He sat beneath the dead willow, where moonlight filtered through twisted branches like ghostly fingers.
The earth was cold, even in summer. Silent. Still.
He came here every night.
Not for peace.
But for memory.
The first time he saw her, the moon was full.She stood at the edge of the lake, barefoot and unafraid, her pale hair floating in the breeze. The way she looked at him—it was as though she'd been waiting.
"You're not from here," she had said, her voice delicate as wind over water.
He remembered blinking, startled. "No," he answered honestly.
She smiled. "Good. That means you won't run away so easily."
They spoke until the stars began to fade. Her name was Samantha. She had laughter like a secret and eyes that seemed too wide for someone who had seen so little of the world.
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Samantha (Character Art)
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They met again. And again. Always by moonlight.
He never asked why, not at first.
But questions bloom in silence. One night, he found her standing still beneath the moon, arms bare and skin luminous like snow.
"That light," she said, nodding up at the moon. "It doesn't hurt. Only the sun does."
He looked at her then, more carefully. The paleness of her skin. The softness of her voice. How she never once mentioned day.
"I was a child when it began," she whispered. "After the fever. The sunlight started to… burn. It blistered. It scarred. They thought I was cursed."
She tried to laugh. She failed.
"Now I just hide. From everything. Except you."
He took her hand. It was cold, like river stone.
"I'm not afraid of you," he told her.
But she pulled her hand back.
"You should be."
Summer came, but not for her. Her strength waned. Her laughter disappeared. Some nights, she couldn't even walk to the lake.
He stayed with her in the darkness, night after night, helpless.
Then… came that morning.
She had fallen asleep on the floor, near the window. The curtain barely open. Just enough.
A beam of sunlight found her.
It touched her ankle. Then her arm. Then her face.
And she began to burn.
Silently.
No screams. No cries. Only the sound of skin blistering in the quiet.
He burst through the door too late. The air smelled of char and sorrow.
"Samantha...!"
She was barely breathing. Her lips cracked as they moved.
"Go," she rasped. "Don't let it take you."
"I'm not leaving you."
"You must."
"I won't."
Tears blurred his vision.
"You don't understand," she said. "It spreads. I feel it inside me. The light twisted something. It wants to pass on. I won't let it."
He clutched her hand as it trembled.
"I'd rather die," she whispered, "than be the reason you suffer."
Then silence.
He called her name. Once. Twice.
She never answered again.
The man who buried her dug the grave with bare hands. The soil bled into his nails. Into his soul.
He stayed beside that grave. For days. Then weeks. Then years.
His name was once Zayran. A name now lost in grief, buried as deeply as her bones beneath the willow.
He became something else.
A keeper of shadows. A guardian of her memory.And when others came years later, strangers with dark, cold and fire and questions.
He did not greet them as a man.
He met them as the darkness he'd become.
Because no one would disturb her rest.
Not again.