When Charlie left for work, the house fell silent except for the faint hum of the refrigerator. Astraea sat at the kitchen table, fingers resting lightly on the wood, her eyes distant.
Paper trails. Names. Numbers. This planet needed them to prove a person existed. She did not have the luxury of waiting for bureaucracies to catch up.
Closing her eyes, she reached into the fabric of this world's reality — the subtle weave that bound thought, record, and memory into a shared truth. With a slow exhale, she pulled on the threads.
Birth records altered. Databases rewritten.
An official birth certificate slid into existence within the nearest government archive, timestamped eighteen years ago in a quiet hospital on the coast. A driver's license followed — her face captured in perfect clarity — and a Social Security number that wove itself seamlessly into the national registry.
By the time she opened her eyes, the digital and physical realities of this world agreed on one truth: Astraea Vale had always existed.
She rose from the table, her expression calm but her steps purposeful. The morning sunlight streamed through the windows, warm against her skin — a sensation she had gone far too long without.
Crossing the living room, she ascended the stairs and entered the room she had been using. Kneeling beside the bed, Astraea pressed her palm lightly to the wooden floorboards. A faint shimmer pulsed under her hand as the boards parted just enough for her to retrieve the blackened crystal she had hidden there — the astral fragment, still warm to the touch, the spiral star and its seven smaller companions etched into its surface as if they had been carved from the void itself.
She held it for a moment, feeling the quiet thrum of its power, before slipping it into a small cloth pouch at her side.
Outside, the air was crisp with the scent of pine and damp earth. She followed a narrow deer trail, her senses sweeping ahead until the forest opened into a secluded clearing bathed in golden light. Grass swayed gently under a soft breeze, and beams of sunlight filtered through the canopy in shifting, golden lattices.
Perfect.
Astraea stepped into the heart of the clearing and lowered herself into a seated position, cross-legged, the pouch resting before her. With a flick of her fingers, she opened it, letting the astral fragment catch the sun. The symbol upon it seemed to drink in the light, making the etched stars glow faintly.
Closing her eyes, Astraea inhaled slowly. She reached beyond what mortal senses could touch, feeling for the ambient Aether drifting on sunlight and air currents. It came to her in shimmering threads, warm and weightless, drawn into her body with each breath.
Her skin began to faintly luminesce, a soft halo forming around her silhouette. The grass around her stilled, as though the clearing itself held its breath.
The fragment pulsed once — then again — in time with her heartbeat. Wisps of astral light rose from its surface, spiraling upward before sinking into Astraea's chest. She felt the resonance deepen, as though the crystal was both feeding her and feeding off her in equal measure.
Memories tried to stir at the edges of her mind — not her own, but echoes tied to the fragment. She did not chase them. Not yet.
Instead, she kept breathing, gathering Aether until the faint ache of weakness in her limbs began to fade, replaced by a steady, humming strength.
When Astraea's eyes opened, the clearing was gone.
The sunlight vanished, replaced by a dim, wavering glow — as though she stood deep underground. She looked down and found her feet planted on ancient stone, worn smooth by time. In her hands, the astral fragment pulsed with a slow, deliberate rhythm, brighter than she had ever seen it.
A figure emerged from the darkness ahead. The same one she had glimpsed in memory before — tall, robed, their face hidden in shadow beneath a deep hood. The fabric was stitched with that same emblem: a spiral star encircled by seven smaller stars, each thread catching the faint light like strands of silver.
The figure knelt before a shallow depression in the stone floor. Without speaking, they placed the fragment into the hollow with both hands, their touch lingering.
Astraea stepped forward instinctively. "Who are you?"
The figure stilled but did not look up. Their voice, when it came, was low and resonant, as though spoken across centuries.
"If you are seeing this, then they have returned again."
The fragment in the vision flared briefly, flooding the chamber with white-gold light. Astraea shielded her eyes, but shapes still flickered at the edge of her sight — a sky split open, a crown of stars breaking apart, and seven trails of light scattering into the void.
"Guard what you hold," the figure continued, "for it is both the key and the lock. When the seventh star falls, the path will open."
The light dimmed, and the figure's form began to dissolve into drifting motes, as though the vision itself was being pulled away.
Astraea reached out — but her hand passed through empty air.
She turned the fragment over in her hand, running her thumb across the engraved spiral star. The crack on one of the smaller stars was thin, almost hairline, but she could feel it — a faint pulse of energy leaking through, like a whisper trying to escape.
She closed her eyes and reached inward, letting her senses probe the memory of the fragment. She sifted through impressions she had stored before, her mind cataloging every ridge, every symbol, every curve.
No… this fracture hadn't been there when she first unearthed it. Not even when she brought it to the clearing this morning.
That meant something in the vision — or in her — had caused it.
Her grip tightened slightly.
Could it be linked to the 45% of power she'd already recovered? Or… was the fragment responding to the reawakening of her true abilities?
She exhaled slowly, letting the thought settle.
If the crack had appeared after only a small fraction of her strength returned, then she could only imagine what might happen once she reached full power.
Tucking the fragment safely back into its wrappings, she rose from the grass. The warmth of the clearing was no longer just comforting — it felt watchful, as though the place itself had seen what she'd seen.
Astraea cast one last glance at the sun-dappled trees before turning toward the forest path.
She needed to learn more about the emblem. And the figure. And… the meaning of the "seventh star."
Rising from the soft grass, she brushed stray petals from her skirt and stepped out of the sunlit clearing. The air grew cooler as the forest closed in around her, but the slow, steady stream of Aether she had drawn into herself kept her limbs light.
By the time the Swan house came into view through the trees, the scent of brewed coffee drifted on the breeze. She floated the last few feet to the porch, landing with barely a sound before slipping back inside.
The quiet interior greeted her, noon daylight filtering through the windows and scattering gold across the living room floor.
Charlie's voice carried faintly from the kitchen. "There you are. Thought you'd gone for a walk."
"I returned," she said simply, her tone warmer now, a hint of energy back in her words.
Charlie leaned back against the counter, coffee mug in hand, watching her with a mix of curiosity and that quiet, fatherly wariness he seemed to wear naturally.
"So," he started, "about this morning. The school thing." He took a sip before continuing. "If you're planning to stay here a while, you're gonna need to be enrolled. Can't have you just… hanging around all day. And they're gonna want paperwork—birth certificate, ID, social security. That kind of thing."
Astraea met his gaze, her expression unreadable for a beat before it softened into something almost pleasant. "I understand."
Without another word, she reached into the satchel resting by the couch and withdrew a neat stack of documents. Birth certificate. Social security card. State-issued driver's license. All of them bearing the name Astraea Vale alongside a flawless photo of her.
She held them out. "These should suffice."
Charlie blinked, caught off guard by how complete and organized they were. He took the papers, flipping through each one with the practiced eye of someone used to spotting fakes… and finding nothing wrong. "Huh. You work fast."
"I am… efficient," she replied simply, a faint curl at the corner of her mouth hinting at amusement.
Charlie shook his head, setting the papers aside. "Alright. I'll talk to the school. Bella'll be home soon—you'll probably meet some of her friends in the next few days."
Astraea tilted her head. "That will be… informative."
Charlie just chuckled and shook his head, heading into the living room.
Astraea settled into the kitchen's small table, a well-worn paperback resting in her hands. The book itself wasn't particularly engaging—it was simply something Charlie had left on the counter last week—but her attention wasn't really on the words. Instead, she let the quiet of the house seep into her awareness, listening to the hum of the refrigerator and the faint ticking of the wall clock.
Her gaze occasionally drifted toward the window, where thin beams of afternoon sunlight slanted across the counter. Each one was a soft trickle of energy, not enough to replenish her entirely, but pleasant all the same.
She turned another page, her fingers tapping idly against the table in a faint, rhythmic pattern that might have been part of some half-forgotten melody. With each breath, she anchored herself deeper into the moment, letting her mind remain open—ready to sense any new disturbances in the currents of fate that wove through Forks.
An hour passed this way, the book half-read and her thoughts only half-present in its story, until the muffled rumble of a familiar truck in the driveway reached her ears. A small smile touched her lips. Bella was home.
The creak of the front door and the sound of boots on the hallway floor signaled Bella's return. Astraea didn't look up from her book right away, the soft scratch of a turning page the only movement she made.
When Bella stepped into the kitchen, she froze.
Sunlight streamed in through the window behind Astraea, catching the strands of her long hair—pink, blue, and lavender weaving together like silk threads dipped in morning dew. The light made her two-toned eyes—a mix of lavender and teal—glow faintly, almost unnaturally, as if something within them caught and refracted the sun's warmth.
For a moment, Bella forgot to breathe. The strange girl looked as if she didn't quite belong to the same world—too composed, too still, too luminous. She sat there in the simple wooden chair, one leg folded over the other, the sunlight painting her in an ethereal halo that made the ordinary kitchen seem like a place pulled from a dream.
It was only when Astraea finally lifted her gaze from the page and met Bella's eyes that Bella snapped herself out of it, clearing her throat.
"You're… reading?" she asked, though the words felt almost too mundane for the moment.
Astraea tilted her head slightly, as if considering the question more deeply than necessary. "I am," she replied softly. "The literature here is, well, not as beautiful as I would like, but it was good to pass the time, I suppose."
Bella set her bag on the counter but kept glancing at the girl, still faintly dazed by that surreal first impression.
"What are you reading?" she asked, trying to sound casual, though her voice had a faint hitch to it.
Astraea's gaze lowered briefly to the open pages before lifting back to Bella. "A collection of… philosophies," she replied, her tone quiet but tinged with something warmer than the clipped detachment Bella had heard this morning. "This world has… curious ways of defining truth."
Bella blinked, unsure if she should be amused or confused. "That's… vague," she said, pulling out a chair.
Astraea tilted her head in acknowledgment, a faint curve at the corner of her mouth—just enough to make Bella wonder if she'd imagined it. "Perhaps," she said. "But I think I would find it… interesting."
For a few moments, the kitchen was still except for the ticking of the wall clock and the rustle of pages as Astraea turned another. Then Bella realized she was staring again and quickly looked away, feeling strangely unsettled—though she couldn't quite say why.