Burning Horizon

An old man named Anders tells a story to his two grandchildren of a time when there was more than just darkness and ice. The story follows Christina, a poor indigenous girl regularly beaten by her father for not selling enough candles for them to survive. One day, following the footsteps of an old woman who left their village to see a trail of smoke, Christina is saved from freezing to death in the mountain-bordered forest by a mysterious man whose hands can produce fire like magic. Unable to convince him to return to her village, Christina is able to procure some fire from him (in the form of a torch) that soon sets the village aflame both figuratively and literally as they fight for this newfound power. When her father blames her for the torch going out (not seeing a dangerous ember beginning to catch on a roof) his fury becomes fatally directed at her until the mysterious man accidentally kills him in an attempt to stop the beating. With her village in ashes, Christina rejoins the fireman, Hans, and they journey to a deserted city looking for food. Despite treasures such as a realistic music box and nutritious modern food bars, the only hope Christina finds is in a desecrated but still beautiful church with story-laden stained-glass windows. ...Until Stallo, a machine-fused soldier, appears. With no explanation and less time to escape, Christina is driven underground to take shelter in the tombs of long-dead but young-lived previous leaders, before Hans comes to help her by sacrificing himself. Burying him in the nearby forest while knowing Stallo is still out there, Christina follows his advice to head back where he came from - the other side of the imposing mountains. But getting through the mountains proves no easy task, as Stallo reappears and chases Christina once more beneath the earth, facing all sorts of strange lights and dreams that serve to only confuse her further. Pressing on past glowing lakes and a horrifying shape-shifting creature, Christina comes to another forest this time shaped by human hands and glowing with strange orbs. The lights lead her to a hut that betrays her joy as it was mostly burnt a short time ago. Even further dashing her hopes is a tribe of indigenous folk who abandon Christina in the forest out of fear, leaving her alone and apathetic to her fate. Somehow stumbling through the grey woods, Christina comes to the worst sight yet seen - a terrible cut in the earth filled with bodies and machines of war. While slinking past Stallo's ilk and strange contraptions of death, Christina sees the man himself resuming chase and pushes on to a scrapyard where once more she must face the hunter. Luckily escaping yet again, Christina is not given long solace when the soldier reappears and is about to strike her down, just as her own hands burst forth flames. But it is an undetected mine in a graveyard of all places that finally seems to stop her foe for good. The last place to venture - the source of smoke Christina has seen since her village - looms close and she makes one last effort. Before coming across the only working thing around - a massive factory - Christina passes through a strange neon alley and something more simple, a playground for children. Reflecting on the innocence she unwillingly lost, she plunges into the factory and finds more macabre scenes of dead bodies and wrecked machinery. But the building still empowers its primary function - a fire, pouring black smoke that covers the sky and kills all nearby, and Christina's body too begins to show the wicked signs of its production when at last she stumbles across a button to shut the whole evil business down. But Stallo isn't finished yet. Crawling on what's left of his limbs he gets between Christina and the button, and only stops when she finds a book that shows him how the system used him to serve its sinister purposes, even against himself. Finding common ground at last, Christina provides the poor boy with her own torch, passed on before she extinguishes the fire and plunge all into darkness yet again... But, as Anders finishes his story and sends the future generation off to bed, maybe not all will remain as such, as new perspectives and thoughts between darkness and light could possibly, maybe, just save humanity, before they all become as the tragic skeleton resting forever at the factory's playground.