“They say the sun used to make the world beautiful.”

Fleur stood atop the grassy meadow, her hands clasped behind her back. Quill followed her gaze, watching the flat black expanse of the sky above the city.

“They do,” Quill agreed, his voice no louder than it needed to be.

“Sorry, Quill,” Fleur said, flashing him an apologetic smile. “I know we have this conversation a lot.”

This was true. Quill didn’t particularly mind. Fleur had a tendency to grow wistful when they visited the Last Light, her everyday cheeriness melting away, and Quill knew that if she left her emotions bottled up inside, it would be nothing but harmful.

“It’s alright,” he said, smiling back at her. “I wish I could’ve seen it too.”

The two of them weren’t quite at the city center yet, but it had been a rather long walk already. Yes, neither of them would usually scoff at a three-mile walk, but today was something of a pilgrimage day. A day to take a break, to reflect. Resting was excusable.

“The stars, too,” Fleur said, reaching a hand up and standing on her tiptoes as if she could reach the sky itself with her outstretched arm. “The old books say they were like a twinkling carpet across the heavens.”

“I can’t imagine,” Quill said.

“The world must have been so different before the fall,” Fleur sighed. “Sorry again, I know I’ve said this a lot before.”

“I don’t mind.” She had indeed, but it was a sentiment that Quill couldn’t help but agree with.

Nobody knew what had happened those centuries ago when the light had fallen. Anyone who might’ve was long gone, vanquished over the years by the onslaught of the Great Darkness beyond the city, and there was no literature that accurately recorded the events of the fall itself.

“The sun was supposed to be like the Last Light, right?” Fleur asked absent-mindedly, still reaching for the eternal darkness above.

“Other way around,” Quill said.

“Right, right. Though with less of the magic, yeah?”

“Surviving texts would indicate so.”

“That doesn’t confirm that there wasn’t magic, though. We don’t know for sure that they didn’t, especially since the majority of pre-fall literature was destroyed during the fall itself.” Fleur had returned her attention fully to the conversation now. She always got excited when she had a tangent of thought she could pursue.

“True enough,” Quill agreed. “But the sun wasn’t exactly like what we have today. It was bigger and a star in its own right, not a magical source on the ground.”

“That’s true too,” Fleur said, turning back to face Quill. “I’d imagine that people like you or me wouldn’t exist.”

In the warmer light of the city center, her features were especially striking. Fleur’s dyed-black hair that had its natural red growing in at the roots was never allowed to grow past her shoulders, and her figure was lithe and muscular. Perfect for a fellow soldier.

“Speaking of which,” Fleur added. “You haven’t set a new loop point in a while, right?”

“Forty-five days,” Quill said. “Why the sudden change of topic?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “My thoughts are just bouncing around all over the place right now. I’m a little antsy.”

“It’s understandable,” Quill said. “Big day.”

August 31st. For the last ten years, Fleur and Quill had made it a point to visit the Last Light at least once a year, and they’d settled on this date. It was good to have a reminder of what was keeping them going, a reminder of what was keeping the Great Darkness at bay.

Quill had been through twenty-three August 31st trips. Two years ago, there had been an instance of attack on that day shortly after they had completed the trip. Quill and Fleur, the city’s only [Timewalker]s, had only been alerted to it after the fact. Fleur’s loop point had been ahead of Quill’s by that point, so when they had initiated their [Loop] skills, it had only been his consciousness that had been sent back before the attack. To avoid [Timewalker] desync, he’d had to go through the same day over a dozen times before he’d been able to surreptitiously put an end to the attack.

Still, even after doing it so many times, Quill had to admit he enjoyed the practice. It was a good way to ground himself, to remind him what he was fighting for.

“We should get a move on,” Fleur said, bringing her gaze back down to earth. “I’ve wasted too much time.”

“We have plenty of time,” Quill said. “August 31st doesn’t end for a while yet.”

“True enough,” Fleur said. “Still, we can walk and talk. I like sitting around and just chatting, but we can do that at the site proper.”

With that, the two of them continued on their path.

The city that had long since lost its name was an interesting one. According to the texts, the city had been a research facility of some kind before the fall, planned and built to accomodate a select few. After the fall, though, it had become the last bastion of humanity, the only place in the world where light still shone.

As a result, the center of the city had stayed rigid and properly planned even centuries later, a grid of efficiency that encompassed the square mile or so around the source of the Last Light itself. Around it, though, the city had sprouted organically as those with [Constructor] classes built and rebuilt sector after sector. These days, it was sometimes said that one could leave a city block for a week and come back to find something entirely new. The city was ever changing, always evolving even within its strict confines.

Quill found beauty in that, in the way that humanity had managed to make and remake beauty even when their canvas had been limited to a mere seven mile radius.

Fleur, though… she wasn’t one for the details of the city in which what was left of humanity now resided. Fleur had always been appreciative of the big details. Of the way that the entire city stayed forever warm and bright under the influence of the Last Light, of how it gave them the classes and skills to reshape the world that they still had.

Despite his appreciation, Quill had to admit that it was sometimes rather irritating trying to make his way across the ever-changing city. The only constant area of the entire region was the city center. Even the sectors just outside of it changed on a monthly basis.

Case in point, Quill knew that he and Fleur had been to this sector before. Sector Nearest, so named for its proximity to the Last Light, was a half-mile long chunk of the ring nearest to the city center, and its layout had changed so much since Quill had last been here that they needed to find a new map to navigate it.

“I can’t say I don’t enjoy rediscovering these sectors,” Fleur said. “Have you read of the travels that they used to do?”

“I have,” Quill said. Another retread of an old conversation, but then Fleur tended to fall into old patterns on pilgrimage days. “There was nothing limiting the people before the fall.”

“Can you imagine?” Fleur asked, twirling around and leaning to face Quill. “Going wherever you wanted, whenever you wanted?”

“It was a very different time,” Quill said, nodding. “Far from what we know today.”

Fleur sighed. “I wish we knew for certain there was something out there past the Twilight. Just any way to know that more than a fragment of that old world remains, even if it’s beyond our reach.”

“We know pieces survived,” Quill reminded her lightly. “We encounter remnants all the time on expeditions.”

“Remnants,” Fleur said, crossing her arms over her chest. “Broken buildings, pieces of old technology that blew across the ruins of a continent to wind up at our doorstep. Nothing real.”

Nothing that can give us hope, she’d left unsaid. Last year, she’d finished that sentence, but maybe she’d found that verbalizing it had been equally as destructive to that rare, golden feeling.

“But it’s enough,” Quill said. “Enough to remind us that there’s a reason we fight for the city. Enough to remind us of those we couldn’t save.”

“True, that,” Fleur sighed. “I just wish… I just wish there was more.”

Quill could understand, he truly could. But what could he tell her? There really wasn’t, as far as he had been able to tell, anything particularly of note beyond the Twilight region where the Last Light began to fade away, and he had no reason to believe there was.

The city was peaceful, and it was by no means a bad place to live. Crime was virtually nonexistent, communities helped each other and sought the improvement of the general human condition, and resources were sufficient if not in abundance.

Fleur knew this, obviously. Quill knew she knew. Still, she was of the not-so-rare type that sought to explore.

He’d read an old article, once. It had described the term wanderlust, the sensation that there was always another trail to hike, another place to roam. When he’d shown Fleur, she’d been enamored with the word. Quill could only partially empathize with the sentiment, but even he could tell that the word was an apt description of his lifelong friend like no other.

“Whatcha thinking about?” Fleur asked, interrupting his thoughts. She’d been leading the way, following a map that she’d found somewhere, and Quill had fallen into following her silently like he usually did.

“Not much,” Quill replied, flashing her a tired smile. “Thoughts on words, mostly.”

“You do love those,” Fleur chuckled. “C’mon. We’re almost there.”

They were, Quill noticed, already solidly through Nearest. Ahead of them was the city center.

“You navigate as quick as ever,” he said.

“And you still can’t read a map,” Fleur quipped. An untrue statement, but then that was what the best jabs were made of.

“At least I can read,” he replied, voice as dry as ever.

Fleur snickered at that, a short bark of a laugh that some would say didn’t suit a girl of her stature.

“City center’s up ahead,” Quill said. “I have our authorizations.”

“Great,” Fleur replied. “Let’s get going.”

The Sector Nearest tapered off to an end, newly constructed roads giving way to centuries-old pavement.

Though the fundamentals of the city center hadn’t changed, the structures built upon it certainly had. On the outer edge of the grid were a series of gates, each of them programmed to only open to those authorized.

The two [Timewalker]s stood in front of the gate now, facing down the massive arch of steel that comprised the southeast gate. It was a good five meters tall and almost as wide, far larger than necessary. Fleur had joked once that these had been designed for the elephants that had roamed parts of the Earth before the fall, and Quill could see where she’d gotten that impression from.

[Quill Lesk and Fleur Amber. Acknowledged and authorized.]

Somewhere along the line, the best [Engineer]s had figured out how to partially hijack the power of the Last Light. Not enough to make any great works of expansion, but enough for trifles like this. Security checks and flashing lights.

The gate rose quickly, revealing more spartan streets behind it.

“Here we are,” Fleur said. “Almost there.”

Every time they made this journey, Quill couldn’t help but marvel at the tenacity of those who maintained the city center. As much as the Last Light provided warmth and brightness throughout the land, it was no simple task to keep the facilities around it from degrading. Thankless work, Quill knew, and yet the [Engineer]s and [Constructor]s here kept at it day after day, year after year.

The dome-like structure of the city center spanned nearly a mile across, almost completely filling the sector. A beautiful structure, to be sure, but Quill had never understood enough about architecture to truly appreciate it. Besides, that had never been the point of the visit.

No, what they came here for would always be the same. At the very center of the dome, hidden away from unauthorized eyes, lay a sphere of bright, pure light, stretching across the full length of a hundred-foot room.

Quill and Fleur weren’t alone in the observatory. They never were. Today, though, there was only one other group with them. A couple, Quill was certain, likely here to commemorate their marriage. Nobody important to him.

Being in the room with the Last Light made him feel warmer somehow. He’d taken his lessons, knew that the construct affected the entire city equally, but inside the observatory it just felt like it was more.

“Beautiful,” Fleur breathed.

It was. In the old days, it had been custom to shy away from observing the daylight star that had been the sun, and Quill couldn’t understand why. The Last Light’s glow was of a color that human eyes couldn’t properly comprehend, and yet its beauty was clear to any who even tried to watch it.

They sat together in silence, their eyes never leaving the glowing sphere. Minutes passed. Quill probably wouldn’t have noticed if hours or even days did, so entranced he was by the light.

The first indication that something was wrong was the sound of sirens outside.

There wasn’t a second indication. In one moment, they were there, illuminated by the glow of the observatory, and in the next moment there was nothing.

On August 31st, the world ended.

On July 17th, Quill woke up.