"In the beginning, there was no flame, no shadow, no storm. There was only the Origin. One star. One silence. One spark waiting to become everything." — The Lost Codex of Stellaris, Fragment I
They say every child is born beneath a Star.
In the noble halls of the Ashborn estate, where banners hung heavier than the air itself, this belief was sacred—etched into walls, woven into law, and stitched into the future of every son and daughter born to the bloodline. For generations, Ashborn heirs had awakened to flames, to lightning, to stone-shaking power.
But on the night Kalel was born, the sky did not burn. It wept.
Thunder rolled like a mourning bell. Rain lashed the windows in long, furious streaks. No Star blinked from the heavens. Only clouds. Only cold.
When the boy first opened his eyes, they were a quiet blue—unremarkable. When he took his first breath, no Star flared above his cradle, no light descended. The family seer, a woman older than time, went pale at the sight of his core. She looked once. Then never again.
"White," she whispered. "Empty. A hollow shell."
His father turned away before the words fully landed. His mother didn't ask questions. And his siblings… never stopped reminding him.
Years passed like paper cuts—small, shallow, but never healed. He watched from windows, from behind columns, from shadows, as other children bloomed. One by one, his siblings awakened. Fire danced on their palms. Lightning coiled around their ankles. Their cores shimmered in elemental hues.
Kalel's remained white. Always white. Untouched. Undesired.
The world called him talentless.
And so he learned to listen to silence.
He spoke little. Questioned less. In a house built on prestige, he made himself small. Unseen. Unbroken. But inside, behind quiet eyes, something ancient stirred.
Not anger.
Not envy.
Not despair.
Just a cold, steady awareness: that there was something wrong with the story everyone believed. Something missing from the script of fate.
Because Kalel didn't feel empty.
He felt full—like a vessel waiting for the sea.
And on the rare nights when the clouds cleared, and all twenty Stars of Aurora shimmered in their constellations, Kalel's gaze would linger not on the brightest, but on the blank space between them. The dark vein where no Star twinkled. The void others ignored.
And in that silence, something always watched back.