The observatory of Oakhaven sat atop the highest hill in the province, a solitary spire of white stone reaching desperately toward the heavens. Inside, the air was thick with the scent of ancient parchment, burning sage, and the metallic tang of ozone that always accompanied heavy star-magic. Elian sat hunched over his grand astrolabe, his fingers delicately adjusting the brass rings. He was a Cartographer of the Skies, tasked with mapping the ever-shifting currents of the constellations. It was a quiet, solitary life, precisely how he liked it. He preferred the silent, predictable dance of the cosmos to the chaotic, noisy world of men below.
But tonight, the cosmos was anything but predictable.
Elian wiped a smudge of ink from his cheek and leaned into the eyepiece of his primary telescope. He was tracking the constellation of the Guardian, a cluster of seven brilliant blue stars that formed the shape of a raised shield. For three nights, the Guardian had been flickering, its light waning as if struggling against an unseen tide. As Elian watched, the unthinkable happened. The central star of the constellation—the Heart of the Guardian—flared with a blinding, agonizing crimson light. Then, it simply detached from the firmament.
Elian gasped, stumbling backward and knocking over a stack of star-charts. He rushed to the open balcony of the observatory, the biting night wind whipping his robes around his ankles. He looked up with his naked eyes. It wasn’t an illusion. A streak of burning azure fire was tearing through the atmosphere, plummeting directly toward the Whispering Wastes just beyond the town’s borders. As the star fell, a palpable wave of cold washed over the world. The remaining six stars of the Guardian constellation flickered and died, swallowed by a patch of absolute, suffocating blackness.
The Umbra had taken another constellation.
Panic seized Elian’s chest. The Guardian was the anchor for the defensive wards of the entire northern province. Without it, they were completely vulnerable. As if on cue, the shadows in the valley below began to stretch and writhe. From the treeline of the Whispering Wastes emerged creatures of pure, shifting darkness. They resembled hounds, but their bodies were made of jagged, absorbing void, and their eyes burned with an unnatural, sickly violet light. The Umbra-beasts.
The town bells began to toll frantically. Screams echoed up the hill. Elian turned back to his study, frantically searching for something, anything to defend himself with. He grabbed a heavy iron alignment rod, his hands shaking so violently he nearly dropped it. He heard the heavy oak doors at the base of his spire splinter and shatter. The beasts were inside.
The sound of scrambling claws echoed up the spiral staircase. Elian backed away until he hit the balcony railing, raising the iron rod. The trapdoor burst open, and three Umbra-hounds slinked into the observatory. They hissed, their muzzles dripping with a black, acidic substance that burned through the floorboards. They began to circle him, sensing his terror.
Just as the largest hound lunged, the glass of the skylight above shattered into a million glittering pieces.
A figure dropped from the heavens, landing with a heavy, earth-shaking thud between Elian and the beasts. It was a woman, clad in armor that seemed to be carved from solid moonlight. In her hands, she held a massive greatsword forged of jagged, silver metal that pulsed with an intense, blinding white light.
“Stay behind me, Cartographer,” she ordered, her voice cutting through the chaos like a whip.
The Umbra-hounds recoiled from the light of her blade, but their hunger drove them forward. They attacked as a pack. The woman moved with a fluid, lethal grace that defied the weight of her armor. She swung the greatsword in a wide arc, leaving a trail of sparkling stardust in the air. The blade cleaved through the first hound, and where it struck, the creature did not bleed; it simply dissolved into gray ash with a shrill shriek.
She pivoted, driving the pommel of her sword into the skull of the second beast, then brought the blade down in a devastating overhead strike that bisected the third. In less than ten seconds, the immediate threat was neutralized.
Elian slowly lowered his iron rod, staring at the woman in awe. “You… you’re a Star-Catcher.”
She turned to face him, revealing sharp, hardened features and eyes the color of a winter sky. She sheathed her greatsword across her back, the radiant light dimming but never fully extinguishing. “My name is Kaelia. And your sky is falling, scholar. The Heart of the Guardian just struck the earth, and the Umbra is pouring through the tear it left behind. If we don’t recover that fallen star and take it to the Astral Forge before the next moon, this world will be consumed by the void.”
“The Astral Forge?” Elian stammered. “But that’s just a myth! A legend from the First Age!”
“The beast ashes on your floor say otherwise,” Kaelia replied grimly, walking toward the balcony and looking out toward the Whispering Wastes. “The star fell in the canyons. Pack your maps, Elian. We leave in five minutes.”