Title: “The Light That Went Out”
Bright, cold. The city slept beneath a bruised sky, and the streetlights bled their pale glow onto the rain-slick pavement. In the corner of a forgotten alley, May crouched—thin, trembling, wrapped in a torn coat that had long lost its warmth. To the world, she was a ghost: unseen, unwanted, unremembered. But tonight, her eyes—the color of ash and dust—suddenly burned with a fierce, unnatural flame.
From the shadows ahead came the sound of a struggle: hurried footsteps, a stifled cry. Three hulking figures closed in on a girl dressed in silk and diamonds—the kind of girl who lived in the stories May used to tell herself before hunger erased all dreams. The thugs moved like wolves, their shadows stretching across the glistening concrete. Then came the scream—a small, desperate sound—and the light in the girl’s eyes went out.
For a heartbeat, the world froze. Then May moved.
The blade in her hand was old, its handle wrapped in rags, its edge chipped but still alive. She didn’t think. She didn’t breathe. She simply became. The first man went down with a grunt, blood blooming like dark roses across his chest. The second turned too slow—a flick of her wrist, and his body collapsed beside his friend. The third tried to run, but the knife found him, too. When it was over, silence returned, heavy and absolute.
May stood there, chest heaving, staring at the millionaire’s daughter—the girl she had just saved from the monsters. But as she stepped closer, something twisted inside her. Under the dim streetlight, she saw the girl’s face: pale, beautiful, terrified. A face that didn’t belong to a stranger.
It belonged to her.
No—not her. The memory crashed through May’s skull like thunder. A photograph, half-burned, hidden deep in her mind: two sisters laughing in the sunlight before the world broke apart. Before the fire. Before May disappeared and became a shadow.
The knife slipped from her fingers and clattered to the ground.
Tears blurred her vision as the girl whispered, “May?”—the name she hadn’t heard in years. And in that trembling voice, May heard everything she had lost: her home, her childhood, her hope.
The light that had once belonged to her life flickered faintly before her eyes—alive, breathing, trembling. But she knew the truth now. The light she’d just saved was the same one that had left her to the dark.
May turned away, her silhouette melting into the rain. The price had been paid. Blood for blood. Light for shadow.
And as the city swallowed her whole, only the sound of her fading footsteps remained—an echo of a girl who once had a name, and a sister who still carried her light.
