“Jimin, do you believe in true love?”

Jimin watched streaming coloured papers blending and folding around one another, no hand to guide them, making patterns in the air. Most nobles who bothered to put their magical powers to art were younger children, outshined by their heir siblings, but not Tzuyu. She simply had a talent for it – a love of it.

“No,” Jimin answered her question without thinking too hard about it.

Tzuyu’s eyes flickered down for a second, the artwork before her not faltering even slightly. She had good control over her power.

“I do,” she said. “I certainly do.”

Jimin knew it was an uncomfortable topic, especially when it came to Tzuyu. She’d grown up to become the most gorgeous woman from the Moon Enclave, someone who drew stares from everyone around them with her effortless grace, her way of holding herself like a doll or a painting. People were always enticed, and always cruelly shut down when they learned that she was betrothed since childhood, thanks to the will of her father.

To the bearer of the Moon’s Essence, no less. Jimin kept watching the patterns she formed, letting his eyes lose their focal point to fully take in the abstract beauty of her creation.

“You realise you’ll never find it with me, don’t you?”

Tzuyu laughed at that, the movements of her streamers slowing slightly. “I know. I hope you realise I’ll be starting an affair the moment I find him.”

Jimin laughed in return, pretending that didn’t irritate him. He didn’t exactly have feelings for Tzuyu – it was hard to, when some deep-seated part of him resisted the rules and boundaries, and those rules linked him to her so closely.

But maybe he was jealous not of whatever man she was thinking of, but of her, for still having any spark left, any desire to live outside of the boundaries set before her. Jimin couldn’t remember the last time he’d cared enough to want something. Tzuyu just wanted even more when the world tried to hold her back.

Tzuyu lifted her delicate fingers, to better puppeteer the absent-minded art before her.

“How are you supposed to know?” He asked, turning his eyes away from her and towards the dancing streams of paper. “You’re willing to risk falling for the wrong person?”

She stopped, lowering her hand and watching the papers sink to the polished marble ground. “I’m not,” she said, allowing the wind to pick up the streams, allowing them to be carried away. “You know. That’s what they say. You see their eyes, or their smile, and you feel it.”

“Immediately?” Jimin asked sceptically, looking over at his betrothed’s face. The faintest ghost of a smile appeared there, just for a second.

“Yes,” she said, looking up slowly. “Right away.”

He followed her gaze, up at the blue sky, shining down on the garden in which they stood. The sun was peeking past the nearby palace, slowly lighting up the area as it crept into late afternoon.

“Does the sun look funny to you?” she asked suddenly, and he looked again, a bit closer, in spite of the way it burned his eyes. It did, a bit – almost flickering in and out of sight.

“Perhaps… some strange cloud formation?” He thought aloud.

“It’s-”

Tzuyu’s gasp interrupted her sentence, because it was flickering more obviously, casting the whole world in darkness before returning in a flash. A few seconds later, it happened again, lasting just a bit longer, but then the light returned.

And then they saw as the sun itself disintegrated in the air, light spreading across the sky, stretching out and dimming before fading entirely. It was as if it was night, except without even the stars or the moon to light up the world.

“…gone.”

Jimin wasn’t sure there was anything more to be said than that, so he kept staring up at the sky, alienated and lost.

“Looks like the Fox Clan are trying again,” Jimin said, the faintest tone of amusement in his voice. “This will be interesting.”

“Oh, yes,” Tzuyu agreed. “Interesting… is one way to put it.”

***

They all stood in a straight line, and Dahyun tried not to fidget.

The orphans of the Sun Chapel were all born after the last time the world was shrouded in darkness, so no one exactly had experience with this. They had nothing but the history classes in the back of their minds, ancient tomes being read out by elderly ladies whom no one had really paid attention to. Dahyun hadn’t really been very different in that; she’d wanted to pay attention, but she remembered the last few times they’d been told about the sun being taken away Yugyeom had been sitting next to her, chattering and telling jokes, and just generally being a thousand times more interesting than whoever had been teaching that class.

Yugyeom wasn’t here now, though. He’d been sent away, to work for the Star Council, and she remembered his bright smile when he’d thought about the prospect of getting onto it one day.

He’d been ambitious. Dahyun was never ambitious; she was sort of… itchy, maybe, stir-crazy and filled with wanderlust, but power was downright scary. She glanced to her side; where Chaeyoung stared ahead, looking downright bored. On her other side was Taeyong, who wasn’t bored but comfortable. She didn’t understand either outlook. There was an undeniable energy in the air; Mother Soonkyu before them, with Nayeon and Jungyeon on either side of her, was overwhelmingly tense, reading a parchment in silence with the nervousness wafting off her like a scent.

Dahyun was finding it hard not to fidget.

“As you all know…” Soonkyu started, but something stopped her from continuing, instead turning to commiserate with her travelling companions.

“It’s dark,” Somi said from somewhere in the hall, and Soonkyu smiled.

“Yes. Thank you,” she said, glancing at the floor for a moment. “We need to prepare to grant someone the Essence of the Sun,” she continued, looking sadly over the apprentices. “Whoever is chosen will be taken to the Star Council. I’m sure you’ve all been told the implications of this, so I won’t repeat it now. But what you do need to know: I will have chosen by the morning. We will be leaving in the afternoon, so please, try to be prepared. Goodbye for now.”

Dahyun watched as she walked away, Jungyeon and Nayeon meeting eyes for a moment before following. She glanced over at Chaeyoung, who glanced at her at the exact moment.

“What… are the implications again?” Chaeyoung asked, uncertainty finally showing through her front. That was the last thing Dahyun had been hoping to hear.

“I was going to ask you that,” she said, looking back over at the door through which Soonkyu, Nayeon and Jungyeon had vanished.

“Well,” Chaeyoung said, stretching out and yawning – it was dark out by now. Or rather, it wasn’t dark, since the moon and stars lit up the sky and, to some degree, the earth, and that was more than they’d had for the latter part of the day. “I’m sure it’ll be fine. I’m going to bed.”

Dahyun stood still as Chaeyoung moved away, trying to remember. It was there, the knowledge that she really had absorbed, but whenever she tried to remember she just saw Yugyeom making his stupid jokes and pretending to shy away from her cold glares when she was trying to pay attention.

By the time she decided she wasn’t going to remember it just by staring at the distant, elaborately designed doorway, she was alone, a single small girl in a giant hall. She looked around, as if there was anything new for her to see, and then she sighed, turning to make her way back to the dorms.

The Fox Clan stole the sun – that much she remembered. They took away the light, though she wasn’t exactly sure why, or how. Yugyeom had been whispering about the foods he’d wanted to eat, and he’d struck on that type of curry that one of the cooks had made a few weeks before and the thought of it had left Dahyun watering at the mouth, shaking herself back into reality when Yugyeom started giggling at her inattention.

“Hah!”

Dahyun screamed, nearly losing her balance as she blinked – no torches lit up this hallway, so it took a moment for her eyes to make out Chaeyoung, cackling at her success with her hand on her belly.

“Every – time!” Chaeyoung heaved the words out through her infectious laugh.

“You monster!” Dahyun exclaimed, rushing past her and letting her shoulder slam against the younger girl’s. Dahyun stifled her giggles as she rushed forwards, knowing that Chaeyoung was following her, still laughing.

Chaeyoung caught up to her at a faster run. “So, who do you think’s going to be chosen?”

“I don’t have a clue,” Dahyun said. “I’m still trying to remember the consequences.”

“Don’t worry about it. No one paid attention in those classes.”

“But I always tried to,” Dahyun said, letting her eyes lose focal point as she walked. It wasn’t hard; there was little to focus on in this darkness, just a few faintly lit rooms with the brightness pouring out. Their shadows were goliath every time they walked past an open door, fuzzy around the edges.

“You tried to. Even so: no one paid attention.”

Dahyun let out a little laugh to answer. It was still in the back of her mind, itching like mad. To the point where when they walked past their room, Chaeyoung had to grab Dahyun’s wrist to stop her from wandering ahead. Without words Dahyun followed her friend in, where a dying candle lit up their side of the room; on the other end, Ros‎é and Yeri both lay in their respective bunks, their quiet chatter hardly interrupted for a second by the arrival of the next two girls.

Chaeyoung stretched out again, yawning and picking up her nightrobes to change. Dahyun didn’t do the same, looking down at the ground and trying to remember.

Suddenly, something in her mind clicked.

“When the Fox Clan manages to call the night,” that elderly voice said in her head, “the only way to save them is to release the Essence of the Sun back into the world. That’s no easy task, children. It takes powerful magic to gather the Essence; and a host to serve as a conduit for the energy. After that process, there’s only one way to deliver the Essence to the sky.”

“Are you just going to stand there all night, Dahyun?”

She looked over, as Chaeyoung moved to her lower bunk.

“Sorta creepy,” she joked, aiming a dimpled smile at the older girl.

“No,” Dahyun said, trance just made stronger by the realisation. She changed quickly into her nightgown and climbed her bed’s ladder, crawling over to her pillow and pulling the blankets over herself.

There’s only one way to deliver the Essence to the sky. Her eyes closed, though she wasn’t sure how she’d actually sleep. The bearer must be given as a ritual sacrifice.

Either her, or a member of the only family she knew, would be given the death sentence tomorrow morning.

a/n- I'm trying not to overload you guys with information on this universe, to string it naturally into dialogue and the POV character's thoughts. Hopefully it's not too confusing D: big universes are daunting and hard to write ahh. Hope you like!