Sitting on the floor, my back against a sofa that wasn't mine, I watched Milia sleep behind me, exhausted. Her face, even in dreams, was marked by a tension I knew all too well. It was the same tension I felt in my own shoulders, a weight that didn't leave even with rest.
I remember when I met Astrad.
I was a skinny, scared kid, cornered in a park by bullies who seemed like terrifying giants to me.
There was no logic to their cruelty, only power. And I had none.
Then, he appeared. Astrad. Skinny like me, but with a crooked smile that knew no fear. He didn't fight with honor. He used dirt, low kicks, insults. And he won.
He was… Dazzling…
That day, I didn't see a boy fighting dirty. I saw a light. A chaotic and free force that I longed for with every fiber of my being. I wanted to walk by his side, to have his strength, to face the irrational world together…
I tried so hard. I started training, playing with him, I learned sports, my muscles grew, my physical condition was up to par.
The bullies couldn't intimidate me anymore…
But… I couldn't… I understood it when we entered high school.
No matter how much I trained my muscles…
I couldn't raise my voice to adults, I couldn't kick a gang member without thinking twice, I couldn't spit the truth in your face with a smile…
His heart, his courage… I couldn't match that…
The conviction to defend justice without fear of the consequences, the courage to treat others with the contempt they might deserve…
Every incident where he could do something I could only dream of… It destroyed me more…
With each passing day, no matter how much I stretched my arm to reach that burning sun… no matter how much I ran after it… It only moved further away…
And at some point… I stopped running… I lowered my arm, now burned by an impossible dream…
But the worst part is that… He stopped… He held out his hand… Just like he did that day so many years ago, in that old park… With that ever-confident smile on his lips.
But this time… I didn't take his hand… this time… I abandoned him…
While he defied the system, I learned its rules. While he collected scars, I collected good grades.
The chains of "what one should be," of the "functional adult," weighed too heavily on me. I stayed behind, watching from the safety of the paved road as he ventured into the weeds.
And then, I drew the final line with that brilliant sun.
Milia… In her eyes, I saw my own longing, my own reflection. The one who was left behind. We had both loved that light, and we had both been frightened by its heat. Words were unnecessary. That day, we stopped being two friends of a sun and became two moons orbiting the same absence, building a shelter with the remains of our shared failure.
For once, the pain of not being able to reach that burning sun didn't feel so heavy.
For once, I felt I could be a different kind of hero, a more… system-adjusted one… But… A hero nonetheless…
I believed it was the right path. I believed I had become the hero I was meant to be.
And then… The world ended.
Every time I close my eyes, I go back there. To the first day. To the chaos.
I remember the howl. I remember the first scream from the math teacher, a sound that was cut off too soon. And I remember the fear. A cold, paralyzing fear that left me rooted to the spot, watching as those beasts, those Lupus brunneis, entered the school as if they owned it.
My first instinct was the same as everyone else's: run, hide, survive. The panic was a thick fog.
But then… how curious… in the end… in the midst of my deepest despair.
The image of politicians or great scholars did not come to my mind.
In the end, only his image came to me.
In the midst of that thick fog and darkness, I remembered that burning sun.
The image flashed through my mind like lightning. A memory of a park, of bullies who looked like giants, and of a skinny boy with a crooked smile who knew no fear. The boy who saved me.
What would Astrad do?
The question was a spark. And the answer, a certainty.
FIGHT.
He wouldn't hide. He would fight. And in that instant, I gathered my courage. It wasn't my courage; it was his, one that I borrowed.
["OVER HERE! TO THE STAIRS!"] —I shouted, my voice breaking—. ["BLOCK THE WAY!"]
It worked. My shout broke the paralysis. Together, with great difficulty, we managed to create a barricade. We survived. And in the silence that followed, in the darkness of the third floor, I became the leader.
Not because I was the strongest, the smartest, or the most popular, but because I was the first to remember how to act.
For a brief moment, I became that sun that acted without asking questions…
But my happiness would not last long.
The days passed. The food and water ran out. And the weight of being a hero became unbearable.
Every decision was an equation of lives and resources. The fear, the fatigue, the desperation… being a leader, I discovered, wasn't about shouting first, but about enduring the silence that came after.
And then, the rope arrived. The opportunity. And the test.
I remember Kiti, Amelia, the other girls on the other side. I remember their eyes. And I remember the cold calculation in my head: the exhaustion, the risk, the low probabilities. My duty was to protect the greatest number possible. It was the logical decision. The right one. The one a leader must make… For the good of the group…
I understood it in that moment… I understood why Astrad always had such disdain for this system, I understood why they were irreconcilable specters.
I understood it when I finally used it the way everyone really uses it.
"The greater good… for the good of the group…" all beautiful and convenient words… To hide your own cowardice… And the worst part wasn't being a coward. The worst part was knowing that Astrad, in my place, would have never made the calculation….
As I turned my back, leaving Kiti and the others behind, I felt a part of me break. The borrowed light of Astrad was completely extinguished…. And only the shadow remained….
Because light does not shine on a coward…
Still, I clung on…
Desperately, I clung to the system I had chosen.
I had no other choice, even now I don't.
Now with no right to inhabit his light, this world called "the greater good" is all I have left and the only thing that could justify me.
This mask of hypocrisy that he despises so much, I could no longer lose it.
I had to prove that even if it's something hypocritical, my path also has its own value, its own strength… That even if it's sometimes hypocritical, that "greater good" wasn't always hypocrisy, that "greater good" was sometimes a decision based on facts, the right path.
But before the sun, the shadow pales.
Words like "there is no other option."
They only flourish without a sun that arrives to give you a burning slap in the face.
I still remember the faces of the girls when they entered that room. But above all, I remember Astrad's eyes… Eyes filled with a manifest and irreconcilable contempt, even more fierce and disgusted than when the thing with Milia happened.
But my humiliation was far from over.
In the supermarket, I once again found myself facing the great wall.
The difference between pretending to be a leader and actually being one.
The difference between words and action.
The Vitrum. They weren't like the wolves; they were chaos incarnate. When they attacked us, I again did what I knew: I tried to impose order. - ["Get back! Form a line!"] -. The captain's voice. The words of a man who no longer believed in his own orders.
But Astrad… No, Astrad obviously didn't need something as mundane as orders.
Astrad didn't see the chaos; he danced with it. He didn't try to control it; he redirected it. Every one of his movements, every insult, every shot, was a piece of a symphony of violence that I was incapable of composing.
He didn't lead by shouting orders; his mere presence was an order. Everyone—his companions, and eventually, us—became instruments of his will. He wasn't a captain. He was the conductor of hell's fucking orchestra.
And I… I was just another musician, clinging to my metal bar, trying to keep up with the rhythm.
The worst part was when he acted as bait. That suicidal and arrogant act… was exactly the kind of move the boy I admired would have made…
And… just like that… Once again… The sun had only burned me… But this time, of course, he didn't extend his hand.
.....
["Your attitude is pathetic,"] I remembered saying those words to him, the cold night wind brushing my cheeks on the roof of that abandoned house.
["You're just stuck in your own poison,"] I continued with feigned conviction.
Heh… hehehe… How ironic… in reality, I already knew… I always knew, I just didn't want to accept it… that those words, from the very beginning, were directed at myself…
I look around. At Carlos, analyzing the map from the Journal that Simon got. At Milia, breathing calmly for the first time in days. We are safe. And we are here thanks to the boy we turned our backs on. To the hero I couldn't be.
I don't know what the right path is now. I only know that mine has brought me here… There's no more room for that boy who desperately ran by his side.
Now, all that's left for me is to walk… In the shadow of his light.