A thousand years before Aren Vanmoir set foot in Caelthyr, the sky bled starlight.
Not the gentle drift of distant constellations, but rivers of burning silver, tearing across the heavens in jagged, world-scarring lines. Towers cracked as if struck by invisible hammers. Oceans surged without wind. Every leyline in the realm howled at once.
On the highest terrace of the Sanctum Citadel, twelve figures knelt in a circle, robes plastered to their bodies by the storm. At their center stood a woman in pale armor, her hair whipped free of its braids, her gauntlets bare of any weapon.
She did not need one.
"Report," she called, though the wind ripped at her voice.
A nearby seer pressed a bloodied hand to the stone, eyes rolled white. "The Convergence has begun. The stars… they are choosing anchors again."
Around the circle, beads of light flared to life — one above each kneeling priest. Some glowed faintly, like candles threatened by rain. Others blazed like miniature suns.
"Bonds," a younger priest whispered, staring up at the torn sky. "The age of bonded hosts is returning."
The armored woman did not look up. She knew what she would see; she had seen it once before, in a vision she had never confessed.
"Name the threat," she said.
The seer choked, breath fogging the air in short, panicked bursts. "Groups of three and four flattening battalions. Cities falling overnight. Souls linked across miles. Power multiplied beyond calculation."
The terrace trembled. Far below, across the city, other circles of priests echoed the same words, the same terror.
"The last Convergence ended in empirefall," another priest muttered. "If the stars choose an anchor again—"
"They will," the seer rasped. "They already have. Not yet awakened… but marked. Waiting."
The armored woman finally raised her head.
The sky stared back.
Threads of light spiderwebbed between the fractured constellations, converging on a single, unseen point far beyond their sight. To anyone else, it might have seemed random. To her, with her half-forgotten gift and scars no healing rite could erase, it looked like a net being drawn tight.
"Can it be stopped?" someone shouted.
"No," the seer said. "Only… directed. Controlled. Or killed before the bonds form."
The wind died as suddenly as it had risen.
Rain did not fall. Instead, tiny motes of crystal drifted from the torn sky, each fleck of solid starlight dissolving before it touched the stone. Where they vanished, the air hummed — soft, resonant, hungry.
The woman in armor stepped forward, toward the center of the circle. At her feet, the stone had begun to glow: a faint, slanted mark, like the first stroke of a sigil not yet fully drawn.
"Write it down," she said quietly. "All of it. Every image. Every word you saw."
The priests stirred, startled. "Commander—"
"If we fail, they will need to know why," she replied. "If we succeed… they will need to remember what must never be allowed to happen again."
Her gaze lingered on the half-formed mark at her feet. For an instant, she thought she saw it mirrored in the sky — etched between the stars, not yet complete.
"In every age, there will be one," she said. "A soul the Convergence favors. An anchor strong enough to hold what should not be held."
She turned away from the sky, away from the fading storm, and stared toward the distant horizon where Caelthyr's ley currents shimmered faintly like sleeping serpents.
"When that anchor appears," she murmured, more to herself than to the circle, "the world will do what it always does."
"Sanctify it?" a priest asked.
"Claim it," another suggested.
The woman's expression did not change.
"Fear it," she said. "Break it. Or kneel."
The storm ended.
Years became decades, then centuries. Empires shifted. Orders rose and hardened into law. The story of that night thinned into doctrine, then into half-believed scripture, then into a cautionary tale told to children who played at forming pretend bonds in academy courtyards.
The written record remained, hidden under layers of ink and warning sigils: a prophecy sealed in the Sanctum's deepest vaults.
It spoke of a boy who would make magic listen.
It did not say he would be a noble.
It did not say he would be prepared.
It only said this:
When the stars fall and do not break, when bonds form around a heart that does not seek power, the Convergence Anchor will return.
And the world will gather, once more, to decide what to do with him.