The air was stale, heavy with the scent of neglect and dust.

Despite the cavernous size of the room, the heaps of junk and discarded objects made it feel oppressive. Narrow passageways snaked through the mess, the only clear routes to move. The grandeur of the room—high vaulted ceilings, ornate carvings on the walls, and gilded furniture—was at stark odds with its grimy, cluttered contents. It was a strange room, if only because the grandeur of it didn't match its contents.

At the centre of this chaos, beneath a set of opulent sheets, lay a girl. She was curled into herself, hidden away under the blankets like a ghost haunting the mess. In the suffocating darkness of the room, the only light came from the faint glow of a handheld screen. Sol watched, her wide, unblinking eyes fixed on it as if it held her tether to the world.

It's all she ever did—watch.

TV shows, movies, A-Tube videos, short clips on the Clock app; she devoured them all in endless succession. Her gaze rarely wavered, except for the frantic darting of her eyes following movement on the screen. When she got tired of that, she'd read, flipping through page after page of stories written by online novelists. Her sole aim was to flood her mind with stimulation—anything to keep the emptiness at bay.

Sol had been diagnosed with a mental illness at a very young age. Her parents had been worried, seeing her exhibit behaviour so unlike other kids her age. They saw how different she was from other children: quiet, withdrawn, unwilling to laugh or smile, dreading interactions with anyone. For years, they dragged her to therapists and specialists, hoping for a breakthrough. At first, her parents had taken her to numerous specialists to try to come up with a solution, but after years with little improvement, they gave up. Instead, they decided to focus on making enough money to support her.

And so, Sol's world shrank to the four walls of her room.

So Sol grew up, and finished her schooling. She didn't go to university. She never really made any friends. Her surroundings grew more luxurious as her parents' wealth increased—new devices, plush furniture, indulgent gifts intended to placate her. Yet, Sol herself remained unchanged. A hollow figure in a gilded cage, her life reduced to an endless stream of stories that weren't her own.

Her parents paid her less and less attention, especially once they had her younger siblings. She became nothing more than a forgotten relic in an unused room of the home.

Her parents' attention faded even more as her younger siblings came along. Sol became an afterthought, a forgotten relic in the farthest room of the house. No visitors disturbed her, save for the household staff delivering food or cleaning on occasion. Sol's world continued its endless loop—wake, watch, eat, watch, sleep.

Inside, however, her mind was anything but quiet. She wanted so much: to see the world beyond her screen, to create stories, to be someone worth noticing. But her body never moved, her mind a constant wall against her desires. Each day blurred into the next, the weight of inaction pressing harder and harder on her chest like an anvil.

Years passed. Then decades. Her lack of a lifestyle finally took its toll, and she passed away in her sleep. Her life was brief, uneventful, and disappointing. A footnote in the lives of the few who knew her.

But death was not the end of Sol's story.

As her soul slipped from her broken body, its brilliance caught the attention of someone—something—greater.

"How pitiful," the goddess murmured as she cradled the delicate spark of Sol's essence. "Let me grant you a chance to truly shine."

And with those words, Sol's journey began anew.