The clouds above shimmered faintly, like a skin stretched thin over something immense and waiting. Nima stood at the edge of the ridge with Dmitri beside her, both staring down into the gulch where the sky seemed to fold inward. In that impossible bowl of lightless gravity, a spiral of broken stars slowly churned, orbiting a single, unmoving object: a dark sphere, veined with amber, pulsing once every few seconds like a massive, sleeping heart.
"The Stillborn Star," murmured Dmitri. "Velreth spoke of it in riddles… but I thought it was metaphor."
Nima's eyes didn't leave the spiraling ruin. "Everything we've heard was a metaphor. But the metaphors are real."
As they began to descend, the path underfoot warped slightly, as if resisting their passage. The air was thick with static, the scent of ozone and something deeper—like old blood and crushed time. Gravity tilted oddly in places, their feet touching stone that shouldn't exist, angles collapsing into each other.
Every few steps, they glimpsed fragments of memory caught in the folds of reality: a child's laughter echoing from nowhere, a fading image of a woman at a loom, threads weaving themselves into air. The Star's influence wasn't just physical—it was temporal, emotional. It dug through the cracks in the soul.
"Do you feel that?" Dmitri asked, stopping suddenly.
Nima turned to him. "The pull?"
He nodded. "Like it's not just pulling us toward it—but out of ourselves."
She clenched her hands, trying to resist the disorientation. "It wants us to be undone."
The base of the gulch came slowly, and the closer they drew to the Star, the quieter the world became. Even their breath sounded distant. Around the sphere floated the remains of once-living things: statues of people mid-scream, vines turned to crystal, broken clocks with hands ticking backwards. Whatever the Star had once been, it had unraveled every truth around it.
At its edge stood a single figure.
They were wrapped in layers of white ash, wearing a mask made of cracked porcelain. Thin, pale fingers held a long staff inscribed with hundreds of symbols—each one shifting when Nima tried to focus on them.
"You walk paths not meant for mortal feet," the figure said. The voice was neither male nor female—just tired. "You heard the Song, and now you seek its silence. But this is not the place for peace."
"We didn't come for peace," Nima said, stepping forward. "We came to understand."
The masked figure tilted their head. "Then you will suffer."
"Who are you?" Dmitri asked, his hand brushing the hilt of his knife.
"I am the Witness of the Hollow Birth," they replied. "Once a prophet. Now a page turned inside-out. I saw the Star fall, saw it fail to become. This is what was left."
They turned toward the sphere.
"This is what happens when a god forgets its name."
Nima's voice was quiet. "It was supposed to be born?"
"Yes," the Witness said. "But the Song was interrupted. The Bell tolled before its time. And the result is this: a god that cannot live, yet cannot die. And so it dreams. And those dreams reach out."
She could feel it now—vivid dreams brushing her thoughts: a forest devouring itself, a moon weeping blood, a library of unborn books burning under still rain. They weren't visions of the future or past. They were possibilities, collapsed timelines orbiting the Star like satellites.
"This thing," Dmitri said, "is what keeps the world from healing?"
"No," the Witness said. "It is what reflects the wound. The Song echoes in its absence."
Nima stepped closer, drawn to the veins of amber running through the Star. The longer she stared, the more she could feel them resonating with the shard she carried. A low hum, harmonious yet cracked.
Her shard was… singing.
The Star responded.
The ground trembled, and the spiral of light twisted inward, collapsing momentarily into a thin line before snapping back open.
"You carry a piece of the First Echo," the Witness whispered. "Then it has chosen you."
"Chosen me for what?" she asked.
"To become the next note."
The meaning hit her like a blow. The shard wasn't just a remnant—it was a key, a building block of the Song itself. And it had chosen her not merely as a vessel, but as a composer. Or a weapon.
Dmitri's eyes widened. "If the Song is rebuilt… what happens to the Bell?"
"The Bell is a gate," said the Witness. "Its Song binds possibility and silence. If you change the Song, you change the truth."
A silence fell between them, heavy and vibrating.
"And if we refuse?" Nima asked.
The Witness turned to her. "Then the Stillborn Star will awaken. And it will not be kind."
They stepped aside, revealing a strange mechanism nestled into the Star's base: a harp of bone and rusted wire, strung across a mirror that did not reflect them.
"This is the Instrument. Play it, and you will offer your shard to the Song. You may rewrite part of it. But the cost is never clear."
Nima stood still, the shard in her pocket pulsing gently. It had grown heavier since arriving here. It wanted release. It wanted purpose.
She turned to Dmitri. "What if I choose wrong?"
He met her gaze. "Then we choose again. Until we get it right."
She stepped forward, fingers trembling as she drew the shard and touched the first string.
The sound that erupted was not music.
It was a scream stretched over aeons, a chord of light and pain and memory. The shard sank into the harp, dissolving into resonance. Images exploded behind her eyes:
— A tower made of lungs, breathing clouds of memory.
— A child with a mouth stitched shut, singing through their fingers.
— A figure of glass bleeding light across a battlefield of hollow kings.
And then silence.
The Instrument was still.
The Star pulsed once.
And then… one thread changed.
Nima stumbled backward. The world trembled—not a quake, but a shift in the context of reality. Something small had rewritten itself. A single cause. A lost ripple now redirected.
The Witness bowed. "You have begun your composition."
But Nima didn't feel triumphant. She felt cold. The cost hadn't arrived yet, but it would.
And the Song wasn't done.