Beginning

The darkness met him, cold and sharp, and promised him power, but he no longer wanted it. He wanted sunlight. He yearned for hope. His heart, his hands, everything he could hold with wanted only to hold purity. 

It was a new feeling for a man who had spent his entire life on temporary pleasures, always looking in the same place for something different and finding the same over and over again. He feared he was a slow learner, but he was meant to learn this lesson well so that he would remember it with his heart, his hands, everything he could hold.

His mind changed when the wall fell. It pulled the darkness with it. He saw the shadow tugged by the weight of the collapse. What can grasp a shadow and pull it down? He thought he must have seen an illusion. The wall must have hit something real and moved it, of course, and that altered the shadow. Of course? But he was slowly losing belief in the course of things and gradually accepting that he had seen a shadow moved. A shadow that was not a reflection, not cast by light, not a mere effect of something real- this shadow was its own entity. He had seen evil moved and he knew it.

"You don't need to be afraid of the dark anymore."

He would not admit to being a fearful man. Maybe, once, or twice, he had felt fear as a small child or in a strange circumstance, but never as a man, never unless he was half asleep or- but it was futile. He was afraid. Fear led him. Fear drew him. Fear called his name. Fear ate his meals before him and arranged his home to suit its needs. 

Fear had been the boss for so long he did not recall another time, until that moment, and he realized, instinctively, then with logic, that there was something that could move differently than everything else. Something could rescue him. He winced at the thought because the last thing this strong man wanted was to need rescue. Then it happened.