Chapter 1
Long ago, when the sky painted itself with brilliant sunsets and flowers competed to display the brightest petals, there lived a man named Kael.
Kael was fascinated by colors.
To most people, colors were gifts of nature. To Kael, they were treasures that belonged to no one—and therefore should belong to him.
For years he searched forgotten temples, climbed impossible mountains, and explored ancient ruins until he uncovered a forbidden spell known only as The Painter’s Curse.
One moonless night, Kael whispered the spell.
The oceans surrendered their blue.
The forests lost their green.
Fire gave up its orange.
The sun abandoned its gold.
Blood became gray.
Snow became dull.
Rainbows vanished forever.
One by one, every color flowed from the world into enchanted crystal spheres that floated around Kael’s palace like tiny planets.
At last, he smiled.
“I own beauty itself.”
Outside his palace, the world became silent.
Children no longer laughed when they saw butterflies.
Artists threw away their brushes.
Birds could no longer attract their mates.
Flowers stopped blooming.
Even hope seemed to fade with every passing day.
Still, Kael admired his collection every morning.
Hundreds of glowing spheres floated around him, each holding a different color.
One held crimson.
Another held emerald.
Another sapphire.
Another silver.
Another gold.
He believed nothing could ever separate him from his greatest treasure.
He was wrong.
One stormy night, lightning struck the tallest tower of his palace.
The tower collapsed.
The crystal spheres crashed together.
Thousands of brilliant lights exploded across the sky.
Every imprisoned color escaped.
They scattered beyond mountains, oceans, deserts, and distant stars—too far for anyone to recover.
Kael desperately reached into the glowing storm.
But every color slipped through his fingers.
Every one...
...except one.
A single crystal landed beside him.
Inside it rested a dark, swirling shadow.
Black.
The final color.
Kael laughed at first.
“I still have one.”
But black alone could not paint a sunrise.
It could not color a flower.
It could not bring life back to the forests.
It swallowed every bit of light it touched.
Soon the entire world became covered in darkness.
Cities looked like abandoned ruins.
The oceans became endless black mirrors.
The moon disappeared into the sky.
People forgot what colors had ever looked like.
Children grew up believing the world had always been this way.
Years passed.
Kael wandered alone through the endless darkness.
His palace had become nothing more than a broken monument to his greed.
The crystal of black was heavier than any stone, although it weighed almost nothing.
It carried every mistake he had ever made.
One day, Kael met a little girl sitting beside a colorless flower.
She asked softly,
“What did colors look like?”
Kael opened his mouth.
Nothing came out.
He could remember their names.
Red.
Blue.
Green.
Gold.
Purple.
But he could no longer remember how they truly looked.
The memory of color had abandoned even the thief who stole it.
For the first time in his life...
Kael cried.
His tears struck the black crystal.
Tiny cracks spread across its surface.
The crystal shattered.
Black escaped into the night, joining the other lost colors somewhere beyond the world.
At that moment, the darkness lifted just enough for a single white star to appear in the sky.
It was small.
Almost invisible.
But it proved one thing.
The colors were not gone forever.
They were waiting for someone worthy enough to find them.
And somewhere beyond the horizon...
the first new sunrise had already begun.
The End.
