Chapter 17: The Illusion of Fate
Luna felt the collapse before it happened.
A sudden rush of vertigo, the world tilting like the fabric of reality itself had been pulled from beneath her feet.
She gasped, reaching out to steady herself—only to realize there was nothing to hold onto.
The chamber was gone.
The celestial charts, the metallic pillars, the oppressive walls of fate itself—vanished.
Instead, she was falling.
Stars whirled around her, stretching and bending like liquid light. Time unraveled, spiraling in golden threads, looping and twisting in ways that made her stomach churn. She could hear voices—whispers, echoes of a thousand futures, a thousand possibilities all crashing into each other.
And then—
She hit the ground.
Pain shot through her body, the breath knocked from her lungs.
She blinked rapidly, trying to make sense of where she was.
The chamber was back. The glowing celestial charts still lined the walls. Lord Castian stood exactly where he had been before. The Celestial Order was still there.
Ethan was still there.
Nothing had changed.
Except for one thing.
The other Luna was gone.
Luna's heart stopped.
Had she imagined it? Had she really just spoken to a future version of herself—or had it all been a fabrication? A carefully constructed illusion?
She turned sharply, her eyes locking onto Lord Castian.
He was smiling.
"Fascinating," he murmured. "Your mind resisted longer than I expected."
Ice shot through Luna's veins.
He knew.
She hadn't spoken to her future self.
She hadn't seen an alternate reality.
It had all been a trap.
Luna's fists clenched. "You—"
"—are trying to help you," Castian interrupted smoothly. He stepped forward, his golden mask catching the dim light. "You believe you have a choice, Luna Sinclair. That you can bend the stars without consequence."
She gritted her teeth, forcing herself to stand. Her legs were unsteady, her body still reeling from the fabricated vision.
"But the truth is," Castian continued, watching her carefully, "you are already in a web of fate you cannot escape."
Luna forced herself to breathe. To think.
The entire thing—the meeting with her future self, the fractured timelines—it had all been orchestrated by the Celestial Order.
To break her.
To convince her that fighting fate would destroy reality.
To make her doubt herself.
Anger burned through her veins, sharp and searing.
They wanted her to be afraid.
They wanted her to give in.
They wanted her to submit.
She lifted her chin, her voice steady despite the fire inside her. "You're lying."
Castian's expression didn't change. "Am I?"
Luna forced herself to remain calm. To analyze.
If the vision had been a fabrication, then what did that mean?
It meant they didn't know what would happen if she changed fate.
It meant they were scared.
She almost laughed.
Lord Castian, the ever-composed, ever-calculating leader of the Celestial Order, was afraid of her.
And that?
That was power.
"You wouldn't have gone through all this effort to deceive me if you weren't afraid of what I can do," Luna said, her voice sharper now.
Castian's golden eyes gleamed behind his mask. "Clever girl."
Luna stepped forward, every muscle in her body coiled like a spring. "If I truly had no choice—if fate was absolute—you wouldn't need to manipulate me."
A silence stretched between them.
For the first time, Castian did not have an answer.
Luna's pulse hammered. She was right.
She could feel it now—beneath the surface of her skin, inside her very bones.
The stars weren't her prison.
They were hers to command.
Luna exhaled. Then—
She moved.
Not her body.
Not her hands.
Her power.
It surged from within her, a pulse of celestial energy that vibrated through the room, sending the very constellations painted on the walls flickering.
The restraints binding her?
Gone.
The moment they shattered, Ethan moved.
His dagger was already in his hand, flashing as he lunged at the nearest Order member. Chaos erupted in the chamber.
But Luna wasn't focused on the fight.
She was focused on Castian.
The energy inside her surged, white-hot and endless.
She lifted a hand—and the stars obeyed.
The celestial chart carved into the floor cracked, its glowing constellations splitting apart. Energy rippled through the air, a cosmic storm threatening to tear the chamber apart.
Castian barely flinched.
Instead, he smiled.
"You have already begun," he murmured. "Do you feel it, Starborn?"
Luna's body trembled.
Because she did feel it.
The shift.
The unraveling.
The stars were no longer fixed.
She had done something irreversible.
And the universe would never be the same again.
Chapter 18: When the Sky Shatters
The world broke.
Luna felt it before she saw it.
A shift so violent it rattled her bones, a distortion so immense it sent ripples through the very fabric of reality.
She staggered back, her breath catching as the celestial chart beneath her feet fractured, its glowing constellations flickering wildly, some vanishing entirely. The chamber around her groaned, the walls bending, twisting—as if the universe itself was resisting what she had just done.
Ethan was at her side in an instant, grabbing her wrist. "Luna—"
But she couldn't hear him.
Because the stars were screaming.
Not in sound, but in presence. A howling void in the depths of her mind, an overwhelming flood of energy that surged through her veins, searing like wildfire. She felt everything at once—the planets shifting, the sky unraveling, time itself hesitating, unsure whether to move forward or collapse.
She had done something irreversible.
The Celestial Order felt it too.
The members still standing gasped, some collapsing to their knees, clutching their heads as if reality had just turned against them. The very foundation of their belief system—the unchangeable nature of fate—had just been proven false before their eyes.
Lord Castian, however, did not kneel.
He stood tall, still, his golden eyes locked onto Luna as the celestial chaos raged around them.
And then, for the first time since she had met him—
He looked afraid.
Luna's fingers twitched. The power still surged inside her, too much, too vast, too unstable—
Something cracked overhead.
She looked up—
And her heart stopped.
The sky was shattering.
A rupture had formed above the chamber, splitting through the heavens like a jagged wound in the cosmos. Beyond it, the night was no longer the night—it was something else, something shifting, swirling, breaking apart into golden fractures, revealing glimpses of…
Luna's own face.
Dozens of them.
No—thousands.
Every possibility, every future, every Luna Sinclair that could have been or would be—reflected back at her through the fractured sky.
Her past selves. Her future selves.
Some fighting. Some fleeing. Some falling into nothingness.
She had not just changed fate.
She had broken the boundaries of time itself.
Ethan swore, his grip on her tightening. "Luna, we have to go—now."
She could barely think. "I—I don't—"
A roar erupted from the sky.
Something was coming through.
Something ancient.
Something wrong.
A shadow spilled from the rift, swirling like ink, its form shifting, flickering, as if it was not meant to exist in this world. The moment it emerged, everything trembled.
Luna felt it.
The same way she felt the stars.
The same way she had always felt fate itself.
This thing—this being—was never supposed to exist.
And yet, because of her, it did.
Castian took a step forward, his expression unreadable. "You see it now, don't you?"
Luna's pulse pounded. "What… what is that?"
His golden gaze flickered toward the swirling shadow. "That, Starborn, is what happens when you tamper with fate."
Luna's chest tightened. "No."
Castian exhaled, his voice eerily calm. "Yes."
The shadow moved.
The temperature plunged.
The chamber's stone walls cracked.
Ethan yanked Luna backward. "Luna, we can't stay here—"
Too late.
The thing turned toward her.
And it spoke.
Not in words.
Not in sound.
But directly into her soul.
"You do not belong."
The voice was not one.
It was many.
Hundreds, thousands, overlapping, all versions of her.
Luna gasped, her vision blurring.
This thing—this impossible thing—was something the Celestial Order had never accounted for.
Because even they didn't know what happens when fate is rewritten.
And now?
Neither did she.
The ground splintered beneath her feet. The rift widened.
Reality itself was unstable.
Ethan moved. Fast.
He grabbed her, his voice sharp. "We are leaving."
Luna couldn't move.
The shadow was still watching her, still speaking without sound.
"This world is not yours anymore."
The rift tore wider.
And then—
The chamber collapsed.