The first time Elira noticed it, she thought it was her imagination—just a stutter in the glow that lived behind her ribs. But then it happened again the next night, and the next after that.Kael’s flame—his presence, his essence—had always burned inside her with steady warmth. Now it flickered unpredictably, sometimes guttering so low she could barely feel it at all, sometimes flaring bright enough to make her gasp.She was in the Star Throne’s observatory when the latest shiver came. The glass floor reflected the constellations above and below, but her focus wasn’t on the stars. Her palm pressed flat to her sternum, chasing the irregular pulse of heat.“Elira,” Zara’s voice cut through the quiet. “You’re pale. What’s wrong?”“It’s him,” Elira murmured, still staring at her own reflection in the glass. “Kael’s flame—it’s… changing.”Zara approached, the hem of her dark coat whispering over the crystal floor. “Changing how?”“Like pieces of him are breaking off,” Elira said. “And they
The Hall of Seven Lights was never meant to hold so many worlds at once.The mirrored gateways shimmered along the marble walls, each an unbroken sheet of liquid glass. Beyond them—other skies, other continents, other versions of the same people who now stood in tense clusters beneath the vaulted ceiling. The air carried the hum of unstable magic, the kind that made even seasoned mages keep their hands close to their blades.Elira sat upon the Star Throne, the glow of her six flames casting her face in shifting gold. She did not look like a ruler born to the title—too young, too fierce, and too tired—but none in the chamber dared mistake her for anything less than sovereign.“Let them through,” she told the guards at the central archway.The doors opened, and the first of the mirror-versions entered. They came in pairs—a mirror captain from the Eastern Watch, his armor etched with strange constellations; a mirror healer whose eyes reflected silver instead of green; a mirror councilor
The Wound had no name on any map. It was not a place so much as an absence—a raw gash in the world where nothing held shape, where the sky forgot to be blue and the earth forgot how to grow. It stretched in all directions and yet never seemed to move. And when Elira stepped into it, barefoot, silent, her feet brushing ground that shifted like breath, like memory, the world behind her simply ceased to exist.Zara and Ruby had searched for her for nearly two days before her trail vanished at the Wound’s edge. Ruby had begged the wind spirits for direction; Zara had traced the skies for star-ripples and unmade tracks. But Elira was already beyond reach, already falling inward, pulled not by logic or duty—but by a calling she hadn’t yet named.There was no wind here. No color. Even time stuttered like a skipped heartbeat.She walked as if sleepwalking, though her eyes were open. Each step deeper into the Wound was a shedding—of thought, identity, ego. Until only the flame remained. The on
The Vale was quieter than usual that dawn. Winds scraped along the high ridges with an anxious hush, as if the very sky was holding its breath. Ruby stood at the edge of the Storm Wall, eyes fixed on the churning expanse beyond. The clouds boiled with tension, as if they, too, had heard the whispers.A threat from within.She clutched the edge of her cloak tighter around her shoulders. Below her, in the newly raised barracks of the Guard, silence reigned—too quiet for a force sworn to protect Elira. She had spent the past week tracing rumors, catching fragments of conversation buried beneath compliance and politeness.A suggestion here. A question there.Could the Starborn be unbound forever?It had taken time. Too much time.She turned at the soft crunch of boots on gravel. Talin approached, his face pale, his uniform stiff with recent rain."It's true," he said. No preamble. Just those two words, heavy as stone.Ruby didn’t need to ask what he meant. She only nodded, feeling the ach
The Sea of Lost Teeth had never known silence. It was a place of wind-lashed cliffs, wrecked ships, and churning waves that clawed hungrily at the sky. Yet this morning, as Zara stood at the helm of the sky skiff, the sea below was still—not calm, but suspended. Like it was holding its breath.Above it floated an island that hadn't been there the day before.Not driftwood or stone, but an actual landmass, hovering hundreds of feet above the sea—rotating gently, cloaked in glowing vines and etched with ancient sigils. The same sigils Elira had drawn in ash months ago.Zara gripped the edge of the vessel tighter as Ruby landed beside her. “It’s not just floating,” Ruby said, eyeing the island. “It’s...breathing. Do you feel that pulse?”Zara nodded. Beneath them, the skiff trembled with the same rhythm that pulsed beneath Elira’s Star Throne each night."She dreamed this place," Zara murmured. "Or thought she did."Behind them, Elira sat with her legs tucked beneath her, glowing marking
The frost came without warning.It wasn’t winter. The Vale’s skies were clear, the moons high. Yet by dawn, the rooftops of seven cities shimmered with delicate ice, etched in spirals that mirrored constellations no one remembered. Traders woke to frozen wagons, villagers found their hearths silenced, and across the sea, a coastal temple vanished beneath a tide that had reversed itself—just for an hour. Then everything returned to normal.Except it hadn’t.Zara stood at the threshold of Elira’s chamber, watching her daughter sleep. The girl lay still, fingers curled beneath her chin, lashes flickering as she dreamed. Her breath fogged the air like smoke. Around her, the Star Throne pulsed faintly—glowing where no light touched it, humming with an energy that made even silence feel loud.It had been two nights now. Two nights of strange happenings linked only by their timing—and the impossible sigils that appeared in each place.Zara knew them. She’d seen Elira draw them in ash a week