"Where the Sun Forgets to Shine"
They say there's a place where even the wind dares not whisper.
A village, shrouded in silver mist and eternal twilight, nestled deep within a forest that grew so thick the sky forgot how to touch the ground. No birds sang there. No flowers bloomed. Time itself moved like molasses, heavy and slow, as though the air mourned a memory it could not recall.
No one remembered how the curse began—only that it was.
The villagers lived like shadows of themselves, voices dulled, eyes dimmed. They moved in silence, spoke in murmurs, and dreamed no more. Babies were born without laughter, elders passed without tears. The world had forgotten them, and in return, they forgot the world.
Except for her.
The blind maiden.
She had been born long after the sun disappeared, her first cry breaking through the hush like a bell chime through fog. Her eyes, pale and clouded, had never seen the world. But some whispered she could see far more than the rest of them. Some said she walked with ghosts. Others said she was one.
Her name was Lyra.
She wandered the village barefoot, her silver-white hair tumbling down her back like moonlight in water, her hands brushing the air as if feeling something no one else could. They feared her, adored her, pitied her—but most of all, they needed her. For in her presence, the silence felt less heavy, the mist less thick, the darkness... less cruel.
And every night, in the house of cracked stone by the dead oak, she would whisper to herself a story only she knew:
"One day, he will come.
A prince with stars in his eyes.
He will ride through the storm and shatter the dark.
And I will see him... even without eyes."
Far beyond the cursed trees, where the sun still painted gold on fields and skies, a prince tossed in his sleep—haunted by dreams of a village that had no name, of a girl who knew his soul.
The wind stirred.
The prophecy had begun.