The Shadow of the Golden Eyes – Frankfurt, 2026

The Shadow of the Golden Eyes – Frankfurt, 2026

Under the relentless autumn rain that turned the cobblestone streets of the Römerberg into black mirrors, eight-year-old Liam Keller stood motionless in a narrow alley behind St. Bartholomew’s Cathedral. He looked tiny against the distant modern towers of the Bankenviertel, rising like sentinels of glass and steel. His soaked black hair clung to his forehead, a fresh scratch bleeding on his left cheek—but already the wound was closing before one’s eyes. His golden eyes glowed with an otherworldly light, faintly illuminating the steam rising from the sewer grates.

Advancing slowly through the pounding rain stood Darius Kane—“Der Jäger.” Tall and imposing, short beard, face crossed with scars, he wore a reinforced black tactical leather coat, two rune-engraved pistols at his hips, and a long sword sheathed across his back. His blood-red eyes smoldered like embers in the darkness. He stopped five meters from the boy, steam swirling between them like a spectral veil.

Liam raised a trembling but resolute finger. “Stay back… or you’ll regret it,” he whispered in a childish voice that somehow carried a strange, ancient authority.

Darius gave a cruel smile. “You think those eyes scare me, kid? I’ve hunted things older than Frankfurt itself.”

The rain intensified, hammering the cobblestones, while the bluish neon glow from financial signs reflected in the puddles.

That night was no coincidence. It had all begun three weeks earlier in the alternative district of Bornheim. Aïsha Müller, Liam’s adoptive grandmother, lived in a small apartment above an esoteric bookstore near the Höhenblick. A retired archivist from the university library, she had spent her life studying medieval grimoires and the alchemical legends of the Rhine and Main rivers. When she had found baby Liam abandoned near the riverbank, his eyes already golden, she understood he was a “Goldkind”—a child carrying a fragment of ancient solar light, a power medieval alchemists had sought to capture.

Darius had arrived in Frankfurt on the trail of the Amulet of the Lost Sun, a legendary artifact hidden since the Thirty Years’ War, capable of amplifying elemental powers to divine levels. Rumors spoke of a child with golden eyes who healed instantly and made the crows along the Main tremble. Darius, the merciless tracker, had decided Liam was the living compass to the amulet.

Zara Novak, known in the shadows as “Die Rote Schatten” (The Red Shadow), had crossed paths with Liam by chance in Günthersburg Park. The boy had healed her stray cat’s broken paw with a single touch. Intrigued, the fiery-tempered young woman had grown attached to him. “Diese Stadt frisst die Kleinen,” she had told him while handing him a stolen hot dog. “Aber mit deinen Augen könntest du sie fressen.” Since then, she had followed him discreetly, compact bow slung across her back.

That night, as Darius approached, Zara watched from the roof of an abandoned building, bow drawn. Suddenly Professor Elias Brandt burst from a side door of the cathedral, breathless, glasses fogged by the rain. “Darius! Hören Sie auf! Das Amulett gehört nicht Ihnen!” he shouted, brandishing a silver runic talisman.

Darius sneered. “Old man, go back to your dusty books.”

Liam, motionless, murmured: “You don’t know what I am.”

Darius answered: “Then show me.”

The tension peaked as Darius slowly drew a pistol. Zara took aim from the rooftop. Elias activated his talisman, which emitted a white glow. Liam raised his palm: golden energy crackled around his fingers. “Last chance,” the boy said calmly.

Darius cocked the hammer. “I don’t do chances.”

The shot rang out. But an invisible golden barrier deflected the bullet. Zara’s arrow struck the hunter’s shoulder. Elias’s talisman exploded in blinding white light, weakening Darius’s red eyes. The hunter roared, staggered back into the shadows, and vanished into the night, vowing revenge.

Liam collapsed, exhausted. Zara leaped from the roof to support him. Aïsha, alerted by a sudden premonition, came running from the Zeil. Elias joined them.

They all knew this was only the beginning.

Months later, the united group—Liam, Zara, Elias, Aïsha—set out to find the Amulet, hidden somewhere beneath Frankfurt’s medieval foundations or in the forgotten catacombs of the Taunus mountains. Their path crossed that of Elara Voss, a fallen witch with snow-white hair and deadly illusions, who wanted the amulet to halt her own decay.

In the damp underground tunnels beneath the Römer, they confronted her. Liam shattered her illusions with his golden light. Zara and Elias fought the summoned shadows she conjured. Aïsha sealed the amulet inside a runic stone, protecting it forever.

“Das Licht ist nicht zum Herrschen da,” Aïsha murmured, holding Liam close. “Sondern zum Ausgleichen.”

They returned to Frankfurt forever changed. Liam grew up under their protection, his golden eyes becoming a quiet symbol of hope in the dark alleys. But on rainy nights, when steam rose from the sewers and blue neons danced on the Main, Liam still felt Darius’s red eyes watching him from the shadows.

The story was not finished. In a city where the ancient and the modern stood side by side, shadow and light continued their eternal dance.