that moment on, Velyn carried within her what no one should carry – souls that cannot rest. And strangely, they did not scream within her. They whispered, as light as the wind, as if… if only one person would listen, they would sleep. She was called the Shadow Bearer. Not a destroyer, nor a saint. She had no weapons, no spells. She carried only a long strip of bandage, covered with symbols, wrapped around her arm, on which was the dried blood of those she had missed. Every time she walked, the Shadows quietly melted into her, as if being welcomed back.

The old guard who had first met her in an alley of ashes had asked, his face quite fearful: “You… aren’t you afraid of the dark?” Velyn turned back, her voice so low that you had to listen to hear it clearly: “I am afraid… But if I don’t walk, who will lead them away from it?”

Some nights, Velyn dreamed of the people she had met – the Shadows that had slept inside her – sitting around a fire, no longer shadows but people. They laughed. They talked. They recounted the little things they had not lived. Those dreams kept her alive, kept her heart from freezing completely. And so she continued walking, even though the fire in her grew weaker each day.

It is rumored that if the Shadow Bearer falls, all the souls she has carried will rise up, turning into a black storm that will tear the world apart. But some people believe that if, in the end, the light within her is not extinguished, she will become the last light of humanity - a light lit by memories, and love for those who have disappeared...

P/S:
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