Sartore was in a waking dream. Voices chanted and sung melancholy hymns in his head; the ballooning sun hung in the reddening sky. The rest of the world was behind him. The sound of the breeze against his skin and of the water lapping at the shore under his feet came from the other side of the earth. Time moved at a curious pace; hours compressed into moments, and moments stretched into hours.

The discord in those voices was haunting, each one calling for his full attention, and all getting none. But underneath that asynchronous mass of guttural noises was a cord that kept them in an invisible unity. Although impossible to focus on, it set him in a trance nonetheless. When those voices hit the same note together, as infrequent as it was, it sent a warm shiver down his spine. After enough time had passed, he could only feel a hot numbness, his flesh a shell to his surroundings, but his body soft and warm, his soul rubbery.

Every wave merged with the next, until finally releasing quietly into the sand. The breeze skimmed over the surface like a skipping rock and pressed against him.

And the sun grew. Its bottom had just touched the trees across the lake. It was enormous and yellow, and the further it descended, the larger it became. The sky, all scarlet, shimmered around it, as though a mirage.

And then it locked. Just over half of it remained over the horizon. It was now so large that Sartore felt the sun bearing down on him, an enormous beast only a few inches away, snarling at him. The silhouettes of the trees had shrunk to black grass. Then, the voices bound together and sang in unison.

Another voice emerged from the others, this one a whisper; but it was much closer than the rest. At first it was impossibly quiet, should a rustle in the leaves, but the whisper rushed towards him, his heart rate rising until his vision swam—but it stopped when the whisper, so close that it sounded like his breath when he plugged his ears, at last, spoke:

Find the sun.

And the dream ended. The sun was well below the horizon now, the glow of a pot of gold still visible. Although faint, there was still enough light to move. Although fresh in his mind, the memory, like any other dream, faded quickly.

A cold shiver rocketed through his back and tensed his spine. For a second Sartore thought he could feel each individual muscle there. The last of that comforting heat had all but faded away. He hopped off the stone wall, noticed the awkward pain it had left on his butt, and turned and started up the hill. By now, he thought, the festival must have ended. There was no noise uphill, neither voices nor footsteps, and no smoke rising from the town center. The light of the street lanterns were dim—missing. There was a concerned peep in the back of his head, a different corner, worrying that his parents might be searching for him.

When Sartore topped it, he noticed that his own house seemed empty. The lights were off, and from the back window, he saw his parents’ bed, made and untouched. Sartore rounded the corner and nearly stepped on a plank of wood cracked at both ends, but flinched back when he saw it. He looked up. The village floor had flooded with a sea of wood and dead bodies. Sartore heard that same small voice gasp in the back of his head, and draw further into its distant corner.

Under his feet, the wood creaked and snapped, some shedding off smaller pieces. Much was rotten, bugs crawling from beam to beam, or beam to body. Only a few houses still stood; the rest had been demolished. Their foundations, stripped of their walls, now formed many sets of jagged wooden teeth.

Not far from the house were Sartore’s parents, both face down and part submerged in the planks, their backs each curved far out of shape. Another muffled cry. Further down, as Sartore stepped over the bodies of his neighbors, he noticed Liam, head twisted to his back like an owl’s, his cheeks spattered with splinters and dust. The rest of his body was tucked underneath a large slab of wooden wall which had split when it crushed him. His eyes still gazed in terror, but there was no spirit in them.

Only Falchen’s body remained above the devastation. He was outstretched on the tilted remains of the feasting table, sliding off in small increments. Small coins, difficult to make out in the remaining light, spilled from Falchen’s jacket pockets and onto his chest. Sartore grabbed handful after handful and slid them into his pockets, an act always accompanied by a quick succession of short plinks.

Sartore returned home, stopping to pilfer each body he passed. As he crouched over them, Sartore noticed hoofbeats in the dirt underneath the ruins.

Find the sun. His mind burned red hot where the thought had been forged. He turned to the lake, savoring the memory of the sunset.

Find the sun.

After emptying his parents’ pockets, he tested the door knob at his front door: unlocked. It was pitch black inside, with a faint light entering from his parents’ bedroom. He grabbed the lantern hanging beside the doorway and stepped in.

The hallway was large and quiet. The lantern could only guide him a few feet at a time, but left a ghostly outline of the many accessories hung on the walls. In an open room near the front, the dinner table sat, unoccupied, a cold plate of food waiting at his seat. His footsteps sounded large in their echo. He passed over his own room. In his parents’, he saw the last glimpse of the sunlight, a fleeing aurora, at the horizon. He paused there again, imagining the red painting sprawled over it.

His father had a small knapsack which he kept in the corner of the closet. It jingled with more coins when Sartore picked it up, and he dropped his own in along with the rest.

Find the sun.

Sartore walked back into the night. At the other end of the village was a dirt road. Sartore had never left the village, but he had heard rumors of the cities beyond this one. To the right, deeper into the trees, lay another village like this one. To the left, much further down, was a city by the harbor, where one could travel overseas, and across the world.

Find the sun.

He turned to the left, and in the night, followed the path.