The sky went wrong at lunchtime.
One moment, Hikaru Sato was squinting at the window's washed-out blue, counting down minutes to math. The next, the light thinned as if someone were turning a dimmer on the sun. Phones rose like a field of silver fish; someone said, "Solar eclipse!" and everyone pressed to the glass.
The room cooled. Shadows sharpened. Hikaru's reflection wavered on the pane—soft black hair, shy eyes, that practiced smile he wore so teachers wouldn't ask if he was "doing okay."
Then the hum started.
Not from lights. From the air. A cicada-song that vibrated behind his teeth.
"Chosen." The voice didn't come from a person. It came from everywhere, like the eclipse itself had decided to speak. The floor flexed. Chalk dust lifted. Circles of pale brilliance unfurled beneath desks and sneakers, delicate as frost.
Hikaru's breath hitched. He stumbled back from the window.
A classmate grabbed his sleeve. "Sato—"
The world folded.
—
Cold stone kissed his knees. Frankincense burned his nose. When Hikaru blinked the stars from his vision, the classroom was gone.
He knelt in an enormous hall beneath a cathedral dome, its stained glass a riot of suns, moons, and wheeling constellations. Hundreds of candles guttered. A gold-robed priest lifted a staff crowned by an eclipsed sun. Around Hikaru, boys and girls his age clutched at unfamiliar robes and tunics, mouths open, eyes huge.
They weren't alone.
Armored knights formed a ring beyond the candles, white cloaks embroidered with solar sigils. On the dais, an elderly man watched from a blackwood throne. A crown like a burst of rays rested against his graying hair. Even from the floor, Hikaru felt the weight of his gaze.
"Welcome, chosen of another world," the priest declared, voice rolling to the rafters. "By decree of the Celestial Church and prayer of King Edric of Aurelia, you have been summoned to aid this realm against the tide of darkness." He lifted his staff. The eclipsed sun glowed. "Rejoice. You are heroes."
A murmur rippled through the gathered students—disbelief, fear, breathless excitement.
Not a dream, Hikaru thought numbly. Not a prank. His chest fluttered as if his ribs were a birdcage and something larger than him tried to get out.
A boy near him—sun-bright hair, shoulders like a sprinter—grinned wide and fearless. "Holy crap," he whispered, then laughed, the sound bubbling up like a champagne cork. He would learn later that the boy's name was Leonidas. The knights looked at him with something like relief.
Hikaru swallowed. Excitement lapped at his ankles. Then he remembered the eclipse swallowing their sky and he flinched from it.
On the dais, a magus in midnight-blue robes opened a ledger that smelled of vellum. "By tradition, appraisal follows. Each hero will receive their initial blessings and affinities, that they may be trained accordingly."
"Appraisal?" someone asked.
"Your talents," the priest said, indulgent. "Fire. Light. Lightning. Swords. Things the gods gifted to those worthy."
Hikaru pressed clammy palms to the floor to keep them from shaking. He glanced up. One of the priests in the choir stalls—a narrow, lantern-eyed man with a starburst tattoo at his throat—wasn't watching the crowd. He was watching Hikaru. Noticing that gaze was like noticing a thorn nested inside a bouquet.
The knights opened a path down the carpet.
"First, the bold youth who spoke," the magus said, the edge of a smile touching his mouth. "Come forward."
The blond boy straightened, swagger settling over his frame like a cape. He climbed the steps. He placed his hand on the crystal set into the lectern.
Light burst.
A column of gold streamed to the dome and wreathed him like a coronation. The crystal rang out as if a sword had been struck. Runic script flared in the air: Holy Affinity – Light. Blessing: Dragonsbane. Sword Saint Aptitude.
The hall roared.
"Sir Leonidas," the king said, voice booming warm as bread from an oven. "A hero indeed."
Leonidas turned, stunned and delighted, basking in the adoration. When he caught Hikaru's eye, he grinned like they were already teammates sharing a victory.
One by one, more classmates stepped into the light.
A girl with braids: Water + Healing.
A thin boy who never stopped doodling: Wind + Illusion.
A deadpan sprinter: Lightning.
A quiet alto from chorus: Light + Sanctuary.
Cheering swelled with each success. Knights exchanged approving nods. Teachers back home would have wept to see them bloom like this.
Hikaru's turn approached like a tide.
When the magus called, he forced his legs to work. The carpet seemed to tilt under his steps, like the cathedral had become a ship in high waves. He climbed. He found the crystal. Up close, it was shot through with tiny motes, as if you could catch galaxies.
"State your name," the magus said, quill poised.
"Hikaru Sato."
"Place your hand."
He did.
Cold bled up his fingers. The motes moved. For a heartbeat, the world narrowed to a pressure behind his eyes, the kind you get when an elevator stops too fast, and—there—
Something tugged down, and in, and around. A notion, a weight, a curve of space felt rather than understood. It skated away like a fish under dark water.
The crystal flickered.
A few sparks rose, violet-black, like cinders that swallowed light instead of giving it.
Then… nothing.
No column. No fanfare. Only the faintest thrum, like a plucked vein.
Hikaru's cheeks heated. "Did—did it work?"
Silence pooled.
The magus frowned. He squinted at the crystal, then at the runes that should have formed over the lectern. They struggled into existence, pale as chalk dust in shadow.
Affinity: Celestial (???). Blessing: —. Aptitudes: —
A cough. A snort that someone failed to smother.
"Rarely," the magus said, the way people say unfortunately, "the crystal returns an indeterminate reading. Your status is… obscured. For now, we will enter you as unawakened."
"Unawakened?" a knight repeated, and a ripple of disappointment traveled the ring like a bad smell.
Leonidas' smile faltered. He looked away, guilt and relief tangling in his eyes.
The king's mouth tightened, barely. "Very well," he said. "The gods reveal their designs in time. Next!"
Hikaru stepped down, rope-limbed with embarrassment. He found a dark stretch of wall and pressed his shoulder to it. Every clap that followed for someone else stung like applause at a party he hadn't been invited to after all.
"You look like you're going to throw up," said a soft voice.
He turned. A girl from his class—Miho, the one who always remembered to return borrowed pens—stood a careful arm's length away. "I'm fine," he lied.
"You will be," she said, with the serene conviction of people who'd just been told they were healers. "They'll figure it out."
He nodded, the movement small as a flinch.
Across the hall, the lantern-eyed priest had not stopped watching him. When Hikaru met his gaze, the man's mouth tipped in a private smile, like they shared a secret.
A chill skittered down Hikaru's spine.
—
They were fed in the refectory: stew, dark bread, cold apples. The food clattered in Hikaru's stomach like coins in a jar. Later, novices led them to cots in a long stone dormitory overlooking the palace wall. A crescent moon hung over Solmaris, the capital, painting the rooftops silver.
Hikaru didn't sleep.
He lay on his back and watched the moon slide behind a gauze of cloud. Snatches of conversation floated up from nearby cots—bragging, planning, breathless what-ifs.
You don't have to be special, he told his churning thoughts. You just have to be useful.
He could learn. He could clean weapons, carry water, hold a shield, take notes, smile in the right places. If he was a background character, he would be the best background character.
A bell tolled midnight.
The dormitory door creaked.
No footsteps followed. Only the whisper of air as it swung wider, then closed.
Hikaru's skin tightened. He rolled his head.
A figure stood at the far end of the cots, a smear of black against black. For a breath, Hikaru thought thief. Then the figure tilted, and candlelight from the corridor found a face he recognized: the narrow priest with the starburst tattoo.
Hikaru lowered his head before their eyes could snare each other. He watched through his lashes.
The priest's gaze drifted like a needle seeking true north. It stopped on Hikaru. The smile again—polite, chilly, terribly interested. Then the man lifted two fingers to his breastbone in a sign that wasn't the Church's sunburst. He pressed those fingers to the doorframe. He left with the same noiseless care he'd entered.
Hikaru counted his heartbeat until it no longer hurt.
In the corner, moonlight made a cross of light on the floorboards. He stared at it until it wavered.
Tomorrow, the guild trainers would start evaluations. Swords. Bows. Marching. He could swing, sweat, square his shoulders, nod when shouted at. He could make himself small where he must, and larger where he could.
He closed his eyes, and the memory returned—the feel of something tugging down and in and around, the lift of his stomach as if the floor had dropped a centimeter, the way the crystal shed shadow instead of shine.
He reached for that sensation the way you reach for a word on the tip of your tongue.
Nothing answered.
Hikaru rolled onto his side. Outside, a wind moved, and Solmaris' towers thrummed like strings.
He did not notice the glass by the open window tremble, or the apple core on his trunk shift a hair and settle again. He did not notice how the shadows near his cot hung heavier than elsewhere, how the night stretched thin around him like cloth pulled too tight over a frame.
In another place—the cathedrals of men, the temples of old dragons—the moons wheeled. Somewhere far below the city, in a cave that remembered thunder, something old turned its face toward the boy who could not sleep.
Morning would bring appraisal again. Training. A dungeon named after a falling moon.
And the first small, unremarkable step toward an abyss.
— End of Chapter 1 —