By Nicolin Odel

Kurokage Yami’s only friend, Hikari, a fluffy-white dog, bounced around his feet energetically as Yami kicked the leather-bound ball down the dusty road near the Kurokage family farm. The next closest farm to the Kurokage’s was two days away. The vast North Iron Belt mountain range loomed over the farmland from the northeast, like silent sentries standing guard for eternity. The shadows of the mountains loomed over the farmland, surrounded by thick forest, and Yami hated that darkness. He hated the forest. He hated the farm. Things move in the dark. Things whisper in the dark. And I have no one to talk to about it. A few years ago, Yami had wandered into those woods, a lost child, crying in the shadows under the trees and calling for his father as darkness shifted and moved around him. He recalled stumbling through a groove of gaseous midnight black mushrooms that spewed a cloud of dark dust through the air that had stung his eyes and burned his lungs. 

That’s when the darkness began to whisper his name. Yami. 

“Yami!” His father had finally found him crying in the dark. “What are you doing out here?”

“I was looking for friends.” 

Not long later, his father came home from the market with a little white dog under his arm.

Yami blinked back to the present as Hikari yelped, chasing the ball down and tackling it, going end over end as she was about the same size as the ball. He smiled. The bright sun shone and warmed his skin—no reason to fear the dark. Yami caught up and picked the ball up as Hikari tried, with little success, to tear it apart. He knelt and gave Hikari an affectionate scratch on the head.

“You got him, Hikari,” Yami chuckled. “He never had a chance.” He stood and kicked the ball once more. Too hard. The ball deflected and went wide, bouncing down a slight ravine and into the thick, shadowed woods near the side of the road.

Yami stood, his feet frozen, staring into the darkness that seemed to claw its way from the woods. He recalled rumors from the rare visiting farmers of a massive grey-hided mountain bear that had supposedly become a man-eater. The bear didn’t bother hunting other animals, instead seeking out humans as its primary food source. 

Hikari darted past him and disappeared into the shadows of the forest. 

“No, Hikari!” Yami shouted, and his apprehension shifted to fear of losing his little friend, forcing him to move. One foot after another, he picked his way down the ravine. But it was slow going, as fallen trees and the hill’s steepness hampered his way. Finally, he found himself in the shadows of the woods. That darkness was… 

Yami. 

“Who’s there?” Yami spun about, looking for the source of the voice.

Then he heard Hikari’s faint, repetitive yapping. He hurried toward the sound as it grew louder and louder. Twigs snapped across his face, and shadows closed around him. Suddenly, Hikari’s barks were cut off with a squeal.

“Hikari!” Yami sprinted toward where he thought the sound was coming from. He rushed around a bend into a small clearing surrounded by blackened mushrooms, inhaling a cloud of black spores that burned in his chest as he stepped on the spewing fungi. A sensation tingled through his body, a giddiness, an anticipation. Then he saw the beast, a hulking, hunched form in the dark and a flash of white fur… stained red.

The grey mountain bear turned its massive head, jowls dripping crimson, and roared. A split second later, it was charging down on Yami. 

Yami could only see his dog, silent, still, and red. “Hikari.”

Yami. 

Yami clenched his jaw and answered, “I’m here.” The shadows came to him, and the tendrils snaked up his legs and arms. His hands shot up, and shadow tendrils stretched into the canopy above.

The bear swiped at him, narrowly missing his feet as the inky tendrils pulled him through the air. 

He released one hand and pointed it at the grey and black-furred beast. The tendril streaked out and wrapped around its neck, constricting. 

The bear reared away, and Yami’s arms nearly pulled from their sockets. He released both shadows and fell a dozen feet to the forest floor with a painful snap—followed by a sharp, searing agony, like a white-hot knife slicing through his flesh. He blinked his eyes open to see bone jutting from his arm. 

The bear growled and huffed as its heavy paws thumped toward him.

Yami turned his head to see Hikari staring at him, her slight chest moving faintly with struggling breath, and rage broke through the pain. He imagined a thousand spears from all sides skewering the bastard beast. Die, die, die! Over and over again. 

He opened his eyes when a warm liquid touched his cheek. A stream of blood trickled from the massive punctured form of the dead mountain bear. Spears of pure darkness prickled the bear only inches from Yami’s face.

Painfully, Yami sat up and cradled Hikari’s limp form in his one good arm. Tears trickled down his blood-stained face. “You need to live. You never had a chance.” The shadows twisted and darkened around him. The shadow spears dissipated from the bear’s corpse, and new threads of black began to stitch Hikari back together. 

Her eyes blinked slowly as she looked up at him. Her breath became a whisper.

I need to go deeper. He sent the tendrils within…

“Yami!” His father’s voice echoed faintly through the woods. 

You’ll live, Hikari. I’ll never let you go. 

Hikari let out a strained whine. Yami. 

“Yami!” 

Yami heard branches breaking nearby. He turned to see that his father had appeared just past the massive corpse of the bear and stopped in his tracks. 

His father gaped at the scene, and his panicked eyes fell on Hakiri, cradled in Yami’s arms. Then, they darted back to the bear, confusion clouding them. “What happened? Yami, how did you kill that bear–”

The bear. The fury came so swiftly within Yami that he sent the shadows coursing through the dead beast and took control of its body. It reared up on its hind legs, blood and guts spewing from the holes torn through it.

Kurokage Yami watched as his father did not look back to see if his only son would survive; he was once again alone. The shadows clung to him and comforted him. Afraid of the dark? No, I’m not scared anymore. I’m not alone.

***

“He hasn’t said a word in weeks.” His father’s voice was hushed as he addressed a man in black and golden robes shadowing the threshold of the Kurokage farm. 

Yami sat in a dark corner, inky shadows wrapping around a once-broken arm. His little white dog hopped and ran about with stilted movements. There were no barks, yelps, or the excited cries of a child at play—only the silent rattle of the dog’s rigid, shadow-wrapped paws as they fell unnaturally to the floorboards. 

The man knelt before him, pulling a leather glove from his hand. He rested it upon Yami’s black-haired head. “It’s going to be all right, little raven. The darkness is your friend. You will control that darkness and snuff out the light.”

Want to read more from this universe? Check out The Sunstone Saga!

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