Night did not fall gently over the Ashlands.
It descended like a shroud, heavy and suffocating, dragging shadows behind it as if the darkness itself were alive and crawling. The faint glow of star-glass lamps flickered along the settlement's narrow paths, casting warped silhouettes against cracked stone walls. Ash drifted endlessly from the sky, muting sound, dulling color, and making every breath feel borrowed.
Aren walked alone.
His footsteps were steady, but his mind was anything but.
The vision still lingered behind his eyes—an afterimage burned into his thoughts. The broken throne. The endless void. The command that had not been spoken, yet had nearly crushed him all the same.
Kneel.
His fingers curled slowly at his sides.
"I don't kneel," he muttered under his breath.
He passed shuttered homes and wary faces peering through narrow windows. People withdrew as he approached, doors bolted softly, conversations dying mid-sentence. It had always been this way. Since the day the Crown-Stone reacted during his childhood appraisal—glowing faintly when he touched it, then cracking down the center as if rejecting him.
Too weak to awaken. Too dangerous to ignore.
The Ash-Bound.
A label that followed him like a curse.
At the edge of the settlement stood a structure more ruin than building—a watchtower long since abandoned after its upper levels collapsed during an old starfall quake. Aren ducked inside, climbing the uneven stone steps until he reached the broken platform halfway up.
From here, he could see the horizon.
Even now, hours after impact, a faint pillar of light stained the eastern sky. It pulsed slowly, like a distant heartbeat. The starfall site.
Too close, Maelor had said.
Aren clenched his jaw.
He wasn't supposed to feel drawn to it. Normal awakeners felt repulsion—a natural instinct to avoid unstable celestial zones unless trained or protected by artifacts. But what churned inside Aren wasn't fear.
It was gravity.
He pressed a hand against his chest, right over his heart. The sensation sharpened instantly, sending a spike of pain through his ribs.
"Damn it…"
He slid down against the cold stone wall, breathing through clenched teeth as memories surfaced unbidden.
He had been nine the first time it happened.
The settlement had gathered for the annual appraisal, a grim ceremony where children were tested for resonance with star energy. Most would show nothing. A few would awaken faint embers of power—enough to be taken to inner territories, trained, molded into soldiers or tools.
Aren remembered placing his hand on the Crown-Stone.
He remembered the silence that followed.
No glow. No surge.
Then the stone had screamed.
A fracture had split its surface, spiderwebbing outward, and the elders had recoiled in terror. Maelor had dragged Aren away before the Inquisition observers could react, shouting that it was a fault in the artifact.
That lie had saved Aren's life.
But lies rot.
A crunch of footsteps snapped Aren back to the present.
He rose instantly, senses sharpening. Someone was approaching the tower—moving carefully, deliberately. Not a scavenger. Not a villager.
A hunter.
Aren stepped into the shadows just as a figure emerged below, cloaked in layered ash-gray fabric reinforced with leather and metal plating. A mask covered the lower half of the stranger's face, etched with sigils that glimmered faintly in the dark.
Starbound Inquisition.
His blood ran cold.
The hunter paused, head tilting slightly, as if listening to something beyond human hearing. The sigils along their gauntlet flared once, then dimmed.
Aren held his breath.
Don't react. Don't think. Don't—
Pain lanced through his skull.
The pull toward the starfall surged violently, yanking at something deep inside him. His vision blurred, and for a split second, the world fractured—reality peeling back to reveal threads of light and shadow woven through everything.
The hunter stiffened.
"So it's true," a distorted voice said. "You're awake."
Aren moved.
He launched himself from the shadows, momentum carrying him down the broken steps in a blur of motion. His fist connected with the hunter's chest, impact reverberating through his arm. The hunter staggered—but did not fall.
Instead, a shockwave erupted outward, slamming Aren into the stone wall.
He gasped, ribs screaming as he crumpled to one knee.
The hunter advanced calmly. "Ash-Bound subject Aren Valecar. By decree of the Starbound Inquisition, you are to be detained for immediate extraction."
Aren spat blood onto the stone. "You people don't know when to quit."
"Incorrect," the hunter replied. "We know exactly when to act."
The sigils flared again.
This time, Aren did not resist the pull.
Something inside him answered.
The world slowed.
Ash froze midair. The hunter's movement dragged, like wading through invisible water. Aren felt a pressure behind his eyes, unbearable yet intoxicating, as the broken image of the throne flickered into existence again—closer now, clearer.
Not commanding.
Waiting.
Aren roared, forcing himself to his feet as heat flooded his veins. Blackened light crawled across his arms, forming faint, branching patterns beneath his skin. The stone beneath his boots cracked.
The hunter hesitated for the first time.
"Impossible… you're still Ash-Bound."
Aren smiled—a sharp, feral thing.
"Then stop underestimating ash."
He moved faster than thought.
In a single breath, he crossed the distance between them, driving his shoulder into the hunter's center of mass. The impact shattered stone behind them as both figures burst through the tower's outer wall, tumbling into open air.
They fell.
Wind screamed past Aren's ears as he twisted midair, slamming the hunter into the ground below. Dust and ash exploded outward on impact.
Aren rolled, barely managing to stand before his strength faltered. The blackened light receded instantly, leaving behind only exhaustion and searing pain.
The hunter lay motionless.
For now.
Aren staggered away, heart hammering wildly.
That power… it wasn't stable. It wasn't safe. And it wasn't something he could control yet.
But it was real.
Alarms began to sound across the settlement—low, mournful horns warning of Inquisition presence.
Aren didn't look back.
He ran east, toward the glowing horizon.
Toward the falling star.
Toward the truth that had been chasing him since the day the Crown-Stone broke.
Behind him, buried deep beneath layers of ash and forgotten history, the Starbound Crown stirred once more—its broken will aligning, piece by piece, with the boy who refused to kneel.