Chapter: 01
Perfect 🌑 — the main character is Lucy, and we're doing a dark fantasy with a hopeful-emerging-from-despair tone.
Here's your opening:
Light Out into Darkness
Chapter 1 – The Last Flame
The world had forgotten what daylight looked like.
They said the sun died fifty years ago, swallowed by the veil that tore open the sky. No one truly knew why — only that the stars fell silent afterward, and the world became a kingdom of ash and shadow.
Lucy had never seen the sun. But she dreamed of it.
She dreamed of gold pouring through leaves, of warmth that didn't burn, of a sky that wasn't made of stone. Every morning she woke before the bells, clutching her chest where the light used to live — a faint warmth that hadn't yet gone out.
The bells tolled now, faint and hollow through the mist. That meant another lightkeeper had fallen.
Lucy rose from her cot, the cold biting through her sleeves. The settlement of Blackmere slept under a blanket of cinders — roofs sagging, torches flickering, shadows crawling where they shouldn't. People moved like ghosts here, surviving on borrowed fire.
Her mentor's voice echoed in her mind:
"As long as one flame remains, the dark can't truly win."
That had been the creed of the lightkeepers. But there were so few of them left now.
Lucy pulled her hood tighter and stepped into the wind. The tower at the edge of town rose like a jagged tooth against the endless black sky. At its peak burned the last beacon — a fragile sphere of white fire. Her duty was simple: keep it alive.
But lately, the fire had been whispering.
She climbed the spiral stairs, boots scraping stone slick with frost. As she reached the top, she stopped short. The flame was smaller tonight, its glow trembling like a dying heartbeat. The protective runes carved around it had faded to dull gray.
"No, no, not yet…" she whispered, placing her hand on the glass casing. The flame pulsed once, weakly, as if hearing her.
Then she heard it — a voice, faint and wrong, slipping through the air like smoke.
"It's over, little light."
Lucy froze. The shadows behind her thickened, curdling into something alive. Two eyes blinked open in the dark — silver and cold.
A figure stepped forward. Cloaked in mist, skin pale as moonlight, lips curved in something that might've been a smile.
"You're the last one," it said softly. "The last keeper. Do you even know what you're keeping alive?"
Her pulse hammered. "Hope," she said, though her voice shook.
The creature tilted its head. "Hope doesn't burn forever."
And with that, it reached out a hand — a motion slow and graceful — toward the flame.
Lucy moved before she could think. Her dagger flashed, cutting through the air. The creature hissed, recoiling into the mist, but not before its touch brushed the glass. The flame flared once — and went out.
Silence.
The beacon that had guarded Blackmere for decades was gone.
The night sighed in triumph, and far below, the torches of the town flickered and died one by one. Lucy fell to her knees, tears freezing on her cheeks. For the first time, there was no light left in the world.
And yet… beneath her palm, something stirred.
A faint warmth, deep inside the ashes of the extinguished flame. A spark. Small, but stubborn.
Lucy closed her fingers around it, her heart beating faster.
"Not yet," she whispered. "You're not done yet."
When she stood, the spark glowed brighter — slipping from her hand and weaving into her skin. For the first time, light bloomed within her instead of around her.
Below, the shadows began to move, drawn to the new glow. The creature's voice drifted through the dark again, curious now, almost reverent.
"A light that walks," it murmured. "This hasn't happened in centuries."
Lucy turned toward the voice, her pulse steadying. The last flame had gone out — but the light had chosen her.
And the darkness would soon learn to fear her name