Prologue
Light in the darknessLee Hyukjae looks at the pile of debris just a few metres away from him. He closes his eyes, and he sees the clear blue sky, he sees his old university. He remembers eating with his friends in the school, going for dance lessons, he remembers running down the corridors.
He opens his eyes, and all he sees is darkness and the rubble. He sighs, and squats down, feeling around the darkness. Hope - the only thing that's keeping him going. This is one of the last parts of the cities he hasn't covered. If he finishes empty handed again this time, then there really is nothing left.
His sensitive ears pick up the sound of three Lumos. He picks up his knife and runs to hide behind a wall that used to be part of a shop. He sees the Lumos with their electric blades, monitoring the area. They seem to pick up a signal from their leader and they head towards the opposite direction.
Funny how they call themselves Lumos, when all they do is to take away the light from the human species, Hyukjae thinks.
It had all started two years ago. He remembers the descent of the first Lumos spaceship down into Earth. He remembers eating deokbokki with Henry when the first lights started going off.
He remembers running in fear from the Lumos.
He remembers seeing his friends and family die one by one.
He remembers the day the Lumos declared war on Earth, to claim this planet as theirs. And because the Lumos feared light, they took it away from the humans, so that they could fully claim this planet as theirs.
He closes his eyes, and as he lets sleep take him away into another land of darkness, he dreams of a city filled with light.
-
Hyukjae wakes up to the sound of growls. The sound that pierces through his ears only means one thing - the Lumos hounds are doing their daily monitoring. And he's right, because at that moment, he hears growls just around the corner. He stands up, and runs into the nearest store he can find.
As the hounds make their way around the city, Hyukjae looks around the shop, trying to take as many supplies as he can. He stuffs a few cans of beans into his bag and two bottles of water. He takes a swig of the water and leans against the door, waiting for the beasts to finish their rounds.
As he hears the growls growing distant, he opens the half broken shop door quietly, stepping into the barren streets. He nearly falls to the ground a second later when one Lumos hound comes out from the shadows where it's been waiting - red eyed, bloodthirsty.
Hyukjae runs.
He feels his lungs nearly giving up as he turns a corner, but the Lumos hound is still after him. He reaches into his pocket, grip tightening around the small handgun. He hesitates to pull it out, for there are merely five bullets left. He slips the gun back into his pocket and continues running.
He takes a few turns to confuse the hound and soon enough, he hears the growling getting softer.
Hyukjae pants, slumping against the empty crate as he watches the hound sniffing around, and turning away. He heaves out a sigh of relief. Just when he's about to stand up, he hears a scream. His grip tightens on his knife, but his eyes widen in disbelief.
He sees the Lumos holding onto his electric blade, but only staring as the human gets up and runs away. This isn't normal, Hyukjae thinks. As Hyukjae leans forward, he steps onto an empty packet of chips and the sound makes the Lumos turn towards his direction. He gasps, making to run, but the Lumos only stares.
Their eyes meet for a whole minute, and the Lumos turns away first. Hyukjae sinks to the ground.
Those eyes... They weren't like the others.
That night, as Hyukjae lies against a bunch of hay he had found earlier, he thinks of the those azure blue eyes, and that flicker of emotion he had seen.
He looks up into the night sky and there are no stars. He hasn't seen light for two years and he thinks he's forgetting how it even looks like. Tomorrow, he mumbles to himself. Tomorrow he will continue searching for the light.
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