They called him Solius the Bright.
Though, at the time, he was neither bright nor brave—just a boy with too many burns on his hands and a name that wasn't his own.
He remembered the smoke first. Always the smoke. Thick, bitter, and clinging to his skin like a second layer. It had the scent of burning wheat and scorched leather, of homes and people and memories turned to ash. He heard the dull pop of collapsing beams, the crackle of fire chewing through thatch. Somewhere, a baby had cried, and then stopped. The heat had been blinding, but it was the silence afterward that had truly terrified him. In that moment, Solius hadn't known if he'd been the only one left alive—or if he was already dead too. Crawling up from the broken village roofs, curling like claws against the pale morning sky. That was the day the demons came. The day his sister vanished. The day Solius stopped being a child.
He was ten.
