Utter chaos descended upon the Citadel.

Up in the beacon tower, guards from all around the Citadel stormed up to its highest floors where Zealous was extinguishing the great brazier. The mirrors that focused the beacon's light were smashed, the floor littered with pieces of broken glass. One man met the full force of the Citadel as guards tried to enter the relatively small room. Righteous quickly forced his way to the front to confront Zealous directly.

From the base of the tower, Yunkef could hear no words of their heated exchange, but he saw, with growing horror, how the confrontation ended.

Zealous, with a great roar, tipped over the brazier of the great beacon with his bare hands. Blazing hot coal and still burning lamp oil splashed onto Righteous himself, catching quickly onto the Citadel leader's robes and spreading its flames. Soon the oil made its way down the beacon tower's spiral staircase, the fire leaping eagerly from soldier to soldier. Lanterns were thrown about in a panic as the soldiers screamed and screamed.

The tower burst into flames as the tapestries emblazoned with the circle-with-rays motif caught fire. The thrown lanterns burst and spilled their own burning oil. Immolated soldiers jumped out of high windows in a desperate bid to escape the flames, and crashed into nearby buildings. One of these soldiers crashed through the roof of the Church of the Eternal Flame, and upended the altar brazier with the impact of his fall. The fire spread there.

The fire spread everywhere.

Before Yunkef's eyes, the Citadel fell to the flames. The city burned brighter than ever before, with flickering flames that reached and raced up into the residential caves carved all along the side of the cliff wall. People scrambled over each other to escape, but in their panicked rush, they found only the solid stone walls that surrounded the Citadel. The very walls that protected them now held them trapped as their doom approached. An older man, retired from the wall watch, rushed to the gates and pushed with all his might to open them. The crowd, seeing the great gate inch slowly open, charged towards it and the old man. Yunkef could hardly call out for the man to watch out, to get out of the way when the crowd swallowed him and he disappeared under their stampeding feet. The gate opened inwards and was only opened slightly before the crowd came rushing towards it. In their panic and haste, a bottleneck formed at the gate. As more and more people rushed towards it, more and more people were trampled to the ground, and those behind them began to climb over the bodies.

Yunkef felt the uneasy knot in his gut and had to turn away from the sight. As he turned away, a strange sight caught his eye.

By the side of the burning Church of Eternal Flame was now a patch of shadow that had not been there before. The fire and rampant destruction had cleared away some lanterns and left a patch of shadow, made all the more dark and deep by the intensity of the light. Standing in the shadow was a hooded figure holding a lantern with green glass.

"Night!" Yunkef cried, rushing towards the guide.

The hooded figure held out a gnarled hand, offering it to Yunkef. "Hurry boy, before chaos takes the Citadel."

Yunkef didn't think twice. The second his hand touched Night's, he found himself surrounded by the darkness. It was all-encompassing, and yet he could see. The outline of the guide, illuminated by the green glow of the lantern, was clear to him as if he was seeing it under the lights of the Citadel's beacon.

"Where did you take me?" Yunkef asked.

"Look around. I know you can see now." Night answered.

Yunkef blinked a few times and looked all around him. In the distance was something burning in the distance with such a fierce light that it hurt just looking at it. "Is that the Citadel?"

"Yes. It is burning to the ground. Can you see the beasts?"

"They're..." Yunkef trailed off, struggling to see fine details from the distance. Then suddenly, he recognized the skittering, shifting black figures that were climbing the high stone walls. "They're scaling the walls! The Citadel will be overrun!"

"Yes. They tried to open the gates, as you saw, and more were killed in the crush than were able to escape. Those that did make it past the gate ran headfirst into the beasts." Night's sigh sounded filled with disappointment. "For all their walls, they have made themselves a cage."

Yunkef stared in wide-eyed horror as the beasts began to climb over the lip of the wall and disappear down the other side. The beacon tower itself began to list to its side before falling completely with a crash that echoed out through the darkness. Embers and sparks were thrown up into the air from the impact, coloring the air above the Citadel in bloody reds.

"Is there anything we can do to help them?" Yunkef's voice was barely a whisper.

He saw Night shake their head. "No. It was inevitable that the Citadel would fall." The guide fell silent for a while as they watched the Citadel burn. "You've met Zealous, have you not?"

"The scarred warrior..." Yunkef shuddered. "I met him, and he was mad! He tried to force me to help him destroy the Citadel. I..." he trailed off, falling silent as he replayed the last few minutes of peace in the Citadel in his mind.

"It was not your fault." Night said patiently as if reading his mind. "You hardly did anything. All of Zealous's bluster was of his own doing. All he did was heal your hands."

"My hands were his doing? I thought it was because of Pious's healing!"

"You suspected that it was not." The hooded face turned towards Yunkef, and with his enhanced vision he saw the faint suggestion of a tired, drawn face obscured by the hood. "It was the power of our lady of the darkness. Lady Black, some call her. You are darkness-touched, as was Zealous, and he used that to his advantage."

"If I am darkness-touched, then I'm the same as Zealous? Will I go mad too?"

Night pondered the question for a moment. The guide turned back to watch the Citadel be consumed in flames. "I don't believe you will, Yunkef. You are darkness-touched by our lady, but your will is not consumed like most have been. This is good."

"It is?" Yunkef said instinctively. "I mean, of course, it is, but what do you mean?"

“There are cases. Rare, but a few cases, of people touched by the darkness. They were enamored by the whispers of our lady and the essence of the darkness had entered them.” Night trailed off, remembering. “They heard the lady’s whispers in their dreams, they gained the sight in the darkness as you have, and some even gained the ability to speak to the beasts. Usually, those touched by her become her playthings, her little minions within the darkness spreading chaos throughout the world. Yet these few did not lose their senses as Zealous has.” The hooded figure gestured towards the burning Citadel with their lantern. Another crash sounded through the darkness as more of the structures within the stone walls crumbled and fell to the fire. The screams that rose up from the Citadel began to fade as fewer people were alive to do so. “There was no saving Zealous from the taint of the darkness. You remember how he came to be so afflicted, yes?”

Yunkef nodded. “He left the wall to save some people like me that were fleeing the beasts and running towards the Citadel for help.”

Night nodded. “He was clawed by a beast, and though he slew it successfully, the beast’s black blood seeped into his would and mixed into his blood, staining his mind. He was lucky to have made it out of the encounter with his life, but not unscathed. And never the same.”

“He said that he could hear the lady in his dreams.”

“Could you?” Night asked.

Yunkef shook his head. “I haven’t had any dreams. I don’t know, maybe I just haven’t been sleeping well at the Citadel?”

Night said nothing for a while. Yunkef sat heavily on a rock between them, watching the embers rising from the burning Citadel. The light from the raging flames had started to fade into flickers that fell across the jagged landscape. After a short moment, Yunkef looked up at the guide.

“You mentioned that there were other darkness-touched that didn’t go mad, right? What happened to them?”

Night slowly turned back to Yunkef. They spoke slowly, the emerald lantern’s light growing in intensity ever so slightly. “A few of them still live, actually. Each of the tainted is different in their own way.” Yunkef saw the guide’s thin hands, illuminated in the green light, and the small, worm-like beast that skittered across the pale skin on a million little legs. It opened its mouth and revealed a circular mass of jagged teeth, row upon row that began to move independently of each other. The worm beast pressed its mouth against Night’s wrist and started to chew and burrow.

“Night?” The concern was plain in Yunkef’s voice, and his horrified gaze stared at Night’s hand.

The guide ignored it. “All those tainted by the darkness are different; have different uses to our lady, and different skills bestowed upon them by the darkness. A nest to her beasts if what she wanted, and a nest I shall be.”

"If you've become a nest for beasts, then..." Yunkef trailed off, eyes wide as he recoiled in such visceral horror that he fell off the rock he was sitting on.

Night regarded him with a sense of wary fatigue. The guide's shoulders slumped and the green lantern dipped. "No, Yunkef, you will not become a nest. I imagine our lady has different plans for all the darkness-touched. Although, as you have your senses about you, there may be a chance I could help you evade a fate like Zealous's."

"You can do that? You can remove the darkness? The taint?" The boy scrambled to his feet.

"I will be honest, I am not sure. Yet I've never tried before, so who knows." Night tilted their head, studying Yunkef quizzically. "There are many questions that have yet to have answers about this world. There are places even I cannot go within the darkness. But you and the other darkness-touched might be able to get around our lady and learn what she prevents us from seeing."

Yunkef stared back at Night with wide eyes and a clueless expression.

The guide laughed lightly, and the hood moved with the soft wind of their breath. "I suppose you will learn in time. Come, I will take you to another like you."

"Like me, but not like Zealous?"

"Not like Zealous in the least."

Night held out a thin hand to Yunkef, and after a quick check that there were no beast-maggots on the pale skin, Yunkef took it.

The darkness closed in on the two of them suddenly, and the glowing embers that rose from the burning Citadel disappeared. Yunkef could see nothing even with his enhanced vision. The terror began to rise in his heart again, but Night kept hold of his hand and squeezed it gently.

Within a few, tense seconds, Yunkef could see again. The Citadel was nowhere in sight, and he was now standing just before the small gate of a modest homestead. A cabin constructed from beast bones scraped clean of their meat and piles of roughly cut stone stood at the edge of a small field brimming with glowing mushrooms.

"What? Where are we?" Yunkef asked, looking around in a confused panic. "Where's the Citadel? What happened?"

Night chuckled as they stepped forward and opened the gate. "One boon the Lady Black gave me was the ability to move through the darkness at will, even across great distances. Didn't the people at the Citadel tell you where Settlement 41 is in relation to their fortress?"

"You were how I was able to get that far?" The boy's voice was filled with wonder. "So you really did save me."

"Of course."

Crossing the short distance from the gate to the cabin, Night knocked on the cabin's wall just beside the hanging sheet of tanned beast-hide that served as the door.

"Who's there?" A voice said urgently from within the cabin.

"Red and Cross. It is I, Night."

At once, two people with the same pale, straw-colored hair peeked cautiously out from the cabin. One was male and held a spear with a large beast's tooth fixed to the end. The other was female and kept her hands behind her and out of sight. They were young, around Yunkef's own age.

"Night!" said the girl, dropping a large rock that she had hidden behind her back with a thud. She was the first one out of the cabin and surprised Yunkef by hugging the guide. "It's been a long time since you came to visit!"

The boy came out soon after, still holding the spear and now glaring at Yunkef. Now that they were out of the cabin, Yunkef saw they looked alike. Twins.

"Red and Cross," Night said, and Yunkef could have sworn there was a hint of a smile in the guide's voice. "It is good to see you again. Have you had any trouble with your home since I saw you last?"

"Not a bit!" Red beamed. She was bubbly and excitable and had her long hair tied back with a cord. "We haven't had any problems with beasts since you helped up set up our farm."

"We see packs of beasts roaming past here sometimes, but they don't give us a second look. Just walk right by us." Cross's face was hard, and he kept Yunkef within sight. He had Red's angled face and high cheekbones, but his demeanor and short-cropped hair made him look much older. "Was that your doing?"

"The beasts, perhaps I had a hand in it." Night replied. "I can call in a few favors from our lady's children after all. I'm glad nothing untoward has happened to you both. It still feels too exposed here for my liking."

"Don't worry about it! We have the glowbirds and mushrooms, but no lights otherwise." Red went around Night to make sure the fence gate was shut and locked. It wasn't much, but any security they could scrounge up put Night's heart at ease. "If any hunters or expeditions come this way, they won't be able to see anything. Wild mushroom patches at most. So..." she trailed off and sidled up beside Yunkef. "Who's your guest?"

Yunkef balked, embarrassed and surprised. He quickly stepped closer to Night, who chuckled.

"This is Yunkef. Darkness-touched."

"Oh like us! Welcome!" Red smiled and held her hand out. Yunkef only stared at it.

Cross scoffed his arms. "What are you afraid of? It's a welcome gesture."

"Is it?" Yunkef, his brows knitted in confusion, took Red's hand after she gestured several times for him to take it. She gripped his hand and shook it. "Oh, thank you?"

"Yunkef is a survivor of a hunt gone wrong from Settlement 41." Night explained patiently. "Let us sit inside the hut, I need to speak with all of you and it may take some time."

Red and Cross's cabin was well furnished for being a rather rough building. They had a bunk bed, several shelves that held their essentials for cooking and farming, a chest with changes of clothes, and an area for bathing. Red excitedly sat the guests at a table and chair set fashioned from carved rocks. She went off to the kitchen area to fetch some drinks.

"This furniture is new." Night said as they sat down, setting the green glass lantern on the floor. "I don’t recall it from the last time I was here."

"Cross carved it!" Red said as she set cups of clean water on the table.

"You did?"

"Yeah. Spent too many waking cycles on them, but they turned out pretty good." Cross said matter-of-factly, but Yunkef could see how he was trying not to smile.

"The craftsmanship is very good. And I'm glad you both have managed to improve the place further."

"Well when you let us have the run of it, what did you think would happen?" Red laughed. "We can take care of ourselves, Night! I keep telling you that!"

Night laughed lightly, and it was the first time Yunkef had seen the guide so relaxed. "Yes, I'm sorry. I suppose I cannot help but worry after what had happened?"

"What happened?" Yunkef asked. The second he did, the room went silent. The twins stared right into him, and the tension was palpable.

"It's alright." Night said softly. "If you don't mind, I will explain. I still have much to teach him anyway."

Cross nodded dismissively, drinking from his cup.

The guide took a breath and began. "Red and Cross were originally from a Settlement like yours, Yunkef. Settlement 451, I recall. They were much younger back then, when a hunt went awry. The hunters came home mangled by beasts yet alive, though they became mad like Zealous was. They ransacked the Settlement and flung open the gates, letting beasts charge in and decimate the settlers. I found Red and Cross in the wreckage soon after the beasts had left, and I took them here."

Yunkef looked at the three of them in amazement. "You saved their lives and raised them!"

"No, I did not raise them." The guide shook their head. "I cannot raise any young due to my role given to me by our lady. To be the guide in the darkness. All I did was give them the tools and things they needed to survive and they figured out the rest."

"And we did great!" Red said with a smug smile. "Figured out how to farm and raise the glowbirds all by ourselves!"

"Yes you did, and I am proud of you." Night couldn’t keep the pride from their voice. "You've raised each other and managed to live in the darkness far better than I could have hoped for. Now, I suppose it is my turn to ask you for help."

"What do you want?" Cross kept his speech short. He glanced at Yunkef. "We're not taking him in. We have enough work here just keeping ourselves alive."

Yunkef made a noise at the insult. "Excuse me?"

"No, no, I won't ask that of you." Night held up a hand in a calming gesture. "In fact, I need you both to come with me. We need one more darkness-touched for a task only you can perform."

"What is it?"

"I will explain it all in due time. Please, back what you need, it will be a short journey for me, but then I don't need to eat."

"Aw Night, don't do that! Don't leave me in suspense!" Red said, but she was already on her feet and digging through her's and Cross's chest. She took out a change of clothes and a backpack for herself. "If you're not going to explain it, then let's get going! The sooner we do, the sooner you'll tell us what this is all about, right?"

The guide laughed. "I never could hide much from you, Red. Yes, I have one more person in mind to visit, and then I will explain it all there."

"Hmph. You better." Cross muttered as he got up from the table. As he went to go through his belongings to pack for the journey, Yunkef saw a set of three large scars that ran across the boy's neck that stretched towards his back. They were raised and deep, but seemed healed a long time ago.