Starfall Above Cindergate

The stars had no right to be beautiful.

Not after everything.

Not above a land still charred and half-whispering from a century of death-songs.

But there they were—spread across the heavens like shattered glass, winking down through a breach in the ash-veiled sky. Evelyn stared upward, breathing shallow, still grounded in the dusted basin of the Emberglass Vault.

They twinkled not like passive stars—but watching ones.

Sentinels of another kind.

Torren sat nearby, sharpening a blade he barely used anymore. His gaze flicked to the sky, then back to Evelyn.

"You ever think they're watching us?" he muttered.

Evelyn didn't look away. "They are."

He paused.

"You're not being poetic, are you?"

"No."

They made camp just past the vault's crater. The emberglass shards nearby still glowed faintly, casting long, sharp shadows. Evelyn didn't sleep. She couldn't—not when the stars whispered.

Words she didn't understand.

Glyphs she'd only seen in her mother's hidden scrolls.

Names that sounded true.

By morning, the sky had sealed itself back up, clouds returned like a lid placed upon a boiling pot.

They walked west.

Toward the shattered citadel of Cindergate.

The path was no longer a path.

What had once been cobbled roads now lay in rubble, choked by vines with dark thorns and whispering seed-pods. Trees grew sideways here. Bones jutted from the ground like the ribs of buried titans.

Twice, Evelyn had to steady Torren as they passed places where Echoed remnants still lingered, snared in illusion traps—shards of past suffering, replaying over and over.

They reached Cindergate's outer wall by dusk.

Or what was left of it.

"Wasn't this a Guild capital once?" Evelyn asked.

Torren nodded. "Before the Hollow broke the sky and lit the wardline aflame. Before the Scar sang."

Now the towers were leaning, draped in creeping ashvines and chimeric growths. A massive gate—once burnished gold—lay collapsed in three pieces, half-swallowed by black sand.

But on the walls, still faintly visible beneath grime, Evelyn could see carvings.

Warden Crests. Corebearer Lineage Seals.

And something else:

A sigil of flame eating itself.

"Welcome to the edge of our failures," came a voice.

A figure stepped from the broken arch of a tower. Cloaked, limping, face shadowed.

Torren tensed.

The figure lifted both hands. "Peace. I watched the star breach last night too. And only one born of the Crucible could have summoned it."

Evelyn stepped forward. "Who are you?"

He removed his hood.

Bald. Scarred. Eyes faintly luminescent—not from a core. From something older. Stranger.

"I am Ithryn. Once Guild-Arbiter of the 4th Flame Circle."

She frowned. "Those don't exist anymore."

"They do now." He stepped closer. "Because you exist now."

He guided them through the crumbled halls of Cindergate's inner ring, past altars long buried and halls half-consumed by ashbeasts.

Along the way, he spoke.

Of the Flame Archives, buried below.

Of the Warden Choir once stationed here—who sang sigils into stone.

Of how Evelyn's appearance had been prophesied… or feared.

"You bear the mark of recursion," Ithryn whispered. "The Flame that repeats. But in you, perhaps… it resolves."

They reached a high balcony.

From there, they could see all of the basin—dead rivers, black forest teeth, the scars in the land where Hollowblight had once walked.

And above it all…

The Starfall.

Still visible. Still flickering. A rift of light above the world.

"Why is it still there?" Evelyn asked.

Ithryn turned. "Because you opened it. And you haven't yet chosen what to call down from it."

The sky cracked.

Once—like a heartbeat. A note. A whispering song sung backward.

Torren drew his blade instinctively.

Evelyn's core pulsed.

The starline shimmered again—this time with color.

Gold. Red. Silver.

The same silver she had seen in the Emberglass.

Ithryn said nothing.

Because now all three of them could hear it.

A voice, not entirely of this world, speaking words that were not in any tongue yet still known.

"She listens. The Hollow waits. The stars remember."

Evelyn's pulse synchronized with it.

And in her mind, an image:

A sword, forged from starlight. A mirror, broken and burning. And a choice—sealed beneath stone and song.

As night reclaimed the skies above Cindergate, Evelyn stood tall on the tower's lip.

Fire no longer burned behind her eyes.

It sang.