The day had no name.

  It wasn’t night, not quite morning. Just a blur of gray sky, cracked pavement, and the kind of silence that feels heavy in the chest. Malik walked through it all—the losses, the weight, the noise that lived inside his head even when the world outside was quiet. A car, gone. A job, gone. A tooth, a phone. Pieces of his life, stripped one by one.

  Then he saw it.

  Behind a corner store that had long stopped selling anything worth buying, a figure stood like it had been waiting for him: a horse. Brown as earth, black mane flowing like smoke. Its eyes locked onto his like it knew him. Like it had been there all along.

  Malik stepped closer. The horse didn’t flinch. Didn’t run. It bowed its head.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  He didn’t remember mounting it. Only that there was a saddle nearby—dusty, half-hidden beneath an awning—and when he picked it up, it fit perfectly, like it had been made for this moment. Then came the wind, tearing past him as the horse—Onyx, the name came to him unspoken—galloped through streets he didn’t recognize. The city blurred into shadows and light, past and present, until nothing felt real except the bond between them.

  Onyx turned sharply, slowing into a clearing that didn’t belong to any place Malik knew. The horse moved like a racer—fast, powerful, precise. There, tucked beneath the frame of an old, collapsed shed, was a foal. White. Fragile. Its legs trembled like it had just learned to stand.

  Malik dismounted. Onyx approached the baby horse, nuzzling it gently. There was something unmistakable in the way they moved—together, familiar, connected by more than just instinct. Malik could see it clearly now: Lumen was Onyx's son. The foal stepped toward Malik, blinking up at him with soft, glowing eyes.

  Lumen.

  He didn’t know where the name came from, only that it was right.

  And just like that, Malik had something to protect.