The night swallowed the moon in slow, deliberate breaths, pulling a curtain over its silver glow. Shadows pooled where light had once danced, stretching long and endless, slipping into the marrow of the world. The eclipse was not just an absence of light—it was a presence, a quiet force, a truth that had always been there, waiting beneath the surface.

She stood in its wake, the darkness wrapping around her like silk, cool and knowing. Here, in this hush between moments, she saw what the sun had never revealed. The things buried beneath golden illusion, the half-truths softened by daylight. The sky was a mirror now, stripped bare, reflecting the secrets she had never dared to name.

In the stillness, the eclipse whispered—was the dark not always here? Did it not linger behind every brilliant light, patient, inevitable? She had mistaken its absence for a promise, believed in the sun’s warmth without question. But now, the night revealed itself, not as a thief, but as a keeper of what had always belonged to it.

And as the last ember of light faded, she did not flinch. She let the darkness consume her, not as a prisoner and not in malice, but as something that had finally learned to see.