Sun Thief

Touch the light. Hold the light. The light burns. The light runs away. Hold the light. Lock the light away. The great spirit Vatu keeps the Sun in a box, where no thief can steal it. Once a year, the box is opened and life springs across the dark lands. The whole world belongs to Vatu. He is darkness, he is master of all. There is no hiding from him. But Utas must try, for his daughter's sake. She is sick from darkness, and yet she glows with a mysterious light. If Vatu can find them, he will destroy them, or worse, drag them back into his mad, dark world. Torn between duty and mercy, between justice and freedom, Utas tries to escape, but it seems inevitable that the darkness will reclaim him. For the greatest mercy and the greatest punishment Utas can suffer is to return to his true self.

All things must die. If death will come regardless, then we do not need to fear it or to run from it. We can live instead. The priests of Vatu are locked in an endless cycle of life, death, and rebirth. Their constant reincarnations are defined by service to the dark spirit, hatred for each other, and ruling the world of eternal night in which they live, broken only by a single day each year when Vatu releases the Sun. They have suffered and enjoyed this existence for millennia, for an eternity... until now. In the Tower of the Sun at the centre of the world, the reborn Utas returns to fulfill his destiny to become High Priest. He has scarcely completed his education, however, when a shocking secret of his resurrection emerges. Now questioning everything he knows, he takes a path never before followed in his long existence. Yet darkness and pain still shadow everything he does, and all his attempts at freedom seem only to lead back to Vatu. Can Utas ever escape hatred and death, or will darkness forever rule his heart as it does the shadowed land?

I am the whisperer and the words I speak echo within you. I am the whisperer and my words do not fade, they endure to the end. Everything changed when the high priest defied the dark spirit Vatu. One man split into two, now one is a ghost and the other is free. But while Utas, the high priest, is released from his shackles, Vatu still commands the world, the Sun, and the twelve priests below him. Alaba, the girl who shines like the moon, is alive and in danger. A heretic priest, follower of the Author of All Things, sends her away from the Valley of the Sun for her safety, only for her and her caretakers to be captured by bandits. They make a reluctant home among the bandits, but even in this village of outcasts, rivalries and secrets threaten their safety and their lives. While the other priests of Vatu set out on their own dark quests, famine spreads across the dark lands. Hunger turns to desperation and war looms over the struggle for what little food remains. Utas finds purpose when he finally reunites with his daughter, but how can he keep her safe when death closes in on all sides?