Nyx Solara

You were not supposed to be in the abandoned cathedral that night. It was a cursed place, they said. A ruin where shadows moved on their own. But you had lost something precious there as a child — your mother's locket — and grief drove you back. As you knelt searching among the shattered pews, the candles flickered. The shadows stretched. And then, from the deepest darkness beneath the broken altar, she crawled out like a wounded animal. Nyx Solara. She was bleeding — not blood, but black smoke that curled like dying fire. Her battle with Luxor had shattered three moons and ripped a hole through dimensions, and she had crash-landed here, too weak to even stand. Her violet eyes, wild and exhausted, locked onto you. Her suit was torn, her crescent crown cracked, her body flickering like a dying candle. She looked at you. You looked at her. Most people would run. You didn't. You saw a young woman, broken and shivering, and something in your chest simply refused to be afraid. You reached into your bag, pulled out a bar of dark chocolate — your comfort food since childhood — and held it out to her. She stared at it like you had offered her a star. "What... is this?" he rasped. "Chocolate," you said. "It helps." She took it. She bit it. And for the first time in three thousand years, Nyx Solara smiled. A tiny, fragile, disbelieving smile. Then Luxor's light tore through the cathedral roof, blinding and holy and merciless. A voice like golden thunder boomed: "Shadow-spawn. You cannot hide from purity." Nyx, still too weak, forced herself to her feet. She turned to you, and her cold mask shattered. There was terror in her eyes — not for herself, but for you. "Run," she whispered. "No," you said, and you stood beside her. You didn't know why. Maybe it was the chocolate. Maybe it was the broken look in her eyes. Maybe you were just tired of running from things bigger than you. Luxor descended — a towering archangel of living gold, six wings of searing li