The wind was different on this side of the world.
It carried no scent of brine or blossom—only dust and echoes, faint as breath in a tomb. The sky above the scorched plains of Darethir was painted in long strokes of amethyst and ash. Beneath it, the survivors gathered.
From the east came Liora, her crimson cloak tattered at the hem, her blade sheathed but heavy with memory. Her steps were deliberate as she crossed the broken stone causeway to the temple ruins where they had agreed to meet. She said nothing as she arrived, but her eyes scanned the horizon, ever watchful.
Soon after came Thalin, his staff now bound in silver rings, each one etched with a rune learned during their flight from the Ember Bell. His expression was unreadable, but the weariness in his shoulders betrayed the miles he had walked and the weight he now bore.
Then came Cael, younger than the others and still untempered by despair. He was a scout from the northern ridges, bearing the sigil of the Crescent Vale, and though he had not faced what Aelric had faced, his courage had bought him a seat at this fragile council. He nodded to the others and waited in silence.
Aelric was the last to arrive.
He emerged from the mouth of the fissure beneath the ruins, his form silhouetted against the cold gleam of twilight. The cloak Nyara had gifted him was torn at the edges, and his starforged armor was dulled, as though it had passed through fire and grief alike. But his eyes—his eyes still carried the starlight.
There was a scar beneath one now. Faint, recent. A reminder.
The group turned as he approached. None spoke at first. The silence was the bond between them—too much had been lost to waste words.
Thalin broke it at last.
"We found fragments in the western archive," he said, voice quiet. "Clues that may explain the nature of the Gate of Silent Fire. But there's little left intact. Most scrolls are ash."
Liora stepped forward. "And the rift near Isareth has widened. The Order of the Iron Flame tried to seal it. None returned."
Cael added, "And beyond the rift… something watches. The scouts won't go near it anymore. They say the stars look different there. Twisted."
Aelric looked to each of them, the silence stretching, his hand resting on the hilt of his sword. At last, he nodded.
"Then we can't wait."
A Time to Regroup
They spent the night in the broken shrine beneath the ruins—what had once been a place of worship for the Old Stars. The sigils still shone faintly on the walls, like the afterglow of dreams long dead.
Liora tended to her armor while Cael built a fire from dry roots and oilstone. Thalin wrote in a starbound journal, his quill crackling faintly as it moved.
Aelric sat apart, cross-legged before the altar.
The trial he had passed beneath the Tower Between Stars haunted him still. The visions had grown sharper—less like dreams and more like memories. He had seen Nyara standing at a place between worlds, her fur matted with ash, eyes glowing not with wisdom, but warning.
"The End and the Beginning are not separate. They spiral. What you seal may one day call you back."
He did not yet know what it meant. But he felt it deep in his chest like a clock ticking.
Liora joined him without a word, setting her sword beside her. For a time, they simply sat together, their shadows dancing on the ancient stone.
"Do you think we'll win this?" she asked eventually, not looking at him.
"No," Aelric replied softly. "Not if we fight as we are. Not if we fight as separate stars."
She looked at him then, eyes sharp.
"Then we become a constellation," she said.
He smiled, weary but sincere. "Yes."
The Starborn Flame
By morning, others had arrived.
From the shattered skyships of the north came Arvindel, the wind-singer, his hair silver as comet trails. From the riverlands, two sisters of the Dawn Threaded Order, clad in white and gold. Even Elric of the Hollow Vale—a grizzled, cynical warrior who had once sworn he would never follow a Starborn again—stood beneath the broken archway with a begrudging nod.
Aelric rose to meet them, and though he said little, his presence was command enough.
"We must form what the Starborn were meant to be," Thalin said to the growing assembly. "Not rulers. Not saviors. But anchors."
"To what?" asked one of the Dawn Sisters.
"To hope," Aelric answered.
And so, beneath the fractured stone of the old temple, they built something new.
A council of lights, scattered though they were. They made maps from memory, shared ancient tales, tested the skies for patterns. Aelric opened the scroll Nyara had left him and found new pages inked in starlight. They showed a path—but not to victory.
To understanding.
For to defeat the void, one had to first understand it.
The New Threat
But even as they prepared, the darkness grew bolder.
Scouts brought tales of "Starfall Dwellers"—creatures that wore the husks of old gods and wandered ruins where the veil had torn. Entire villages had vanished overnight. At the edge of the Crescent Vale, the sky had bled blue fire.
But more terrifying than the creatures were the whispers.
They came to the mages first—voices in dreams, speaking in riddles and sorrow.
One woman screamed herself to madness after hearing the name Sothrakar—a name not written in any scroll, but which Thalin recognized from the fragments found beneath the Tower of Echoes.
A name that once belonged to the First Unmaker.
And it was said that this being, this Sothrakar, had awakened not in the void—but within the folds of time itself.
Aelric stared at the symbols etched into the Heartstone he still carried. It pulsed now when he held it—responding not to magic, but to memory.
"I think," he said to Thalin one night, "our enemy was never just the shadow. It's the echo. The ripple we left behind."
Thalin's face paled.
"If that's true… then we've only just begun."
The Silent Herald
The final sign came with the Silent Herald.
A figure cloaked in mirrors, faceless, appearing at the outer edges of their gathering. It did not speak, nor threaten. It simply watched.
It stood beneath a dead tree at sunset and disappeared before dawn. Where it passed, the ground withered.
The next day, a single sigil had been carved into the shrine's wall—a perfect spiral, etched by no tool. It glowed faintly.
Liora touched it and felt a cold clarity pierce her mind. "This is a warning," she whispered.
Thalin closed his journal slowly. "No… it's a beginning."
A New Journey Beckons
Aelric stood before the assembly three days later, cloak blowing in the wind. The sky above no longer held constellations—but something older, stranger. The stars had begun to move.
He looked to them all—his companions, his allies, his lost and found family.
"We've trained. We've gathered. We've survived. But what's coming…" he gestured to the horizon, where a pale aurora shimmered over the mountains, "...it will unmake the world if we don't reach it first."
Liora stepped forward. "Where do we go?"
Thalin answered for him. "South. Beyond the broken coast. Into the realm once known as Kael Dravar."
The words stirred a hush.
Kael Dravar—the Lost Meridian. A place erased from most maps, sealed when the Great Sundering began. A land of storms and silence.
And somewhere within it… the Vault of Unwritten Stars.
A place no Starborn had ever returned from.
-
As they broke camp, Aelric stood at the edge of the ruins one last time.
Behind him, the council gathered—some fearful, some resolute, all bound to the fate he carried. Before him, a road that did not yet exist. Only a shimmer in the wind. A whisper.
He held the Heartstone up to the sky.
It pulsed once, and the stars above shifted.
He saw a city of obsidian and light, floating in the void.
He saw Nyara falling.
He saw himself… older, colder, standing at the edge of a gate that opened not into shadow, but into everything.
The image shattered as quickly as it came.
And he smiled—soft, almost mournful.
"Then let it begin again," he whispered.
With that, Aelric of the Starborn turned from the ruins and led the first steps of a journey that would take them beyond maps, beyond history, and into the truth buried beneath all stories.
Into the Spiral Beyond.
~to be continued