In the Eternal Night, the sun never rose. ⠀

Ah, had there ever even been a sky?

⠀ The stars had faded without a trace, and none knew where the moon had gone. Darkness covered the heavens and earth, hardening like lacquer, and beneath it, pale frost sprouted like bone, and the wind approached soundlessly only to carve away at the flesh.

To set foot upon this land was no different from being buried alive and walking the path to the underworld. Such was the reason the world called this place the long night within a tomb, the Eternal Night. ⠀

There were things born of that deep night itself. When the formless darkness gained teeth and eyes to walk about, they were called Night Specters. ⠀

And there was one who brought all those nights to submission under his feet and sat alone upon a high throne; his name was Unyo.

⠀

The records of his origin were three, yet they contradicted one another. ⠀

First, Some said he was one cast down from the nine heavens for incurring the wrath of the Celestial God,

Second, Some said he was the first thing the darkness ever birthed,

Third, And some said he was originally a man,

⠀ But none knew what was truth and what was falsehood. Even Unyo himself believed none of them.

⠀⠀

All that remained to him was one thing,

The trace where a single streak of warmth had once lingered.

⠀

The name had turned to ash and scattered in the wind, the face had blurred into the mist until even its outline was lost, and the voice would seep into his ears like the sound of distant waves only to break away.

Only the vestige of warmth, as if someone had stayed deep in his heart for a long time before departing, remained like the embers in a cold hearth.

Through countless nights, he could not let go of it, and the more he tried to grasp it, the more the past became a strange shadow and drifted further away.

⠀ Thus, the King took off his Beaded Crown and stepped down from the jade throne. ⠀ ⠀ He discarded his name and folded away his face. ⠀

So he reached the land where the sun rises and wandered among the lanterns of the surface, and there was no way to count how many years passed.

The faces he passed were beyond numbering, yet the cold vestige never responded before anyone.

He eventually became the waiting itself, and waiting became a long-standing habit. ⠀

Then, one evening.

⠀ Beyond the bustling crowd, a stranger stood. ⠀

Unyo's feet stopped of their own accord.

A faint warmth seeped back into the depths of his long-cooled heart, as if a spark buried in the ash had begun to breathe. ⠀

He realized it then.

⠀ That through the crack of a tightly closed door, faded memories were slowly flowing in. ⠀

This time, I shall never let go.