The bells of the Athenaeum tolled in low, solemn harmony, their bronze throats shaking the morning sky. Each peal rolled through the city of Caelumbria like thunder from the heavens themselves, stirring pigeons from rooftops and scattering the ash-fog that clung stubbornly to the lower districts.
To most, the bells were a call to reverence. To Elian, they were a reminder of dust.
He stood atop a swaying ladder in one of the Athenaeum's endless archive halls, his fingers smudged with ink and parchment dust, his brown robe worn thin at the cuffs. Rows of shelves soared around him like the ribs of a slumbering beast, vanishing into shadow where the star-crystals in their sconces gave out. Here, the air smelled of vellum, candle wax, and the faint metallic tang of aetherium oil drifting in from the lanterns outside.
Elian should have been content. A life among books, quiet corridors, knowledge older than kingdoms—most aspirants would sell their souls for it. But as he slid another brittle tome into place, he found his eyes straying not to the words, but to the narrow skylight above, where morning light filtered through the dust in pale shafts.
There it was again.
A star. Wrong. Out of place.
The sky was still pale with dawn, yet a single pinprick of black fire shimmered defiantly against the light. It burned without radiance, as if it were not giving light but swallowing it, a void-pulse that sent a prickle down his spine.
And—it was watching him.
He swallowed hard, shifting his gaze away, heart pounding. This was madness. Stars did not watch. They guided, they empowered, they aligned in the great weave of Aetheria. But they did not watch.
"Elian!"
The sharp voice cracked like a whip across the hall. His ladder wobbled, and he clutched the shelf to keep from tumbling.
Mistress Ilyra stood below, her robe of Solar white pooling around her feet like liquid light. Her hair was silver, her lips pressed thin with the weight of years of disapproval. In her hands, she clutched a brass staff crowned with a shard of sunstone, its faint glow casting him in judgment.
"You dream with your eyes open again," she said, tone dry as old parchment.
Elian forced a smile. "Just… stretching my sight, Mistress. The dust here—it clouds the mind."
Her eyes narrowed. She didn't believe him, but she didn't press. "The Ceremony of Alignment begins within the hour. Every aspirant must be present. Do not shame your tutors with tardiness."
"Yes, Mistress."
She lingered a heartbeat longer, her gaze catching the tremor in his hand as he adjusted a book. Something in her expression softened—almost pity—but then it was gone, hidden beneath the mask of authority. She turned, robes whispering against the marble floor, and her footsteps faded into the labyrinth of shelves.
Elian exhaled, sinking against the ladder's rung. His pulse hammered in his ears.
The star was still there when he looked back.
The streets of Caelumbria bloomed with banners as he made his way down from the Athenaeum's heights. The city was carved into tiers that spiraled up toward the central spire, each level a different world. Above, the noble terraces gleamed with glass domes and aetherium fountains that threw prisms across the air. Below, smoke belched from forge-stacks where artificers bent starlight into engines for skyships, their hammers clanging in rhythmic defiance.
Today, though, all eyes were turned skyward.
The Ceremony of Alignment was not simply ritual; it was survival. Every decade, when the great constellations shifted, the priests and seers wove the new patterns of power into the Loom of Aetheria. Without it, the flow of starlight into the world would falter, and crops would wither, engines stall, magisters go mad with hunger for power.
People thronged the avenues—merchants hawking starfruit glazed in honey, pilgrims in roughspun clutching prayer scrolls, children with paper masks of the Sun-Singer dancing through the crowds. Skyships hovered above like leviathans, their hulls plated with glimmering crystal, sails spread wide to catch both wind and light. The air was alive with incense and ozone, laughter and anticipation.
Elian moved through it all like a shadow. While others gazed upward in awe, his eyes kept straying to that single black star, invisible to everyone but him.
It pulsed when he looked at it. A slow, hungry throb.
The plaza at the base of the spire was a sea of bodies, but the Solar Guard cut a path through them with their radiant armor and disciplined ranks. At their head rode Kaelen.
Elian had seen him before, always from a distance, and always as one sees a statue—perfect, untouchable. His armor was polished to a mirror sheen, his hair a burnished gold, his expression carved from stone. The sunlight itself seemed to cling to him, refracting from the star-metal of his pauldrons.
The crowd adored him. They cheered his name, threw flowers in his path, reached for the hem of his cloak as though a touch might sanctify them. Kaelen did not acknowledge any of it. His eyes were fixed forward, cold and unwavering, a man chained to his duty.
When those eyes flicked, briefly, across Elian in the crowd, Elian's breath caught. There was no recognition—why would a knight of the Guard notice a lowly archivist?—yet something in Kaelen's gaze lingered, a faint crease of unease, as though he too felt a wrongness in the sky.
And then it was gone, swallowed in the ceremony's grandeur.
The spire's summit was a crown of light. The High Seer stood before the gathered aspirants, her staff raised, a dozen acolytes chanting the hymns that wound through the Loom itself. The constellations shifted above, stars weaving into new geometries, threads of radiance binding themselves into the world's fabric.
Elian should have been swept up in the majesty of it. He should have felt awe, reverence, belonging.
Instead, the black star pulsed harder.
A whisper coiled through his skull, low and velvet, like oil spilling across glass.
Elian…
He staggered, clutching his head. None of the others reacted. Their faces were lifted, serene, bathing in light.
Do you see me? Do you see what I am?
His breath came ragged. The air around him shimmered, light bending, warping. He tried to force it down, tried to steady himself, but the pressure built in his veins like molten glass.
The High Seer's voice boomed across the plaza:
"Let the stars renew their covenant with Aetheria—"
The black star flared.
Something inside Elian broke.
Light exploded from him, but it was not golden, not celestial. It was shadow, a searing tide of void that ripped outward in jagged tendrils. The hymn shattered into screams. The nearest aspirant was hurled backward, her body convulsing as her starlight guttered out. Crystals in the spire cracked and went dark.
The crowd recoiled, panic spreading like fire.
And in the chaos, Elian felt the star's gaze tighten on him, as intimate and invasive as a hand around his throat.
Mine, the voice whispered. You are mine.
Elian fell to his knees, gasping, the taste of iron flooding his mouth. Around him, the world reeled—the Solar Guard rushing forward, Kaelen's blade drawn and burning like a fragment of the sun, the High Seer's face stricken with horror.
The bells tolled again, not with reverence this time, but with dread.
Above them, the sky wept darkness.