Kaela wandered.
The Argyle was unlike anything the sacred scrolls had described. It was not a wasteland. It was quiet. Still. As though the world itself had paused its breath.
The trees twisted in strange, crooked shapes, like old hands reaching for a sun that hadn't risen in years. The sky shimmered wrong, colors shifting at the edges of her sight, like something she wasn't supposed to notice. And the ground... every time her feet touched it, she thought she heard it whisper, in a language that felt older than time.
She had nothing. No food. No spell scrolls. No staff. Only the bloodstained shawl from her childhood, tucked in the bottom of her bag, and a name that meant danger if anyone ever learned it.
Kaela of the Fallen Stars.
The name tasted like prophecy. And punishment.
She found shelter in the ruins of what might've once been a home. Time and tangled green had claimed it. Ivy wrapped around the broken walls like memory that wouldn't let go, and thick roots pressed through shattered windows. The roof was gone, mostly. But it was enough. A place to lie down. Somewhere the wind didn't bite quite as hard.
She lit no fire. Even if she had remembered how, even if the words of flame still lived on her tongue, something about the Argyle made her hesitate. The shadows felt alert. Fire would be a beacon. And she did not know who or what was watching.
That night, the dreams came.
She saw a woman standing in the dark. Pale and glowing. Hair like silver rain. A crown resting lopsided on her head, cracked and rusted.
The woman spoke, her voice barely louder than breath.
"Shake the world, my starborn daughter."
Kaela woke with wet cheeks.
The wind outside whispered her name. Or maybe the name she had been given before the exile. The one she no longer dared speak aloud.
She sat up slowly. The stars blinked overhead like watchful eyes. They were different here. Sharper. Too close. They moved sometimes, just a little. Just enough to make her doubt they were still stars at all.
Something pulsed beneath her skin.
Not pain. Pressure.
It had never left her since that first night. A faint pulse behind her ribs, quiet but persistent. Like a second heartbeat trying to remember its rhythm.
Kaela pressed a hand to her chest. It was still there. That strange warmth. That presence. She didn't know if it was magic trying to return to her or something else entirely.
Once, her magic had felt like sunlight behind her ribs. Gentle. Kind. It responded to her voice. Her hands. Her dreams. But here in the Argyle, it was wild and unreadable. If it was even hers anymore.
"Why won't you come back?" she whispered into the cold.
No answer. Only the wind.
On the seventh night, something found her.
It made no sound. It broke no branches. It didn't growl or hiss. She simply looked up and saw it crouched near the entrance to the ruin. Unmoving. Watching.
It had the shape of a person, but the wrong proportions. Its limbs were too long. Its head tilted at an unnatural angle. And its eyes glowed like hollow moons.
Kaela froze.
The creature did not move.
Slowly, she rose to her feet. Her legs shook. Her hands were empty. She reached for the only thing she had, a shard of broken stone from the ruins, sharp on one end. It would not save her, but she held it anyway.
The creature stirred. A twitch of its fingers. A crackle like breaking bones.
It spoke in a voice that sounded like many voices layered over one another.
"You are her."
Kaela gritted her teeth. "I don't know what you mean."
"You carry her blood. You should not be here."
It stepped forward.
She stepped back.
Then it lunged.
The world blurred. She screamed, ducked, rolled. The stone shard scraped against its side, but it didn't bleed. It shrieked, high and furious. Claws slashed across her shoulder. Pain bloomed. Her blood hit the ground.
She thought of her mother's voice.
Shake the world.
She drove the shard into its throat.
The creature dropped. Twitched. Then went still.
Kaela stared at it for a long time. Her breath came in ragged gasps. Her whole body shook.
"I didn't mean to," she whispered, but the words felt thin.
Maybe she did. Maybe not. She just wanted to live.
Hunt or be hunted.
And it hadn't been human. Not really.
Right?
She crouched beside the body. Its skin had begun to crack and flake, revealing something like ash beneath. It wasn't human. That was the only comfort she allowed herself.
Her first kill.
She did not sleep. Not that night. She stayed awake with blood drying on her sleeve and the broken shard still clutched in her hand.
When morning came, or what passed for morning in this cursed place, she ventured deeper into the Argyle.
She walked until her legs burned. Until her vision swam.
And then she found it.
A tree.
Massive. Ancient. Its bark shimmered with silver and deep black, as though it had been spun instead of grown. From its branches hung hundreds of little glass ornaments. Stars. Or something like them. Each one etched with a different rune.
At its roots, half-buried beneath tangled growth, lay a small stone tablet.
Kaela stopped breathing.
She fell to her knees and brushed away the vines and weeds.
The language carved into it was old. Faded. But she knew it.
Her mother's hand. Her mother's script. The same as the one embroidered onto the shawl.
To my daughter, starborn of light and ruin. When the world casts you out, remember. We did not give birth to darkness. We gave birth to flame.
Kaela pressed her forehead to the stone. Her tears fell without shame.
Something in her cracked open. How would her mother's hands have felt if she had ever known them? Her father's laughter. Their faces. Were they in pain as the fire died out in their eyes?
She rose slowly.
The stars hanging in the tree flickered. One of them, the largest, shimmered and fell. It landed in her palm, warm and pulsing.
It wasn't glass. It was crystal.
Inside, a soft light glowed. And she knew it.
Magic.
Hers.
She didn't know how she knew. She just did.
She closed her fingers around it.
A voice, not the one from her dreams but one that lived in her blood, whispered:
You were never broken. Only buried.
Then it faded.
The last echo of her mother's voice.
Kaela stood beneath the silver tree, the crystal warm in her hand, her eyes lifted to the strange stars above. They no longer looked like curses. They looked like guides. She knew she wasn't healed. Not yet. But she wasn't lost anymore.
The path ahead would only grow harder. She had reclaimed her magic. But she had lost her mother's light forever.
She might walk alone again. But she was no longer forsaken.
The crystal pulsed once in her hand, and then shattered. Magic rushed up her arm. Pain bloomed behind her eyes.
A whisper curled in her ear. "They know."