The Last Dusk riders

Prologue: The Fractured Moon

They say the moon shattered the day we lied to the sun.

A thousand years ago, the Sun smiths of Ahriyat forged a pact: Burn bright, and we will feed you stories of joy. But joy grew scarce. Wars salted the earth. Grief thickened the air. The sun, starved and bitter, began to dim. Desperate, the Sun smiths fed it a new tale—a lie about eternal devotion. The sun burned brighter, but its light grew cruel, peeling skin from bones. When the truth surfaced, the sun cracked the moon in retaliation, and the First Shadows crawled from its wounds.

Now twilight lasts longer each cycle. And the Shadows? They’ve learned to speak.

Chapter 1: The Sickle and the Flame

Kiel vi’Nahir found the Shadow in the Sunsmith’s temple, curled in the confession booth like a penitent.

Mercy, it hissed, its voice the scrape of charcoal on stone.

Dusk riders didn’t grant mercy. They harvested. Kael’s glass sickle trembled as she raised it, the blade infused with the last dregs of daylight. The Shadow’s form flickered—a man, a serpent, a child.

Wait— it pleaded.

She swung. The sickle passed through it, scattering the Shadow into smoke. But instead of dissipating, the tendrils coiled around her wrist, searing her skin with frostbite. A memory not her own flooded her mind: A priest in golden robes, feeding a vial of liquid shadow to the temple’s eternal flame.

The flame roared blue.

Kael stumbled back, clutching her wrist. Shadows weren’t supposed to remember

Chapter 2: The Falcon’s Lie

You’re infected, said Veya, her voice muffled through the plague-doctor mask she’d worn since the Coughing Plague. She pressed a magnifying glass to Kael’s shadow-burned skin, where veins now pulsed with ink. “The Shadow imprinted on you. You’re… bonded.

Can you cut it out? Kael gestured to Veya’s dissection table, cluttered with pickled Shadow fragments.

It’s in your blood. But— Veya hesitated, adjusting the clockwork falcon perched on her shoulder. Its eyes were stolen stars, glinting with stolen knowledge. “This memory you saw—the priest corrupting the flame. If true, the High Solar is using shadows to sustain the sun’s lies. And if that’s true…

The fracturing’s deliberate, Kael finished. The temple’s eternal flame was the city’s heartbeat. If it burned on shadow-fuel, the sun’s wrath was no accident—it was a sermon.

The falcon squawked. Veya fed it a moth from her pocket. They’ll kill you if you accuse the clergy.

Kael tightened her sickle’s strap. “Then I’ll need proof.”

Chapter 3: The Whispering Well

Beneath Ahriyat lay the Cistern of Whispers, a tomb for truths too dangerous to breathe. Kael descended, the walls oozing bioluminescent algae that stained her boots turquoise. The Shadows here were thicker, hungrier. They brushed her cheeks, murmuring:

You bleed like we do. Let us show you.

The memory-flame surged. Suddenly, she was the High Solar is, pouring shadow into the temple’s fire. Burn brighter, he chanted. Burn until the lies become truth. Congregants wept, their skin blistering under the artificial dawn.

Kael wrenched free, gasping. The Shadows swarmed, not attacking— pleading.

The sun’s a leech. The priests feed it our suffering. Free us. Free yourselves.

A hand clamped her shoulder. Veya, her falcon screeching. Don’t listen! They’re parasites—

Are they? Kael held up her shadow-veined arm. What if we’re the parasites?

Chapter 4: The Bone Machine

Veya’s workshop reeked of formaldehyde and betrayal. She’d rebuilt the falcon from scraps, its wings parchment inscribed with forbidden equations. The sun smiths didn’t just lie to the sun. They built a machine to *weaponize* the Shadows.

She unrolled a schematic. The drawing matched Kael’s vision—a skeletal engine fed by liquid shadow. It’s beneath the temple. They drain Shadows into it, distilling their essence into ‘holy light.’ But the machine’s failing. That’s why twilight’s lengthening.

Kael’s Shadow-bond pulsed. If we destroy it—

The sun dies. Permanently.

And if we don’t?

Veya’s mask fogged. The Shadows evolve. They’ll consume everything.

Outside, the fractured moon dripped starlight onto the streets. Somewhere, a priest screamed.

Chapter 5: The Dusk Rider's Choice

The machine was uglier up close—a nest of ribs and vertebrae, throbbing with black fluid. The High Solar is stood before it, his golden robes sewn with Shadow-silk.

You think you’re the first Dusk rider to rebel? He laughed, feeding a vial of Shadows into the machine. We’ve always known the truth. The sun needs pain. Without it, the world freezes.

Kael’s sickle felt heavy. Veya’s falcon circled above, its star-eyes dimming. The Shadows writhed in their tanks, pressing handprints against the glass.

Choose, they whispered.

Kael stepped toward the machine. Not to destroy it—to merge. Her Shadow-bond surged, veins blackening as she plunged her hands into the liquid. Agony. Ecstasy. The machine shuddered, its gears grinding as she flooded it with raw, unfiltered truth:

The sun’s hunger. The moon’s grief. The priest’s fear.

The machine exploded.

Epilogue: The First Dawn

Twilight lasted seven years.

The sun, starved of lies, shrank to a cinder. The Shadows retreated, not into oblivion, but into the cracks of the world. Ahriyat’s survivors huddled under bioluminescent gardens, their skin mapped with soft, glowing veins.

Kael is gone. Or perhaps she’s everywhere—the voice in the Shadows and the algae-light warmth.

Veya tends the gardens now, her falcon silent. Some say she whispers to the plants in Kael’s voice. Some say the falcon’s eyes still search the horizon.

And the moon?

If you kneel at the Cistern of Whispers and press your ear to the algae, you’ll hear it: the faint, rhythmic tap - tap -tap of a celestial hammer.

The moon is healing.