“And now…” I drew in a shaky breath. “They’ve come for us again. There was a power shift after the Archangels were removed from power and forced to admit the truth about what they’d done. The wyvern kingdom, the Rebellion forces fromEarth, and the angels of Alfemir—we formed an alliance. A new start. And the upper triads feels?—”
“Threatened by that,” she finished softly, her brows drawing together. “But the war, all this bloodshed you speak of, isn’t what woke me.”
“If my power was what woke you, it’s because of the stars,” I said quietly. “A prophecy we hoped was a myth has come true. During the battle, the stars began to fall.”
I tried to steady my breathing as my panic over it all came rushing back. “I don’t know what happened past that—with the war or the stars—since I’m here now.”
The Creator said nothing, but her silence wasn’t distant or cold; it was deep, listening—vast enough to hold the weight of everything I’d said, as if she were turning each word over in her mind. The silence wasn’t empty. It felt alive, heavy enough that I found myself holding my breath, afraid to disturb it. As she watched me in careful consideration, her skin began to glow brighter, as though she carried the sun itself within her.
The white around us shifted, deepening to the faint gold of dawn before it breaks.
I pressed a hand to my heart, my voice barely more than a whisper. “The upper triads call everything they do divine justice. But if this is divine order—your order—then I don’t understand what justice means anymore.”
When I finally stopped—when it was clear there was nothing left to explain—she tilted her head. The softness in her gaze didn’t fade, but something sharper flickered beneath it, a steady, burning focus.
“And how,” she asked, “doyouplay into all of this?”
Her voice held no accusation. It was calm, almost knowing, as if she already understood the answer and only needed to hear me say it aloud.
I swallowed hard, my voice catching. “That prophecy I mentioned, it spoke of when the stars would begin to fall—that a Star Keeper would rise to stop it. She’d carry their light, absorb them, and restore balance to the world.”
The rest came back to me in pieces, the lines etched into my very bones at this point:
“If she fails, the world will be no more. If she succeeds, her death will be written in the stars. A fate she never saw coming, but one only she can fulfill.” My voice caught as I finished. “It said she’d be both our hope and our demise. That only she could decide.”
The words lingered in the air long after I’d spoken them.
I was still here. But had I saved everyone, or damned them all? Was death still coming for me?
“I thought my purpose was to save the world,” I admitted. “But I don’t even know what’s left of my world after the upper triads launched this battle today before the stars decided to fall. I don’t think they even knew about the prophecy, or if they can stop it.”
For a moment, the Creator said nothing. Her gaze drifted past me, her expression shifting as if she were seeing something I couldn’t—something distant, hidden in the fabric of the void itself.
“Power from the stars,” she said quietly as if she was still processing information she gleaned. “They meant to take it before it ever reached you.”
My breath caught, and I jerked back a step before I could stop myself. “What?”
“When the stars fell, they stood ready, thinking they could intercept them while the war waged on,” she explained, her face twisting with anger. “They believed they could absorb what was never theirs. They didn’t care who died in the process—including you.”
Her words struck like a blow, the enormity of what she was saying sinking in. Suddenly, the war they had waged seemed far more complicated than I’d ever understood.
“So they believed they could play Creator,” she murmured, “claim dominion over life and death, over what they do not understand.”
“They defy their purpose. They use the power I gave to destroy,” she continued, each word carrying weight, vibrating through the air as the space tightened around us. The magnitude of her power pressed against my ribs until I forgot how to breathe, let alone respond. The air around her shimmered, alive and trembling, her gaze a storm of flashing light, furious but heavy with sorrow and regret. I couldn’t look away from her.
Then, as suddenly as it had risen, the fury eased. The air cooled. The sharpness in her voice softened into something almost tender.
“You now carry what they never could,” she said quietly. “And itiskilling you.”
The Creator reached out, her hand hovering above my heart. “It is clear to me that you don’t truly belong here and your pain is great,” she murmured. “You’ve carried more thananyangel was meant to bear, even as the prophecy’s vessel.”
Heat pricked at my eyes and my vision became blurry with tears.
“I will fix what has been broken,” she promised.
The kind words wrapped around me like mercy itself as tears slipped down my face. Golden luminosity flooded my veins until it was too bright to see. I squinted through the blur of tears and brilliance, my vision fading until only her distant soft voice remained.
“Go back to your realm now. The world still needs its Star Keeper.”
