The Shattered Star

**Kelly Thompson's POV**

The marshes breathe.

Each step sinks into the mire, the ground exhaling decay and whispers. My starlit hand glows brighter here, the Shattered Star’s hunger gnawing at my bones, eager to gorge on the Veil’s rot. Eden trails behind, his crows eerily silent, their feathers slick with marsh oil. Kael snarls at every shadow, his wounds from the cliffs still oozing.

Lila’s voice slithers through the fog. *“You shouldn’t have come home, Stormbearer.”*

A Crowshrike talisman dangles from a dead tree, its crow-skull grinning. Eden rips it down, crushing it beneath his boot. “She’s playing with us.”

“No.” I press my palm to the tree. The bark writhes, etching itself into a map—a spiral leading to the marsh’s heart. “She’s *guiding* us.”

Kael’s ears flatten. “To what?”

The Star’s pulse answers, a drumbeat syncing with my own. *“To the truth,”* it whispers, not in the Voidmother’s voice, but in the First Weaver’s.