"Where do the Ancient Stars meet?" Amir whispered, the words scraping out of a throat still raw from screaming.
They had dragged the huge fallen log inside hours earlier so everyone could sit together near the hearth, but the fire had burned low...barely more than embers now. The house felt too large, too quiet, as if the walls themselves were holding their breath. Amir sat hunched forward, elbows on knees, fingers knotted so tightly the knuckles had gone bloodless. His eyes were wide, pupils blown, still seeing what no one else had: his mother's stomach bursted opened like a red grin...his father's body torn apart...his little sister head severed.
Lisa kept stealing glances at him, worried, but she didn't dare speak yet. Aurora sat rigid,lips pressed thin. She clearly recognised the phrase he had gasped upon waking, yet something held her back.
Nalia, lounging at the far end of the log with one leg crossed over the other, was the only one who looked entertained. Her nine tails moved lazily, like smoke. The crimson handfan rested shut against her thigh...tiny silver bells silent for now.
"Where the Ancient Stars meet?" Aurora finally repeated under her breath, almost to herself. Her fingers drummed once on the staff...then stilled. She opened her mouth, closed it again.
Nalia's ears flicked forward. Golden eyes narrowed in delight.
"Did you say...Ancient Stars?" she asked, voice honey-sweet and dangerous.
Amir managed a nod.
Nalia rose in one liquid motion, silk rustling. The bells on her fan gave a soft chime as she stepped away from the log...five paces, six...until the dying fire painted her silhouette tall and theatrical against the wall. She turned, tails fanning wide, and smiled like a fox who had waited centuries for this exact question.
"Then allow me," she purred. "A proper lesson is long overdue."
She snapped the fan open with a sharp, musical crack. The bells sang brighter. With a single sweeping arc she sliced the air...and threads of molten silver light spilled from the ribs of the fan like liquid starlight. They twisted, braided, rose higher than the rafters...curling around the group in slow, deliberate spirals. The temperature in the room warmed, as though a second sun had awakened overhead.
Lisa's breath caught. "Gods...what is that?"
"Lightweaving," Nalia answered without turning. She walked forward, stepping through her own creation as if it were solid ground. The threads responded to her voice, her gestures...obedient, eager.
"Before time had a name...before the first sunrise ever bled across the void...there were Twelve."
Twelve towering silhouettes solidified in the air...featureless at first, blindingly radiant, each one different in height and stance. At their center rose a single unmistakable shape: the cruel, jagged crown of the world's highest mountain.
"The Ancient Stars," Nalia continued, circling the projection like a storyteller on a stage. "Primordial. Absolute. When the Creator came to Them...humble for once...begging to craft a world of oceans and forests and living things, They listened. And then They named Their price."
She flicked her wrist. The twelve figures brightened until the room blazed like noon.
"Seventy percent," she said softly. "Seventy percent of everything that would ever be born, live, or die on this planet would belong to Them. Every soul would carry a fragment of Their temperament...Their moods would become the moods of epochs. Wars, plagues, golden ages...all echoes of how the Twelve felt that particular century."
Aurora gave a low, reluctant whistle. "I always heard it was a partnership...not extortion."
"Everything is extortion if you're powerful enough," Nalia replied, amused. "The Creator signed. The world was born. And for countless ages the bargain held."
Amir's voice cracked through the light. "Then why did one of Them send that thing to murder my family?"
Aurora started to answer...too quickly. "The Stars have been...unstable lately. Old texts say the evil in mortal hearts can seep upward, poison Them, drive Them mad..."
Nalia's laugh cut her off...soft, almost kind, and utterly pitiless.
"Oh, sweet Aurora. Always rushing to the comfortable lie."
She turned her fan sideways. One of the twelve radiant figures began to rot from the inside. Light curdled into tar-black shadow. Limbs elongated, joints multiplied, the face melted into a smooth expanse where eyes should have been. It was exact...down to the wet clicking sound its elbows made when it moved.
Amir's breath hitched. He took an involuntary step back, bumping into the log.
"That," Nalia said almost tenderly, "was Nyxe. Not a corrupted Star. Not a servant. Nyxe is the rage the Twelve refuse to feel themselves...given form and set loose whenever They decide something, or someone, has broken the original terms."
She let the image linger...let them all stare at the creature that had slaughtered Amir's family in his vision...until Lisa had to look away and even Aurora's knuckles were white on her staff.
Then, with a lazy flick, Nalia dismissed the monster. The twelve figures dimmed to embers.
"So," Amir said, voice shaking with something beyond fear now. "Where do the Ancient Stars meet? Where do I find Them?"
Nalia's smile widened until it showed sharp canines. She swept the fan in one final, grand arc. Every thread of light in the room surged upward, twisted, and slammed together into a single towering image that punched straight through the roof beams and kept rising...an ice-clad mountain so real they could feel the wind screaming off its summit.
The bells on her fan gave one clear, triumphant chime.
"Right here," she said, voice ringing like a temple gong. "The roof of the world. The only place thin enough for Their thrones to touch mortal ground...Chomolungu...Sagarmatha...Mount Everest."
She snapped the fan shut. The mountain vanished. The room fell back into firelit shadow.