The first thing Kael felt was pain.
Not the glorious, searing pain of a star being torn asunder—that memory was fractured, half-drowned in the void between his fall and this waking nightmare. No, this was the dull, grinding agony of a twisted leg, the legacy of a boy named Elias, whose broken body he now wore like ill-fitting armor.
He tried to move, and the leg screamed in protest.
Pathetic.
Once, he had been Veytharis, the Crimson Star—a celestial blade in the hand of the Sable Maw constellation. He had carved destinies into the fabric of the night, had watched empires rise and crumble beneath his flickering gaze.
Now, he lay in a rain-soaked alley, his divine essence scattered, his name reduced to a whisper in the dark.
A boot slammed into his ribs.
"Still breathing, gutter-rat?"
Garren's voice was a familiar poison. The butcher's son loomed over him, his broad face twisted in a sneer. Behind him, two of his usual pack of hyenas chuckled, their breath fogging in the cold air.
Kael—no, Elias—had known this torment for years. The crippled orphan, the easy target. But the soul inside the body now was not Elias.
You dare? The thought was a spark in the dark, a flicker of divine wrath.
He tried to summon the power to reduce Garren to cinders, to make his blood boil in his veins—
Nothing answered.
Only the weak, trembling limbs of a starved boy.
Garren's grin widened. "No clever words today?" He raised a meaty fist. "Good."
The first blow split Kael's lip. The second drove the air from his lungs. The third—
—never landed.
A sound like tearing metal ripped through the heavens.
Garren froze, fist still raised. His cronies stumbled back, eyes wide. Above them, the clouds burned.
A streak of silver fire tore through the night, a falling star screaming toward the earth. The ground trembled as it struck somewhere beyond the city walls, and for a single, breathless moment—
—the world was silent.
Then the slums erupted into chaos. People spilled from ramshackle homes, pointing, shouting. Some cried prayers. Others clutched their children and hid.
But Kael knew that light.
One of mine.
A fragment of his shattered power. A piece of his soul, screaming to be reclaimed.
Garren turned to run—
—and Kael's hand shot out, gripping his ankle like a vice.
"You will never touch me again."
His voice was wrong. Not Elias' reedy rasp, but something deeper, darker. A voice that carried the echo of dying stars.
Garren's face paled. For the first time in his life, the butcher's son feared the cripple.
Then Kael pulled.
Garren crashed to the filth-strewn cobbles with a yelp. Kael was on him in an instant, his hands—why were they burning?—clutching the larger boy's throat.
"I could unmake you," Kael whispered, and the words were not a threat, but a promise.
Garren's eyes bulged. His lips moved soundlessly.
Then—
Pain.
White-hot, searing through Kael's skull. He reeled back, clutching his head as visions flooded him—
A constellation tearing itself apart.
A silver-haired woman weeping blood.
A throne of bones beneath a black sun.
And a voice, whispering:
"Find us, broken star. Before they do."
When the vision passed, Garren and his pack were gone.
And Kael's hands smoked with fading starlight.
The fallen star called to him.
He could feel it, a pulse in the earth, a song only he could hear. But he was not the only one who would seek it.
Somewhere in the city, the Celestial Church would already be moving, their Inquisitors armed with blades that drank starlight. Worse, the Heralds—lesser gods bound to the constellations—might already be hunting.
And then there was the Witchs.
The one they said lived in the ruins beyond the slums, who spoke to dead gods and bargained with the void.
Kael's lips curled.
Let them come.