The city was not built for dusk.
It had been designed for schedules: trains that shrieked at precise minutes, offices that brightened at nine and dimmed at six, shops whose shutters rolled down with the finality of a guillotine. But when the light began to linger—no, not linger, but stall—people noticed. It was quarter past three forever. The sun, stubborn as a spoiled child, refused to inch lower. Shadows lengthened and then stopped halfway, stretched like tired arms. The air turned the color of old bruises.
The Seeker sat at a bus stop he would never board from, clutching a paper bag of greasy noodles he didn't want, watching the sky hesitate. His scar was already prickling—faint warmth beneath his shirt like someone holding a lit match too close to the skin.
A girl across the street took a photograph. Then another. Phones rose like small glowing totems. And the city, which always pretended to be calm, began to murmur with the nervous edge of people realizing they might be trapped inside a story.
The Seeker muttered, "This is her."
No one heard him. They were too busy trying to force sense into the stalling heavens.
When Amaterasu withdrew her light in old tales, it was grief or insult that drew her into the cave. This was neither grief nor insult. This was examination.
A shaft of pale brilliance quivered above the skyscrapers. It was not sunlight, not exactly—it was the idea of sunlight remembered, the faint afterimage behind closed eyelids. And somewhere, behind that frozen glare, a gaze weighed him like a pinned insect.
The Seeker knew it was for him. He had been marked too long, carried the scar too visibly to believe in coincidence.
A man beside him said, half in jest, half in terror: "Guess the gods are back, huh?"Nobody laughed.
The city responded as cities do: halting, then trying to pretend nothing was wrong. Office workers stood outside towers, squinting upward. A hawker cursed as his gas flame sputtered strangely blue. The traffic lights clicked through their colors in mechanical obedience, though the dusk refused to move with them.
A bus arrived, doors sighing open. Its driver stared straight ahead, unwilling to acknowledge the light's refusal to change. A handful of passengers climbed on, because habit was stronger than apocalypse.
The Seeker stayed where he was. He could feel her watching.
And then the scar flared.
It began as warmth. Then it was heat. Then it was fire. He hissed through his teeth and pressed his palm against his chest. The noodles spilled from their bag onto the pavement, an oil-dark mess of cabbage and glassy noodles, instantly trampled.
No one looked at him. That was the trick of it. The gods always knew how to veil what mattered. To others, he must have been invisible, a man clutching at some indigestion. But to her—the sun goddess above, half-hidden, withholding—he was radiant as a bonfire.
He staggered to his feet, half-blind with the glow. And in that dazzle, he thought he saw movement. Not human. A shimmer in the corner of the eye, as if reflections had slipped free from glass and were walking the streets uninvited.
The Whisperer's voice brushed his ear, not from a mouth but from the air that carried exhaust and incense alike:"You see it, don't you? She's curious. And curiosity in a god is just cruelty in disguise."
The Seeker spun, snarling. "Leave me."
The reflection-laughter rang back at him. "She won't. And neither will I."
Above, the sky pulsed once, twice.
Every electric sign in the street guttered. Neon kanji and cartoon mascots blinked out. A sudden, unnatural dusk flooded everything. People shouted as though the world had been robbed. A child began to cry. Someone dropped a prayer in Mandarin, someone else in Tagalog.
And then silence. Not absence of sound, but the muffled, cotton-stuffed quiet of ritual.
She was here.
The Seeker lifted his head and saw her shadow across the buildings: not a woman, not even a shape that could be contained. She was light withdrawn, she was radiance caged, she was the echo of the sun refusing to rise or fall. Windows caught her outline the way still water catches the moon.
And in that moment he realized: she wasn't just observing. She was testing.
The scar burned so brightly he could see it without a mirror—its light cast faintly onto his palm as he pressed his hand there, glyphs writhing, no single culture owning them. Norse one heartbeat, Egyptian the next, Aztec after that, shifting faster than thought.
A gasp rippled through the street. For the first time, others saw it too.
The crowd recoiled, muttering. "Prophet," someone whispered. "Omen." "Curse." Phones rose again, capturing the glow.
The Seeker shook his head violently, but the light did not dim. It spread, casting his shadow long against the pavement, taller than any building.
The Whisperer murmured again, sly amusement curling every word:"Congratulations. You're finally famous."
Above, the light flickered. Not anger, not joy. Curiosity.
And then the sky broke.
The frozen dusk collapsed into true night, though no stars shone. Lamps failed. The crowd screamed. And in that terrible vacuum of light, one voice rang out—a voice he knew.
Father Marius.
From the far end of the street, robed in black, arms outstretched as if welcoming a stage, Marius shouted:
"Behold the Chosen! The mark of heaven burns in him! Follow, and you will not be lost in this darkness!"
The crowd surged toward the Seeker, half in awe, half in terror, as the goddess's gaze pinned him more tightly than ever.
The Seeker wanted to run. But the scar held him fast. The scar wanted to be seen.
And somewhere, high above in the frozen, starless sky, Amaterasu leaned closer.