The wind at the summit of Mount Caerith howled like a chorus of forgotten gods, cold and sharp as shattered glass. Aelric stood at the edge of the obsidian platform, boots inches from the drop that descended into a skyless chasm below. All around him, the stars shimmered—though no night sky was visible, only the vast, ethereal expanse of mirrored air that rippled with spectral light.
This was the beginning of the second phase of his Trial of Stars.
Behind him, the Astral Warden—the faceless entity cloaked in robes of moonlight and adorned with silver flame—stood motionless.
"You have stepped through the First Gate and faced the Echoes of the Past," the Warden said, its voice neither male nor female, but resonating with both familiarity and dread. "Now you must walk the Mirror Sky, where truth is reflection and every reflection carries a blade."
Aelric glanced over his shoulder, uncertainty flitting across his expression. "And if I fall?"
"There is no falling here," the Warden replied. "Only understanding. Or ruin."
The platform beneath his feet rumbled. With a great shuddering crack, the obsidian split down the middle and curved into a bridge of reflective crystal stretching across the mirrored horizon. It floated in endless twilight, its surface displaying not the sky above—but countless versions of himself, each one walking at his side, some whispering, some screaming, some entirely silent.
Aelric inhaled deeply, feeling the weight of the moment press upon his chest like stone. Then he took his first step.
The Path of Reflections
Each step across the mirrored bridge rippled through the mirrored sky, as if the world itself responded to his presence. As he advanced, the illusions of himself began to change. Some wore armor he had never seen. Others bore scars he did not yet carry. One limped, dragging a wounded leg, while another's face was lined with pain and grim resolve. There were dozens—hundreds—each representing a possibility, a choice made or refused, a destiny fulfilled or broken.
The further he went, the more chaotic they became.
One stepped free from the reflection and walked beside him—a version of himself clad in crimson, his eyes burned black with shadow.
"You let them die," the shadow-Aelric said, voice thick with disdain. "You chose duty over those you love. And what did it win you? Ashes. Always ashes."
Aelric clenched his jaw but said nothing.
A second emerged, garbed in flowing white, a crown of stars above his brow. This Aelric looked serene. Hollow.
"You denied power when it was offered," the serene-Aelric said. "You could have ended it all—won peace through might. But you chose to be human. You chose pain."
More came. More accusations. More judgments. Visions of futures that might have been, had he turned a different way at any of a thousand crossroads.
He faltered under their weight.
Then he heard a voice—soft, resolute, real.
"Aelric."
It was Liora. Not a reflection, but memory.
He closed his eyes and remembered her hand grasping his after their battle in the marshes, her voice whispering hope into the darkness. That memory anchored him.
He stepped forward, ignoring the ghost-voices.
And the bridge steadied beneath him.
The Lake of Truths
The path ended at a vast lake, its surface unmoving, as if the stars had been poured into water. Aelric gazed into it and saw his entire life ripple across the glassy waters—the village of Eldrin, the moment the Starfire awoke in him, his training, the first time he saw Liora's fire in battle, the day Nyara first spoke his name.
He also saw the things he had hidden from himself.
His fear when he first killed.
His envy of Thalin's knowledge.
His longing to turn back, to just be a boy again.
And above all, the crushing loneliness that never quite left him.
"It is not weakness to feel," came the Warden's voice again. The figure now stood at the opposite shore of the lake. "It is weakness to lie about what you feel."
Aelric stepped into the lake. It did not splash or ripple—it accepted him as if he were light himself. The world around him dimmed, and suddenly he was submerged in his own memories.
The Trial Within
He stood in Eldrin again, but it was burning. Villagers screamed as the Black Priests advanced, fire spreading through thatched rooftops like plague. He turned—and there was his mother, calling for him.
He ran to her, heart thundering—but the flame consumed her before he could reach her. A scream tore from his throat.
Then the vision shifted—he was back in the Marshes, Thalin's lifeless form cradled in his arms, though Thalin yet lived in truth. Still, the weight was real.
"You are not enough," a voice echoed around him. "You will never be enough."
He shook his head. "I've heard you before."
He turned—and there it was. The great serpent of shadow from his nightmares—the same that Morvath had once conjured. Its coils slithered through the water of memory, rising high above him.
"I am the truth of your fear," it hissed.
"No," Aelric replied, summoning the Starfire within. "You're only the shape I give it."
He raised his hand, and light erupted from his palm—not in violence, but in acceptance.
The serpent howled as it was consumed—not by flame, but by clarity.
When the lake cleared, Aelric stood taller.
The Warden watched from across the now-frozen lake, nodding once.
"You have faced the Mirror. You have crossed the Sky. The final gate awaits."
The Gate of Stars
It appeared as a simple archway in the air, made of light and shadow braided like twin rivers. It hovered above the edge of the lake, surrounded by constellations that pulsed with quiet power.
Aelric stepped through without hesitation.
In an instant, he was pulled into the stars themselves.
The Starforge
He stood in a void of galaxies, each spinning slowly around a colossal forge suspended in the nothingness—a place of creation, where souls were tempered like blades and destinies hammered into shape.
A figure waited there—not the Warden, but someone else.
An old man with eyes like twin novas.
"You have come far, child," the figure said. "But every journey makes a shape in the stars. Every choice burns a path. You are not the first Starborn. But you may be the last."
"Who are you?" Aelric asked.
"I am the Starforger," the figure said. "And this is where you choose the shape of your fire."
Around Aelric spun shards of potential—armors made of celestial ore, weapons forged from starlight, crowns of realms undone.
"Will you be a tyrant? A martyr? A savior? The stars do not care. But you must choose."
Aelric stepped forward.
"I choose to be myself."
He reached out—and from the forge, light burst, engulfing him.
Awakening
He awoke on the summit of Mount Caerith again, the stars above real this time. Nyara stood beside him, her golden eyes wide with awe.
"You passed," she whispered.
Aelric looked down at his hands. The star-mark on his chest now pulsed with quiet rhythm—not wild, not dangerous, but in harmony.
"I did more than pass," he said. "I remembered who I am."
Liora and Thalin rushed to him from the edge of the clearing, both visibly relieved.
But the moment of peace did not last.
From the sky, a crack split open.
And through it, a shadow fell.
A tower of obsidian descending from the heavens—above it, a swirling mass of void magic.
Thalin paled. "That's not Morvath."
"No," said Nyara. "It's older. Deeper. The Trial was just the beginning."
Aelric watched as the shadow structure touched down upon the horizon, sending a quake across the continent.
He clenched his fist.
"The next journey begins now."
~to be continued