When you first start playing this beautiful, colourful, peaceful game, you seem to have a very simple objective— reaching your destination of what's supposed to be a Volcano of bright light. The game is called Sky: Children of Light, so light means good, right? Kinda wrong, because your destination is what seems to be a battlefield where you actually have to DIE. And in which way...
You play your character through the whole game. Watch them become stronger, customise them. When you reach the final level aka the Eye of Eden, you also watch them being agonizingly beaten with a meteorite rainstorm coming from the said Volcano. Their cape slowly becomes more dull and ripped, their light is fading with every step they make, and it clearly looks like the character is in pain or suffering. And remember that all the characters resemble children...
Let's not forget what your objective there is: to basically sacrifice your own life (in the form of Winged Light, collectibles you find through the game) to let other children of light be reborn. Your character gives a small piece of what seems to be their soul to a bunch of frozen statues surrounding the area— they are, actually, remains of Descendants who died there before you.
...and with the final few Winged Lights given away, your character has no cape left. Their light has completely faded and they have nothing left from their bright, colourful look. They make a few shaky steps and finally collapse.
This trope happens starting with Season of Enchantment and onward. Finishing a season's final quest and watching as the Spirits you collected and befriended transform into beams of light and fly into the sky, leaving their Quest Giver friend to stay with you and the possible newcomers. Becomes worse in the Season of Dreams, due to how one of the Spirits leaving is the ice skater, who is implied to have a parent-child relationship with the Questgiver based on their interactions. And the skater is not part of the Seasonal spirit constellation, so they will never come back as a Travelling Spirit. the Quest Giver's last interaction before the ice skater left was an excited, proud wave... until eventually, after 1 year, 4 months and 29 days, the spirits are brought back!
The second to last Quest in The Season of The Little Prince has you, the player, run after the Little Prince as he's walking away in the distance in the harsh winds, covering his face. You reach him at some sort of campsite, and light the fire for him. You both sit down, and he lays down a bomb of a revelation: He's going back home to his Rose. He tries to cheer you up by offering a gift; his laugh. He says you will hear his laugh from all the stars in the sky, as they will all be your friends. He then says that, during his return, he will look as if he were suffering, but he doesn't want you to see that. You both go to sleep, and when you wake up, you find that he has disappeared. He is, again, in the distance, and as you chase after him, he sits down on a pillar and lets a Dark Dragon go near him. Fans of the original book will scream in fear, as this scene mimics the scene where the Little Prince lets the snake bite him so he will die and be reborn with his Rose. After, there is nothing you can do. He leaves to Eden, and you're stuck with the harsh winds.
The last Quest in the above mentioned season. To put it simply, you have to go through Eden to save the Little Prince from the crystal shower, and then die to be reborn and go to Orbit. You meet him there after getting wing upgrades, just as you’re about to go through the Rebirth portal, and he’s… silent. As if he knows that going through that portal means you will be reborn in the Starlight Desert without him. He gives out his hand, and you lead on. Unusually, you can’t run after holding his hand. All you can do is walk agonizingly slowly to the portal with him, as the rings of the Temple bells become louder…
After being reborn, you land in the Starlight Desert instead of Home. The animation of your Sky Kid waking up seems more heartbreaking, as if they're looking around for their friend, who is gone. The Sky Kid walks over to the crashed Boat where you both first met, and they slowly walk to the hill where you both sat down and admired the stars. This time... He's gone. The Sky Kid looks up at the starry night, and they remember the Little Prince asking, "Can you hear them?".
