CROWNED BY BLOOD
The stars that have hung dead in its gray sky for eons, cold points of light that never twinkled and never offered any hope to the prisoners suspended below them begin to stir.
One by one, they blink awake, faint glimmers piercing the eternal black like needles of silver thread. It's barely perceptible at first, just the suggestion of movement where there has been only stillness for so long. But as my children's voices grow stronger, as their combined magic builds toward whatever impossible goal they've set for themselves, the stars respond. They pulse with rhythms that echo heartbeats, they shift in patterns that suggest dance, they warm from cold silver to something approaching gold.
And w