He tells his mother he’s found the sun summoner, and all she gives him is a sidelong look and a sigh, saying, “After all this time, you’re still scared of the dark, boy?”

He thinks of night after night, lost in the muffled black, alone with the shadows until he can’t tell where they end and he begins, whether that point still exists at all, if it ever had; a world leeched of color, of feeling, of sound or brightness giving over to a boy drained of emotion, starved for touch, drained down to the dregs of hope.

“Not anymore,” he says, and leaves her with the tight smile he learned from her face, turning his own to the sun, one last time.