The Baltic Sea, normally a slate-grey mirror reflecting the predictable heavens, churned an unnatural ochre. Jonas, just nineteen and already weathered by the archipelago's relentless winds, squinted at the horizon.
He stood on the worn wooden planks of his family's dock, the salt-laced spray misting his face. Dawn on Kökar Island should have been a slow bleed of rose and gold, but this morning, the light was a sickly, jaundiced yellow, pressing down with a weight that felt almost physical.
The seabirds, usually a raucous chorus greeting the sunrise, were silent. An unsettling quiet had descended, thicker than any fog.
He'd woken with a prickling unease, a sense that the expected order of things had subtly, irrevocably, broken. He'd tried to dismiss it as a night's restlessness, fuelled by too much weak beer at the village pub. But looking at the sky now, a cold dread snaked through him.
The sun crested the horizon, not in a burst of glory, but like a festering wound opening in the east.
It was too large, too close. And the colour… that awful, bilious yellow radiated an unnatural heat, burning against his skin even from this distance. Jonas shielded his vision with a calloused hand, his stomach tightening. Something was profoundly out of sync.
He glanced back at the small wooden house nestled amongst the pines. His grandmother, Nana, would be awake, brewing strong coffee and already listening to the marine radio chatter.
She always knew when the sea was troubled, sensed shifts in the atmosphere before any instruments could register them. Maybe she had an explanation for this… this wrongness.
He stepped off the dock and walked towards the house, the gravel crunching under his worn boots. The trees, usually a vibrant green, seemed leached of colour, muted under the sun's unnatural glare.
Even the air felt… different. Not heavy, not really, but… charged. Like before a storm, only this wasn't the familiar electric bite of approaching rain. This was something else, something alien.
Inside, the house was dim and cool, a welcome respite from the oppressive outside. The familiar aroma of Nana's coffee usually brought comfort, but today, it felt weak, insufficient against the encroaching dread.
Nana sat at the kitchen table, hunched over the radio, her face etched with concern. The usual morning news was replaced by static, punctuated by frantic voices breaking in and out.
"Nana?" Jonas started, his voice lower than intended.
She looked up, her blue eyes, usually sparkling with humour, clouded and serious. "Did you see it, poikani?" she asked, using the Finnish endearment, my boy.
"The sun… it's… wrong." He couldn't find words to adequately describe the wrongness, the visceral sense of something fundamentally broken.
Nana nodded slowly, her gaze returning to the sputtering radio. "It began just before dawn. Reports are flooding in… all over. They're saying… changes." Her voice trailed off, the static crackling louder.
Jonas pulled out a chair and sat opposite her, the wooden legs scraping against the floor. He leaned closer, trying to decipher the fractured snippets of sound from the radio. "…unprecedented solar radiation… …cities reporting extreme temperatures… …sightings… …impossible… …demons…" The last word, distorted by static, hung in the kitchen like a death knell.
"Demons?" Jonas questioned, a chill deeper than the Baltic wind biting at him. Nana switched off the radio abruptly, the silence rushing back in, heavier now, pregnant with unspoken horror.
"Hearsay, maybe. Panic. But…" She hesitated, her gaze drifting to the window, towards the poisonous yellow light leaching through the curtains. "There are old stories, Jonas. Tales the old ones whispered about the sun. Not as a life-giver, but something… else. Something hungry."
He scoffed, a nervous sound in the stillness. "Old wives' tales, Nana. Sunspots, solar flares, something scientific, that's all it is." He tried to inject conviction into his voice, but even to his own ears, it sounded hollow.
"Perhaps." Nana's reply was quiet, unconvinced. She rose slowly, her movements stiff with age, and walked to the window. She didn't draw back the curtains, just stood there, her silhouette stark against the unnatural light. "But the way it feels, Jonas… it feels… deliberate."
The day progressed, or rather, it continued its grim, relentless march, each hour dragging with mounting unease.
The radio, when Nana dared to switch it on, offered only fractured reports of rising global temperatures, widespread disturbances, and… things.
Unconfirmed information, dismissed by official sources as mass hysteria, but whispered about in panicked tones by the few voices that managed to break through the static.
Jonas tried to occupy himself, mending fishing nets in the shed behind the house, the familiar rhythm of the work usually a balm for his anxieties.
But the oppressive sunlight seemed to penetrate even the thick wooden walls, casting long, warped shadows that danced with a disquieting animation. He felt watched, judged by the sun's malevolent glare.
Later, as the sickly yellow day deepened towards an even more disturbing orange, they saw them. It began subtly, as distortions in the shimmering heat haze that rose from the scorched earth.
Then, shapes solidified, coalescing from the very light itself. At first, they looked like heat mirages, grotesque figures twisting in the distorted light. But they grew clearer, darker, horrifically real.
Sun Demons. That word, previously just a garbled whisper on the radio, now screamed with horrifying truth. They were creatures born of fire and shadow, their forms vaguely humanoid but twisted into nightmarish parodies of flesh.
Their skin seemed to be made of obsidian, reflecting the sun's awful light, their eyes burning with miniature suns of their own. They moved with an unnatural swiftness, cutting across the landscape with terrifying purpose.
The first one they saw was on the far side of the bay, silhouetted against the now blood-red sky. It was immense, easily twice the height of a man, its limbs impossibly long and spindly, ending in claws that dripped molten light.
It stood on a rocky outcrop, head tilted back, as if basking in the sun's power, then with a guttural boom that resonated across the water, it launched itself into the forest.
Fear, cold and paralyzing, clamped down on Jonas's chest. He stumbled backwards, knocking over a coil of rope. Nana gasped, her hand flying to her mouth, eyes wide with ancient terror. "The stories…" she whispered, voice trembling. "The sun… it heard us. It's angry."
The radio, left crackling in the kitchen, suddenly shrieked to life, the static replaced by a single, clear voice, resonant and deep, speaking in perfect, chillingly calm English. "People of Earth. You have taken my light for granted. You have grown arrogant in my warmth. Now, you will learn the true meaning of fire."
The voice paused, and then continued, a note of cruel amusement creeping into its tone. "My children are coming. They will cleanse this world of your arrogance.
They will prepare it for a new dawn. A dawn of fire." Then, the signal cut out, replaced once more by the relentless static.
Outside, the forest erupted. Screams, human screams, mingled with the shattering of wood and something else, something monstrous and inhuman.
The boom of the first Sun Demon had been just a herald. Now, more were appearing, erupting from the corrupted sunlight, descending on the islands like avenging shadows.
Jonas grabbed Nana's hand, pulling her towards the back door. "We have to go," he urged, his voice tight with panic. "The boat. We have to get to the sea."
They fled the house, the unnatural heat searing their lungs, the air thick with the stench of burning pine.
The sky was no longer just orange, it was a furious inferno, pulsing with malevolent energy. Sun Demons were everywhere now, shrieking their inhuman cries as they tore through the small village, leaving trails of fire and ruin in their wake.
Folks ran in terror, their screams swallowed by the din.
Reaching the dock, Jonas scrambled to untie their small fishing boat, his fingers clumsy with fear. Nana fumbled with the engine, her hands shaking.
The heat intensified, becoming unbearable. He could feel his skin blistering, the air itself burning him. He saw a figure emerge from the trees, silhouetted against the infernal sky, impossibly tall and wreathed in flames. It was moving towards them with terrifying speed.
"Hurry, Nana!" he yelled, his voice cracking.
The engine sputtered, coughed, and finally roared to life. Nana wrestled with the controls, and the little boat lurched away from the dock, leaving behind their home, their island, their life.
As they pulled away, Jonas looked back. The Sun Demon reached the dock, its fiery gaze fixing on them.
It raised a clawed hand, and a lance of pure, blinding light shot out, striking the water just beside their boat, the force of it rocking them violently.
They sped out into the bay, the boat bucking and pitching on the ochre waves. Behind them, Kökar Island was engulfed in flames, a funeral pyre under the blood-red sun. Other boats, tiny specks on the horizon, were fleeing too, all heading west, towards the illusory safety of the open sea.
For days, they drifted, adrift in a world transformed into a hellscape. The sun never set, never dimmed. It hung in the sky, a baleful eye, radiating scorching heat and casting a perpetual twilight in its sickly light.
Sun Demons haunted the islands, picking off survivors, their shrieks echoing across the water. Hope, like the familiar blue of the sky, had vanished.
Food and water dwindled. The relentless heat and fear wore them down. Other boats they encountered were filled with despair, with madness.
Stories were exchanged, fragmented tales of cities burning, continents ravaged, the world consumed by the sun's wrath. There was no escape, no refuge. The sun was everywhere, and its children were relentless.
One evening, or what was left of evening in this sun-scorched world, Nana grew weaker. She lay in the small cabin, her breathing shallow, her eyes closed. Jonas sat beside her, holding her hand, the skin papery and cold despite the oppressive heat.
He told her stories of when he was a boy, of fishing trips and summer festivals, of a world that now felt like a distant, impossible dream.
She opened her eyes, her gaze surprisingly clear despite her fading strength. "Poikani," she whispered, her voice barely audible. "Don't… don't give in to despair."
"How can I not, Nana?" he asked, tears stinging his eyes, hot on his blistered cheeks. "Everything is gone. Everything is burning."
"There is always… something… left." She squeezed his hand weakly. "Remember the sea, Jonas. Remember the islands. Remember… me."
Then, her grip loosened, and her breathing ceased. Nana was gone. Jonas sat there in the suffocating heat, holding her lifeless hand, the only sound the endless lapping of the ochre waves against the hull of the boat.
Alone. He was utterly, irrevocably alone. He looked up at the hateful sun, blazing in the crimson sky. It was a monstrous thing, a sentient destroyer, and it had won. It had taken everything.
His home, his family, his world. Even the sea, once a source of solace, was now tainted, poisoned by the sun's unnatural light.
He knew, with a chilling certainty, that there was no future, no escape. The Sun Demons would come for him eventually.
Or the heat would simply consume him, slowly, painfully. It didn't matter. The world was ending, and he was the last echo of a life that was.
As the false twilight deepened, painting the sky in shades of blood and fire, Jonas did something unexpected. He didn't weep, didn't rage, didn't beg.
He simply took Nana's body out on deck, wrapped her in a fishing net, and gently lowered her into the ochre sea. He watched as she sank beneath the waves, disappearing into the murky depths.
Then, he turned the boat towards the burning east, towards the malevolent sun, and set the engine to full throttle.
He steered directly into the heart of the inferno, a tiny speck of defiance against a cosmic horror, heading towards a dawn that would never break, a dawn of fire, alone with his sorrow and the memory of the cool grey Baltic Sea that was no more.