The bells of Saint Aurelius tolled through the evening air, each strike a reminder that curfew was near. Townsfolk bustled in hurried silence, their faces shadowed by hoods as they retreated behind shuttered windows. Smoke from hearths curled above crooked rooftops, blending into the violet dusk. The air carried the heavy scent of tallow and incense, the kind that clung to stone for days.
The Church ruled here, not only in law but in spirit. Sermons warned that to look too long at the heavens was to invite madness; knowledge was to be trusted only in the hands of the ordained.
Elias had learned early not to question such things. At seventeen, he had long grown used to the quiet life of a scribe's apprentice. He kept his head low, his words few, and his gifts hidden. It was easier that way.
Tonight he sat alone at the long oak table, candlelight quivering across parchment. His quill traced steady lines, copying a commission from a merchant: a simple chart of trade routes, adorned with a scattering of stars for decoration. Elias copied them as asked, but his sharp eyes noticed every imperfection.
The night sky was burned into his memory as if carved there by some unseen hand. His eyes were sharper than most—so sharp that distant details leapt out at him, leaves shivering in the dark, tiny inscriptions etched into coins, stars invisible to ordinary men glinting at the horizon. When he looked at the heavens, he saw not dots of light but precise shapes, arrangements, patterns. The three stars of Orion's belt always aligned just so, while the merchant's map had drawn them uneven, crooked.
Elias sighed and corrected the error. He knew he should not. But the stars demanded order.
The ink had barely dried when the sound of hoofbeats shattered the calm.
He froze. The rhythm was different from the lumbering gait of farmers returning home late. This was the sharp, disciplined cadence of riders moving fast. Then came shouts—curt commands barked in unison.
Elias rose and peered through the window. The square outside erupted in chaos: stalls overturned, torches flashing, townsfolk fleeing. At the center of it all was a figure stumbling across the cobblestones, cloak torn, clutching something that glimmered faintly in the firelight.
A woman.
She pushed through the crowd with a ferocity that belied her limp. Soldiers closed in behind her, black tabards bearing the insignia of the Inquisition. And then Elias saw him.
A man dismounted at the edge of the square, tall and composed, his every movement controlled. He wore no armor save for the dark cloak that marked him, but his presence stilled the chaos. He did not shout like his men. He only looked—cold eyes sweeping the crowd as though he were reading a page already written.
The name surfaced in Elias's mind like a half-remembered warning: Valerius. The Inquisitor.
Elias ducked from the window, heart hammering. He had heard tales of Valerius: a man who found heresy not only in words but in thought, who could make confessions spill forth with nothing but silence.
The workshop door rattled once, then burst open. Elias stumbled back, quill still in hand.
The woman from the square collapsed against the threshold, breath ragged. Her cloak was torn through at the shoulder, blood dark against the fabric. For a moment their eyes met—hers a brilliant green, sharp even through pain.
"Hide me," she whispered.
Elias stood frozen. His instincts screamed to refuse, to step away, to point her back into the street where she belonged. But then she pulled something from her cloak, pressing it into his hands.
It was an object of brass, small enough to cradle yet impossibly intricate: concentric rings turning smoothly within one another, etched with constellations so finely cut that Elias's eyes could see detail no ordinary craftsman could manage. As he tilted it, the rings shifted, the tiny stars aligning into patterns that felt achingly familiar.
The Orb pulsed faintly with reflected firelight, and for a heartbeat Elias forgot the soldiers outside.
"What is this?" he asked, his voice barely audible.
"The truth," she said. "And the reason they hunt me."
Boots thundered outside the door. The woman—Seraphina, she would later name herself—gripped his wrist with surprising strength.
"If they find me here, you will hang beside me," she said, her eyes boring into his. "You can send me out, and they will return for you tomorrow. Or you can come."
Elias swallowed. He thought of the Inquisition's sermons, the whispers of neighbors who vanished, the way Valerius had looked across the square as though he already knew. If this was heresy, he was already tainted by it.
"Come where?" he asked, though the word "yes" was already written in his chest.
Seraphina's lips curved into something that was not quite a smile. "Into the night."
They slipped through the back alley, shadows chasing shadows. Soldiers combed the streets, torches flaring. The clang of steel against stone echoed too near. Seraphina stumbled once, clutching her wound, and Elias steadied her without thinking.
At the edge of the fields she halted, pulling a folded parchment from her cloak. She pressed it into his hand.
"Look up," she commanded.
Elias obeyed. The night sky stretched wide, clear and cold. His vision caught it all: faint stars most never noticed, threads of light weaving the heavens.
"Do you know the constellations?" she asked.
"Yes," Elias whispered. "I… remember them."
"Then use them," she said. "Orion's belt points east. Beyond the fields there is cover in the forest. Guide us."
Elias hesitated, but then he saw it: three stars in perfect alignment, sharp as etched steel in his vision. He traced the pattern with his memory, connecting the celestial hunter's form. For the first time, he felt the stars not as distant lights but as something alive, present, guiding.
"This way," he said.
They moved quickly, guided not by the land but by the sky.
Behind them, Valerius watched the torches of his men shift across the square. He did not curse their failure. Instead, he crouched, fingers brushing faint footprints in the dust. He lifted his gaze to the heavens, eyes narrowing in calculation.
"A boy who sees the stars," he murmured. "Interesting."