The Academy of The Ascendant - Book 1 Marked by Starlight

(Lyra’s POV – Earth)

The world never really fit around me.

The broken pavement under my tattered sneakers didn’t matter. I didn’t belong in foster homes where peeling paint covered the walls and artificial smiles hid microwave dinners. I was surrounded by individuals who treated me as an unwanted error they desperately wanted to erase from memory.

I wasn’t angry anymore. Just tired.

I was exhausted - from forcing myself not to experience everything so profoundly. See things I couldn’t explain. Know things I was never taught.

The wind often carried unfamiliar names in its soft murmurs. Whenever I reached my breaking point the streetlamps would either start sparking or break apart. My nighttime visions weren’t true dreams but experiences of a different nature.

Fire. Oceans. Storms. A palace carved from starlight and obsidian.

The vividness of my dreams made me wake up sensing salt on my tongue and smoke drifting through my hair.

None of it made sense.

The morning of my sixteenth birthday revealed a mysterious mark on my wrist. Not a bruise. Not a tattoo. The mark appeared naturally as if it had been part of me forever while the rest of my body eventually realized its presence.

The glowing sigil expanded outward with detailed red, blue, green, and silver spirals.

Fire. Water. Earth. Air.

I tried to scrub it off. It pulsed brighter.

I never showed anyone.

In foster care, being different wasn’t mystical. It was dangerous.

The situation worsened when no one was prepared to defend you.

By seventeen I had lived in seven different homes. Some were quiet. Some were cruel. None were mine.

The most recent was Mrs. Hensley. The current foster mother smoked in her house while having conversations with spirits and heated plastic containers in the microwave. But she didn’t ask questions.

And that was enough.

I claimed the roof as mine.

High above on the roof with peeling shingles around me and nighttime’s soft hum I found my breath. The world below became nonexistent in my mind while I considered the possibility that I was destined for greater things than mere survival.

There were moments when I gazed at the stars and felt like someone was observing me. Not in a paranoid way. Not even threatening. Just—seen.

Like the sky recognized me.

Like it was waiting.

The night that changed everything led me back to the roof. The hood of my jacket covered my chin while my earbuds shuffled through well-known songs on my playlist.

The sky was unnaturally clear. The moon hung high and sharp. The stars shimmered as if they possessed messages to deliver.

I pulled back my sleeve.

The mark glowed softly—warm, not painful. It felt like a silent vibration stirring beneath my skin.

And in my gut, I knew.

Something was coming.

I didn’t know how. I just knew.

Perhaps my silence during the strange wind reversal that lifted the leaves explains why I did not scream. The clouds took on the appearance of unraveling thread as they twisted.

Or when the stars began to move.

The constellations moved sequentially as they left their original formation to establish an unfamiliar yet recognizable configuration.

I stood frozen, breath shallow.

Then came the sound.

Not thunder.

Older. Hungrier. Calling.

And then—light.

The sky fractured as a silver beam collided against my chest with the intensity of a dying star.

I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t scream. Couldn’t move.

And then—I wasn’t there anymore.

I didn’t fall.

I didn’t fly.

I was taken.

At that moment I was unaware but I had crossed a threshold.

The existing life I lived transitioned into the power I was destined to possess.

And the stars?

They didn’t save me.

They summoned me.