The sky split open like glass shattering in reverse.
The Starborn didn't descend like invaders—they emerged like memories. Ancient, elegant, humming with a language not spoken but felt in the marrow of our bones. They poured through the Gates in patterns too perfect to be random and too chaotic to be rehearsed. The Queen, mid-charge, froze as if the weight of their presence alone arrested time.
Kael stood at the edge of the basin, lightning dancing across her arms. "What… are they waiting for?"
"They're listening," I murmured. "To the world. To us."
The Gates didn't just open—they translated us.
And they judged.
The Starborn leader, scaled and radiant, stepped forward. Eyes like frozen galaxies locked onto mine.
"You are Rae of the Eighth Mark."
"Yeah," I said, voice dry. "That's me."
"You are the Catalyst. But your war is not only ours to end."
The Queen snarled, her voice cutting like broken glass across dimensions. "You do not belong here! This is my realm!"
The Starborn leader turned to her, calm as a sunset. "It was never yours. You only held its leash."
And then the true battle began.
They fought with song.
Not metaphors. Actual resonance. Vibrations that bent space and cracked armor. The Starborn sang in pulses of color and sound that tore through the Queen's army like an aria made of rage. Each note was a strike, each harmony a wave of burning energy.
But she was no ordinary enemy.
The Queen changed. Her form expanded, spiraling out into something winged and monstrous. Her armor shed like snakeskin, revealing a body made of stardust and void. She screamed, and the ground beneath us fissured, swallowing two of our fighters instantly.
Kael lunged with a war cry that made even the Starborn hesitate. Lightning speared from her fingertips and coiled like serpents toward the Queen. Ashi flanked, her wounded arm tied but her stance still sharp. I felt the Mark on my chest pulse. Hot. Demanding.
We needed more than fury.
We needed unity.
"Link with me," I told Kael, grabbing her arm.
"That's suicidal."
"It's necessary."
She didn't argue. For once.
Our Marks synced. My flames wrapped around her storm, becoming plasma. Ashi joined in, her shadow Mark folding into ours like dusk meets dawn. For a brief moment, we were one being—three spirits forged into one current.
And we hurled ourselves at the Queen.
We didn't fight her.
We broke her rhythm.
Her attacks were mathematical. Predictable to the Starborn, but too fast for humans—until we became something in between. I saw her panic. Her strikes started missing. Her form began to flicker.
The Starborn leader nodded once.
"Now, Rae."
The Eighth Mark ignited, a star collapsing into itself inside my ribcage.
I roared, unleashing every ounce of memory, pain, grief, love—every thread of my existence—into the glyphs around the Gate.
The Gates answered.
They closed.
But not before they pulled the Queen into their core.
She screamed, not in pain, but in disbelief.
"No—this realm is MINE—"
And then she was gone.
The basin fell silent.
The aftermath didn't feel like victory.
It felt like silence, deep and endless.
The Starborn lingered only long enough to pass something into my hands: a seed.
"This will grow a new Gate," the leader said. "When the time is right. When your realm is ready again."
And then they vanished.
Just… blinked out. Like they were never there.
Kael collapsed. Ashi cried. Eryn crawled out from the rubble, laughing and sobbing like a girl who just survived a nightmare.
The war was over.
But something else was beginning.
Because in that moment, I realized something:
The Gates never judged us to decide if we were worthy.
They opened to ask if we believed we could be.
And somehow, we said yes.
To be CONTINUED.....