The Weight of Dust and Stars

The dreams always began with the sound of wings.

Ethan Veyra jerked awake, his throat raw from screaming. Under a blood-red moon, the shards of the nightmare clung to him like cobwebs, a raven with eyes like broken glass and feathers that shone like obsidian.

A voice, hummed in his bones as it settled on a labyrinth of stone walls covered in moss.

"Seek it out before the veil breaks."

Sweat soaked his shirt as he sat up.

In the hollow silence of the estate, the clock on the bedside table, which read 3:07 a.m., ticked away too loudly. He had been haunted by the same dream for weeks, and it had always ended with that same echoing command.

Find it.

But what?

Since coming to Valenmoor, all he had discovered was disappointment and dust.

The once-grand Veyra estate towered over the mist-covered hills like a gargoyle, its façade crumbling from decades of neglect.

After his father's untimely death, Ethan inherited it. His father had abandoned him when he was a child, leaving behind only a key to this crumbling monument of family shame and a mysterious letter.

He had been looking through artifacts from a family he had never heard of for days. In the attic were yellowed letters sealed with a wax raven, containing words like sacrifice and oath.

His head ached as he read the spiraling symbols on the pages of grimoires bound in cracked leather that made the library shelves shrink.

Portraits of stern-faced ancestors lined the halls, their eyes tracking him like predators.

But it was the grand foyer that unsettled him most. The moon shone through broken stained glass, illuminating the floor with shattered shades of crimson and sapphire.

In the middle was the Veyra crest, which depicted a raven in midair with its talons gripping a seven-pointed star.

His father had torn up the carpet to expose it years ago, shouting drunken rants about "cursed legacies" during Ethan's single childhood visit.

"Some legacies are curses, boy. Pray yours stays buried."

Tonight, the dream's pull had been stronger. With his flashlight in hand, Ethan found himself making his way down the stairs, attracted to the crest like a moth to flame.

Every step he took caused clouds of dust to dance in the stark light of the beam as his boots echoed on the marble.

He stopped in the middle of the star, its edges smoothed by the passage of time. On impulse, he scuffed his heel against it.

Thud.

He held his breath at the hollow sound. He knelt down and used a rusted letter opener from the study to tug at the edges. The wood creaked and split, exposing a space underneath.

There was a bundle inside, its folds stiff with age and wrapped in velvet eaten by moths.

As he pulled the cloth back, his heart pounded.

The object beneath was no ordinary book. Its surface glistened, cold to the touch, like liquid mercury. Along its spine glowed symbols jagged slashes and spirals that seemed to writhe under his gaze.

The same symbols from his dreams.

The Resonance.

He ran a finger across the metal against his better judgment.

A sharp pain pierced his skull.

Everything vanished.

He was in a desert with twin moons leaking into a smoke-choked horizon under a broken sky. He heard a hymn vibrating in his teeth as figures wearing black robes circled a monolith.

In the middle of them was a woman with ash-streaked pale hair and shadowy eyes. Liora Veyra, his grandmother, whom he only knew from portraits.

She touched the monolith with bloody palms.

"The pact is a lie," she swore, her neck crawling with black veins. "The Thirteenth Star rises. You must—"

The vision was broken by the shriek of a raven. The codex fell to the ground as Ethan staggered backward. The symbols on its spine faded to a faint pulse as his hands shook.

Hallucination.

Sleep deprivation.

However, the grandfather clock in the hall, which had been silent since he arrived, started to tick.

One. Two. Three.

Every blow caused the floorboards to tremble. The stone raven's wings crumpled at the twelfth, grinding like hinges that have not been oiled. A staircase descending into darkness was revealed when the star in its talons broke open.

The sudden cold caused Ethan's breath to fog. The codex hummed insistently against his palm.

Find it.

He took a candlestick with half-melted, wax-dripping arms and stepped into the empty space.

The smell of wet iron and stone filled the air. The stairs twisted deeper than the estate's foundations should allow, walls shifting from brick to slick black rock etched with more glowing symbols.

A circular chamber with a mosaic of constellations on the ceiling and a larger star throbbing a sickly green was located at the bottom.

A pedestal with deep gouges on it stood in the middle. It held a locket with the Veyra star and raven engraved on its surface.

There was a tiny picture of Liora inside, with a soft smile and a black-stained dagger in her hand.

"You're late, little guardian."

Ethan turned around.

The voice came from everywhere and nowhere, dry as parchment. A figure of a man in a frayed coat emerged from the shadows that gathered in the corner, its edges flickering like a distorted reel of film.

"The codex is already hunted by the Order," the figure growled. "They'll peel the flesh from your bones. Give me the locket. Let the Veyras' sins die with you."

"Who are you?" Ethan demanded, backing toward the stairs.

The figure made a sound like glass shattering as it laughed.

"A friend of your grandmother's. She begged me to spare you. Sentimental fool."

A roar shook the chamber. As the green star flared, cracks appeared all over the ceiling. The figure's last words echoed as he vanished into smoke.

"Run, Ethan Veyra. They're coming."

With codex and locket burning in his pack like guilt, Ethan ran from the estate as dawn bled across the hills. From the oak door behind him, the raven crest watched, its sap-like blood dripping from a new spiral sigil carved into its surface.

In the broken chamber far below, the Thirteenth Star woke up.