Chapter 1: Starfall

  ? The Calm Before

  They said the stars used to sing above Kael’thara. Tonight, they screamed.

  Kael stood at the cliff’s edge, the wind curling around him like a half-whispered secret. Below, the village’s warm lantern light shimmered—a soft breath against the darkening world. Sounds of flutes, drums, laughter, and ritual chants from the Veil Festival, reminiscent of fading memories, wafted upwards.

  But Kael wasn’t celebrating.

  His gaze remained on the Hollow.

  Far below the Shards, the Hollow stirred—

  a chasm of void and memory, unmoving yet alive.

  It pulsed like breath beneath the floor of the world,

  veined with impossible light that flickered up through the roots of sky.

  The land floated.

  The Hollow did not.

  It waited.

  It watched.

  Kael's hands ached from the day’s labor—he’d helped his father patch a cracked skyboat hull—and his knuckles still stung from a brief scuffle with an older boy who'd mocked his silence. But those were mundane things. Real things.

  Tonight felt amiss.

  The wind carried the faint scent of ashflowers, blooming out of season. Beneath it, something sharper—ozone, bitter and electric.

  Kael turned from the cliffside just as a tremor passed beneath his feet.

  Subtle. Barely there. No one else would’ve noticed.

  But he did.

  Then came the first whisper.

  Not heard—felt.

  In his ribs. In his teeth. Behind his eyes.

  “Lies lie layered beneath the veil.”

  Kael blinked. The wind fell still. The stars above pulsed once—bright... then wrong.

  ? The Descent

  He was already awake when the Starfall came.

  It wasn’t a sound. It was a pulse.

  Like a bell struck in the bones of the world—shattering sky instead of ringing through it.

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  Then, silence.

  Then—

  Crack.

  The world tore open.

  Kael’s feet lifted off the ground as pressure surged outward. A dome of inverted stillness expanded from the village below, swallowing light and time alike.

  Windows exploded inward. The festival’s music died mid-note. Skyboats sagged in the air, lanterns dimmed, and motion… halted.

  Kael scrambled down the cliff path, breath caught in his throat, heart pounding. As he neared the village, he saw them—

  Dancers, frozen mid-leap.

  A child suspended mid-laugh.

  Mothers holding baskets that no longer moved.

  There was no sound. No wind.

  Only pulse.

  Then he saw it.

  At the village’s edge: a crater—black, smoking, veined with spirals of light that curled against logic.

  At its center lay something... wrong.

  A shard, darker even than shadow itself. Ringed in thorns that flickered with silent blue fire.

  Kael couldn’t look away.

  “Pierce the veil.”

  The whisper came again. Closer now.

  “Bleed the truth.”

  Instinct guided his feet. Step by trembling step. His nose began to bleed, a thin red line tracing his lip.

  He didn’t stop.

  He reached toward the shard.

  The Thorn bit him.

  ? The Mark and the Madness

  A searing pain, beyond the physical, tore through him.

  Not pain of the body.

  Pain of the soul.

  His name felt as if it was being unstitched.

  Like memory itself was peeling apart.

  Like he was dying—and something older was waking in his place.

  Visions. Shards. Echoes.

  —A spear lodged in the sky.

  —An entity with no eyes, screaming into a mirror.

  —A boy’s hand, stained with starlight.

  —A reflection of himself, older, bloodied, the Hollow burning behind him.

  And then—

  A voice. Vast. Still.

  “Will you pierce the lie… or become it?”

  Kael collapsed.

  Darkness rushed in.

  ? The Hollow’s Silence

  He woke to light.

  Not daylight.

  Ashlight.

  The dawn bled dimly along the Hollow’s edge. The village was gone.

  Not burned.

  Not destroyed.

  Unwritten.

  Ash covered the fields. Homes stood like faded sketches. The lanterns were hollow glass. The festival’s echoes were gone.

  Only outlines remained.

  And in the center—where the Thorn had landed—there was nothing.

  Only a faint impression scorched into the earth.

  Kael sat up, shaking. His palm throbbed. The wound was still open, but it didn’t bleed red.

  It shimmered—like something etched in both light and shadow.

  He looked up.

  One star was missing.

  ? The Last Voice

  A cough.

  He spun.

  From the ruins of a collapsed home, someone dragged themselves into view.

  The old seer—the one who told stories by the fire.

  Her eyes… were black.

  Not empty, but void of any essence of light.

  Full.

  Of Hollow-light.

  She gripped his arm with burned fingers.

  “The Spear sees you now, Child of the Thorn,” she rasped.

  “And the Hollow… watches back.”

  Her fingers went slack.

  She did not blink. Did not breathe.

  Her eyes remained open.

  Kael ran.

  He did not look back.