Prologue: The Shattered Sky

Year of the Crimson Eclipse, 1421 AD

Legends say: The heavens were not always silent. Once, they sang—a symphony of starlight conducted by the Celestial Weave, an ancient lattice of energy binding constellations to mortal fate.

But hubris fractured the cosmic song, devoured by greed and avarice.

In the Forbidden City whose name had been erased, the Yongle Emperor's court alchemists had once sought to harness the heavens. They pierced the Cosmic Veil with a ritual of fire and jade, greedy for the stars' immortality. Instead, they tore the sky asunder.

Nine stars, or as what they called —The Luminaries of Xuanji—plunged to Earth, each a living fragment of the cosmos.

The first struck the Gobi Desert, erasing a kingdom into glass. The second drowned the port of Quanzhou, birthing a whirlpool that devoured ships for centuries.

Mortals called them "cursed lights," but the wise knew the truth: those stars were alive and they hungered for destruction.

From the ashes of this cataclysm rose the Astral Veil Sect, a clandestine order of mystic cartographers and warrior-poets. Led by the iron-willed Grandmaster Lin Faye, they believed the stars were not weapons but wardens, meant to guard the boundary between realms. To prevent annihilation, Lin Faye devised the Starfall Map—a living tapestry etched not on parchment, but into the soul of a chosen bloodline.

The ritual to bind the stars demanded a harrowing price. At the summit of Mount Kunlun, beneath a moon stained crimson by the wounded sky, Lin Faye gathered nine disciples. Each drank a elixir forged from starlight and their own life essence, becoming human anchors for the fallen Luminaries.

Among them, the youngest disciple, Yue Qiang, received the Azure Dragon Star; its power flooded her veins, turning her hair silver and her eyes into pools of liquid night.

"We are Cartographers now," Lin Faye had declared to the world.

"Our bodies will fade, but the Map shall endure."

For three generations, the sect thrived in shadow. They built Nine Altars across the Middle Kingdom, each a prison and a shrine for a star. The Cartographers became legends—guardians who walked as storms, their fists crackling with stolen starlight, their brushstrokes healing blighted lands.

Many praise Lin Faye for her ingenuity, others condemn her. The line between her and the Yongle Emperor thinning.

The Heavens were not always silent but never have they roared in anger before as well.

Mere mortals wished to bound the heavens light. Such foolishness wasn't reciprocated well.

In 1587, the sect's brightest Cartographer, Jiang Zian, succumbed to the whispers of the Vermilion Bird Star. It promised him dominion over life and death if he severed the Map's bonds.

Jiang Zian accepted.

At the Altar of Echoes in Hangzhou, Jiang Zian slaughtered his brethren and siphoned their stars into a jade amulet. The heavens roared as the Map splintered.

Chaos insurged and the Disciple fought the Master, their battle one sided. Jiang Zian had won. No one was his match.

Grandmaster Lin Faye, with her body crumbling under the strain of the unraveling ritual and comrades dead around her, made a final gamble. She scattered the Map's remnants into the souls of her descendants, ensuring the stars could never be wholly claimed. Never to be free.

With her last breath, she cursed Jiang Zian: Your hunger will outlive you. A child of my blood will rise to paint your end.

Time followed its trails. The sect vanished, their altars buried beneath dynasties and dust. Jiang Zian disappeared from the history his amulet passed through warlords and fools, its power warping bearers into monsters, until it too was lost among the men and their desire for power. Wars were waged, wars were fought, humanity showed the darkest of their traits until everything turned to ashes, burned in the aftermaths of the civilizations.

...

The stars did not sleep. In the darkness they lured the fate itself.

In 1860, as British cannons shattered the Old Summer Palace, a French officer looted a star-bound relic—a Qing-era compass—and triggered the White Tiger Star's awakening. That night, it razed Beijing's outskirts to ash before fading.

In 1945, a Hiroshima survivor stumbled into a crater shimmering with the Yellow Dragon Star's aura. His journal, recovered decades later, spoke of "a voice in the light" promising rebirth… before his body dissolved into golden mist and he was reborn as something new.

Many such cases followed. Those that had a taste of the Stars' power began to frantically search the globe for the rest.

History was retraced and the forgotten wars were recalled. Relics were unearthed and myths were tested.

The world had forgotten about the Astral Veil, dismissing the stars as myths or radiation but some began to piece things out. They were the Eclipse Syndicate and they were the only ones who remembered.

Born from Jiang Zian's poisoned legacy, and a thirst for power, they hunted the Map's shards, believing the stars' chaos would crown them as gods.

The Legends say a lot of things. The Stars rise and shine each day. Yet with each passing day, they yearn for their freedom.

*Shanghai, Present Day*

The day had come.

Beneath the neon glare of the dams, a tremor stirs. The Azure Dragon Altar cracks, its star seeping into the Huangpu River. In Kyoto, cherry blossoms bloom out of season, their petals edged with starlight. A beggar in Mumbai chants an unknown language, his pupils twin galaxies.

And in a Shanghai alley, a boy named Li Chen sketches a crumbling temple, unaware that his brushstrokes echo Lin Faye's final prophecy.

The Celestial Weave began to sing again. The future was here.

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