TWILIGHT ACCORD : The Starborn Path
Chapter Thirteen
The Starborn Path
The silence that followed was thick and unnatural. Dust still floated in the air like ghostly ash. Stones cracked and groaned as if the cave itself were struggling to comprehend what had happened.
The bandit boss stood amidst the ruin—tall, calm, untouched. A body built like stone, his armor charred but intact, his eyes glazed with something deeper than fury. Around him, the last echoes of the old mage's spell faded into nothing. Kael breathed hard, sweat matting his hair, while Zerai flanked him, blade low but ready. Behind them, Mara steadied the freed captives, Ilya among them, shaken but safe.
The boss tilted his head.
"That all?" he said.
Kael stepped forward, fury on the edge of his tongue—but before he could speak, the mage raised a hand.
"Back off, flameheart," the old man muttered. "Let a relic speak to a ghost."
---
Years after the Accord was formed, an era of peace, under the endless skies of the southern kingdom of Varnesse, there lived a man who adored stars more than politics. His name was Arden Thalen—a teacher, a scholar, and perhaps the last man in Varnesse who still used a telescope made of brass and memory.
Arden was in his fifties then. He lived a quiet life in an ivory tower granted to him by the Astronomer's Guild—not out of prestige, but because no one else wanted to climb that many stairs. He wore robes patched at the elbows, owned more books than dishes, and drank far too much bitterroot tea.
He was, in short, the kind of man the world had forgotten.
But the sky had not.
It was on a frost-clear night that Arden first saw the fire streak across the heavens. A single meteor, burning silver-blue, carving the stars like a knife through velvet.
He marked its path. Tracked its descent. And two days later, he stood at the edge of a crater no larger than a well—its heart holding a single, glowing stone, no larger than his palm.
A meteorite, he corrected himself.
He touched it.
The world vanished.
Flame. Screams. An ocean of stars bleeding black. A war not yet written. A boy with silver flames dancing across his skin.
And Arden—old, frail, dying in the heart of a broken city, with the sky falling around him.
When he woke, the stone had gone cold. But something inside him had changed.
He no longer read the stars. He understood them.
Equations filled his dreams. Runes appeared in inkless patterns on his walls. He spoke names of constellations that no map dared hold. His magic deepened—became gravity itself. He could fold space, bend light, ignite air. But every spell shaved years from his bones. He aged faster. His once-trim beard turned ghost white. His voice deepened. His joints cracked with power. Still, he laughed more than he had in years.
He became short-tempered with fools. And above all, he grew desperate to leave something behind.
"Knowledge should never die quietly," he told himself. "It should be passed screaming into the next fool's skull."
Thus began his search for an apprentice.
He traveled north, east, even to the obsidian universities of Dalthyr. But no one impressed him. Too greedy. Too rigid. Too afraid.
Until he reached the merchant city of Avarel, where he saw a crowd gathered around a booth of swirling sparks.
There she was.
A woman in her twenties, lean and long-limbed, with dark copper skin and hair in a messy braid, goggles perched on her head, and grease staining her fingers. She wore leather belts stacked with glowing minerals, and she worked with the speed and confidence of someone who commanded attention.
Her name was Sarya Elen, a self-proclaimed alchemist of "revolutionary metallurgy."
She turned down his offer to become his apprentice five times.
"I don't do old creeps," she said, eyebrow arched, voice like smoke and steel.
Arden only laughed.
"You wound me, wench of wires. I offer the secrets of the stars."
"Keep your stars. I'm building mine."
He challenged her to a duel of theory.
She countered with a prototype that exploded in his face.
He offered tea. She poured it on his boots.
He showed her a collapsed starforge he made using three stones and a binding circle.
She stared. And for the first time, didn't speak.
"You're still a creep," she muttered. Interestingly, she agreed after seeing the rare mineral never been seen before and thought that this old man might have knowledge that will help her develop better technologies in the future, as she aspire to be the greatest inventor ever known.
They ended up traveling together for two years. Argued daily. She stole his food. He rewrote her formulas in her sleep. She nearly blew up a ferry. He stopped time to rebuild it.
She became like a daughter to him. Or a particularly annoying niece.
But three months ago, she vanished.
They were near the Whispering Cliffs, journeying toward Velmora. He had business in the city—to meet an old woman in the Labyrinth who once claimed to know the language of stars.
Sarya had insisted on scouting ahead.
Then came the scream.
By the time Arden reached the cliff's edge, she had fallen—not crashed, not splattered.
Fallen through.
Like reality had folded.
No blood. No bones. Just scorch marks and a silence that felt unnatural.
He searched for weeks. Searched the cliffs. Traced ancient ley-lines. Spoke to beasts, bound spirits, bribed smugglers.
Everything led to the same place.
The bandit camp near Velmora.
So he let himself get caught. Let them take his enchanted rings and starforged coins. Let them mock him and lock him away.
Until Kael and his companions arrived.
---
Back in the present, Arden stood tall now, his back cracking as he straightened. He looked at the bandit boss, who had just shrugged off a spell meant to rupture stone.
"You're not from here, are you?" the mage said, tapping his staff.
The boss said nothing.
"No. Not from here at all."
Behind him, Kael stepped forward again.
"Who are you?" Kael asked.
Arden didn't turn around.
"A dying man chasing a comet," he said. "But not dead yet."
His eyes glowed faintly—not with fire, but with the memory of stars.
Continue to Chapter XIV...