Story 1133: Birth of the Black Star

Before the moon fractured. Before the Hollow One whispered from beneath the roots. Before the stag walked…

There was the Black Star.

It arrived not from the sky, but from beneath—a wound in the earth that pulsed with wrongness. It wasn’t a meteor or a relic. It was an idea made solid. A hunger so ancient that even the void had buried it.

And in the village of Wetherholt, built on that cursed soil, the night it awakened was remembered as the beginning of the end.

The sky that night was clear. The constellations danced above like old friends. Children laughed by lanternlight, and the town square buzzed with the last warmth of harvest.

Then the air split.

No thunder. No warning. Just a pressure—a vibration in the bones of every living thing.

People screamed without knowing why.

Dogs howled. Infants wailed. Birds dropped from the sky, dead mid-flight.

Then, in the middle of the square, the earth cracked open like a rotten fruit.