"Welcome home, daughter of starlight."
The voice echoed inside my skull, ancient and powerful, making my bones vibrate. I crashed to my knees on the black stone platform, gasping for air as silver light poured from my skin like water.
"Who are you?" I choked out. "What's happening to me?"
But the voice was gone, leaving only silence and the humming of power in the air around me.
The stone pillars surrounding the clearing blazed brighter, their symbols shifting and moving like living things. Above me, the seven aligned stars pulsed in rhythm with my racing heartbeat.
I pressed my hands against the cold platform, trying to steady myself. The silver glow was spreading, crawling up my arms in patterns that looked like... constellations. Tiny stars connected by glowing lines, mapping themselves across my skin.
This wasn't possible. Humans didn't glow. Stars didn't talk. None of this was real.
Except it was. I could feel it—power thrumming through my veins, building pressure behind my ribs like I might explode if I didn't release it.
"Stop," I whispered, squeezing my eyes shut. "Please stop. I don't understand what's happening."
The power didn't stop. It grew stronger.
Images flashed through my mind—not memories, but something else. Something older. I saw myself as a baby, wrapped in blankets covered with star symbols. I saw a woman's face hovering over me, beautiful and sad, pressing a kiss to my forehead. I saw her whispering words I couldn't hear while silver tears ran down her cheeks.
Then the image shattered, replaced by darkness and screaming.
I jerked backward, the vision disappearing. My hands were shaking violently.
That woman... I'd never seen her before. But somehow, deep in my soul, I knew who she was.
My mother.
Not Lady Margaret. My real mother. The one Father never talked about. The one who died when I was born—or so I'd always been told.
"What did you do to me?" I shouted at the stars. "What AM I?"
The stars didn't answer, but the power inside me surged higher, demanding release. It felt like holding lightning in my chest. If I didn't let it out soon, it would tear me apart from the inside.
Fine. If the stars wanted power released, I'd give them power.
I struggled to my feet, spreading my arms wide. Every terrible thing that happened tonight came flooding back—Dorian's betrayal, Seraphina's lies, Stepmother's rejection, the crowd's disgust, those creatures in the alley.
Years and years of being invisible. Of working twice as hard for half the recognition. Of hoping someone would finally see me as worthy.
All of it. Wasted.
"You want to know what I wish for?" My voice came out hoarse and raw. "Fine. I'll tell you."
The seven stars burned brighter, listening.
"I wish to be SEEN!" The words ripped from my throat. "Not as a servant. Not as someone's tool. Not as the girl who doesn't matter. I want everyone who looked through me to SEE me!"
Silver light exploded from the pillars, shooting into the sky like reverse lightning.
"I wish to be WORTH something!" Tears streamed down my face, hot against my rain-chilled skin. "Not because of who I serve or who I marry. Because of who I AM. Because I'm ENOUGH exactly as I am!"
The ground beneath me began to shake. Cracks formed in the black stone platform, glowing with the same silver light as my skin.
"And I wish..." My voice dropped to a deadly whisper. "I wish for the POWER to make them ALL pay. Dorian. Seraphina. Stepmother. Every single person who used me and threw me away. I want them to regret EVER treating me like I was nothing!"
The moment the last word left my lips, the world exploded.
Pure white light erupted from the seven stars, slamming down into the ruins like a hammer from the heavens. It hit the pillars first, making them ring like massive bells. Then it poured into the platform where I stood, flowing up through my feet and into my body.
I screamed.
Power flooded every cell, every nerve, every piece of me. It felt like being unmade and remade at the same time. Like dying and being born in the same breath.
The silver marks on my skin blazed so bright I couldn't look at them. They spread across my entire body—arms, legs, chest, face—turning me into a living constellation map.
Above me, the seven stars began to move, spinning in a circle faster and faster until they blurred into a ring of light. The ring grew larger, stretching across the entire sky, and in its center, something was forming.
A doorway.
No—a portal.
The air inside the ring rippled like water, showing glimpses of somewhere else. Somewhere that definitely wasn't the mortal world. I saw structures made of crystal and starlight, floating in an endless night sky. I saw beings that looked almost human but glowed with their own inner light.
The celestial realm.
It was real. All the old stories Father told me were REAL.
The power inside me reached a breaking point. I couldn't hold it anymore. I opened my mouth and silver light poured out, a scream made of pure energy.
The ruins shook so hard that several pillars cracked. The platform beneath me split completely, chunks of black stone rising into the air, defying gravity.
And then something massive dropped through the portal.
A figure in silver armor landed on the platform in a crouch, one fist slamming into the stone with enough force to crater it. Starlight danced along the edges of his armor, and when he stood up, I saw a face that was almost too perfect to be human.
Sharp cheekbones. Strong jaw. Silver hair that moved like liquid metal. And eyes—gods, his eyes—like molten silver, ancient and powerful and currently locked directly on me.
He drew a sword from his back, and the blade ignited with white fire.
"Step away from the convergence point," he commanded, his voice deep and cold as space itself. "NOW."
I couldn't move. The power was still pouring through me, locking my muscles in place.
The man—no, the warrior—took a step closer, his sword raised. "I said MOVE. You're tearing the barrier between realms. If you don't stop, both worlds will—"
He froze mid-sentence, his silver eyes going wide.
At the exact same moment, something inside my chest yanked hard, like an invisible rope pulling me toward him.
A golden thread of light materialized in the air between us, connecting his chest to mine. The moment it formed, I felt everything he was feeling—shock, confusion, and underneath it all, a warmth he clearly hadn't felt in a very, very long time.
The warrior staggered backward like he'd been shot.
"No," he whispered, and for the first time, his cold voice cracked with something that sounded like fear. "This is impossible."
The golden thread pulsed brighter, and I felt the truth of what it meant slam into both of us at once.
A soul-bond.
We were bound. Connected in a way that couldn't be broken except by death.
The most forbidden connection in either realm had just snapped into place between a mortal girl and a celestial warrior.
The warrior's sword clattered from his hand. He pressed both palms against his chest like he was trying to physically push the bond away.
"What have you done?" His voice was barely a whisper now. "What have you DONE?"
Behind him, dozens more figures dropped through the portal, all in armor, all carrying weapons.
And every single one of them was staring at the golden thread connecting us with absolute horror.
A woman with dark purple hair and amethyst eyes landed beside the warrior. She looked at him, then at me, then back at him.
"Orion," she breathed. "Is that what I think it is?"
The warrior—Orion—didn't answer. He just kept staring at me with those silver eyes, emotions flickering across his face too fast to name.
Then the purple-haired woman's expression hardened. She raised her hand, and a spear made of night itself formed in her palm.
"I'm sorry, mortal," she said, aiming it straight at my heart. "But soul-bonds between celestials and mortals are forbidden. The only way to break it is to kill one of you."
She drew her arm back to throw.
"And you're the easier target."