The first true lesson at Silver Star Academy was Kingdom History and the Origins of the Abyss, held in the grandest lecture hall of the central district—the Echo Hall.
The hall was vast, but its grandeur could not conceal the wear of centuries. Murals of celestial heroes sprawled across the dome, their once-vivid hues now faded and peeling, as though time itself had gnawed at them. Steam pipes as thick as a man's torso jutted from the walls, rattling and groaning, their low thunder serving as both warmth and light for the chamber. The sound was like the eternal grinding of history's wheel, rolling endlessly over the ruins of the past.
Hundreds of new initiates filled the seats in strict order: the Vigils stationed along the rear and flanks, straight-backed and sharp as javelins; the Weavers gathered toward the middle rows, quiet, contemplative. Elara Thorn chose a seat along the edge of the central section—close enough to observe, distant enough not to draw attention.
The lecturer was Professor Margarita Croft, a weary historian and Weaver of no small renown. She wore a threadbare academy robe, her back bent beneath the invisible weight of libraries, yet her eyes—magnified behind crystal lenses—were bright, cutting through the fog of years as though to pierce the bones of time itself. Her voice carried clear across the auditorium, lifted by the speaking array etched into the lectern, steady even against the hiss of steam.
"Children," she began, her tone calm but heavy, "welcome to Silver Star Academy. Before you learn how to wield power, you must first understand why you wield it—what you stand against. Our history is not a hymn of glory. It is an anvil-song of blows and scars, a record of survival hammered at the edge of the Abyss."
She spoke of the Great Sundering.
"Before the Sundering, in the years we now mark as Before Sundering (BS), the world was not like this." Her voice softened, distant with longing. "The chronicles call it the Forging Age. Magic and craft walked hand in hand, the skies were clear, the soil abundant. No whispers of corruption. No rifts tearing reality like wounds."
Her words darkened. "And then… the coming of Erebus-Apophis, the Eternal Weaver. No scholar knows from whence it came. We only know that its arrival tore the weave of existence itself. The heavens split like rotted cloth, but what spilled forth was not starlight—only endless dark, and the searing tide of energy we now name the Blight. From that rending was born the Shadow Abyss. Not a place, but a law of decay—an infection of reality, a cancer of the cosmos."
The Echo Hall fell silent save for the moan of pipes. Croft touched a crystal at her side. Illusory images burst into the air: cities dissolving in tar-black tides; men and women writhing as their bodies twisted into grotesque abominations; heroes battling in futility, consumed in fire and ash.
"The old world was broken. Nearly all was lost. The survivors clawed at existence until, twenty-three years After Sundering (AS), they gathered under visionaries and forged a kingdom from ruin. They named it the Anvil Kingdom, swearing that our civilization would endure hammer-blows, yet never shatter."
The illusion shifted to seven towering gray obelisks, stark against a starless sky. Croft's voice trembled, reverent. "We endure not only by blade and flesh. We live because of a heavier inheritance—the Starshield. At the Sundering's end, the first Headmaster of Silver Star and the High Magister of the Arcanum burned their Stellar Cores, their lives, to awaken these ancient pillars. White light speared heavenward, weaving into a shield across the kingdom's heart. It cannot wholly repel the Blight, but it dampens the Weaver's reach, tames the rifts, buys us breath."
Her fingers traced grooves in the lectern's wood as though counting scars. Her voice dropped, almost conspiratorial. "But light has its price. The Starshield feeds on blood and spirit. Each spring equinox, the Arcanum recruits a hundred souls—convicts, the desperate poor trading life for family grain, or children vanished from slums like Slagtown. They are taken beneath the obelisks, their Stellar Cores drained into the lattice, until they wither to husks, their essence grafted into stone. This is the secret of our survival. This is the cost."
The crystals flickered with a shadowy image: gray-robed figures filing silently into a blackened corridor at the base of an obelisk. Glyphs ignited at the threshold, then dimmed. None returned.
Elara's chest tightened, her fingers curling hard into her skirt. Slagtown's orphans. The children who "found greater purpose," as Sister Lan had called it. She finally understood what that purpose meant: sacrifice, not salvation.
Croft's lecture marched on. She spoke of Silver Star's founding in year fifty AS, the birth of systematic training for Vigils and Weavers, the grim costs of shaping a working framework for psionics—discovering Bloodrage, defining the agony of Mindshred. She spoke of centuries of purges and campaigns, each victory shadowed by the Abyss's inevitable return.
"Because the Abyss has never left us," she said, her voice like iron ground against stone. "The Weaver does not slumber. Its mere presence radiates Blight. To scour corruption is like bailing a lake fed by poisoned springs. New rifts bloom wherever reality grows thin."
Her gaze sharpened, and she dropped a seed that made Elara's breath catch. "Some scholars argue the Abyss is not mere destruction. It seeks to overwrite our world with another order—cold, alien, detestable. Worse, it learns. It adapts. Our tactics fade in strength the more they are repeated. The Abyss remembers us."
Elara's pulse hammered. She knew it instinctively—this world's corrosion was not random, but a rival system of rules, imposing itself. And the truth of the Starshield's sacrificial fuel… it stripped away the last illusions. Order was built on blood. Civilization chained to slaughter.
The lecture waned, yet Croft's final words carried heavier weight than all the illusions before. "The Council has amended some of our earliest texts. Records of the Abyss's first signs, even notes on the Starshield's consumption rate—altered, redacted. They call it 'correction.' Children, be warned. History is dust hiding dangerous truths. In this academy you must learn not only what is taught, but what is hidden. Especially regarding how to fight the Abyss—never trust only one answer."
Her gray-blue eyes swept the room, resting for an instant on Elara. Not accusation—warning.
The words sank into Elara's heart like stones into still water. History rewritten? To hide a failing shield? Or because the Abyss itself gnawed at memory? Either way, she could no longer walk the path others set. Not the Academy's, not Karan's. She would have to carve her own, prying into the buried truths of this world.
When the lesson ended, the Echo Hall emptied into dusk. The spires of Silver Star bled crimson in the sunset, their great gears turning against the sky. To Elara, they did not drive progress forward. They locked shackles, teeth grinding together, binding every life into their machine.
But somewhere deep within that cage, a soul from beyond this world had already begun to pry at the first brick. Her plan—five years, five steps—started here, beneath the crushing weight of history, and in the shadow of tomorrow.