The summit of the Obsidian Reach pulsed with celestial energy, the red glyph glowing brighter with every breath Maelin took. The seven robed figures stood motionless at each star point, their faces masked, their forms indistinct—neither entirely human nor spirit, suspended between realities like forgotten echoes.
Maelin stepped into the center of the glyph.
Her boots crackled against the fire-threaded stone, yet the heat did not burn her. The Starshard hummed at her side, and the Celestial Locket, now opened, projected strands of light upward—forming a crown of shifting constellations above her head.
Caelum watched from the edge, eyes wide with fear and awe. He wanted to run to her, pull her from the circle, but something ancient and unmovable rooted him in place. "Maelin," he called, voice trembling. "Are you still you?"
She didn't answer.
Because in that moment… she wasn't.
Her mind opened, not like a door—but like a sky. Memories not her own surged through her. She saw the first Choir, winged and radiant, crafting the universe's lullabies. She felt the agony of the Whisper's last bearer, a girl who burned an entire city to save one life. She saw herself in all of them. All their hopes. All their failures.
> "The Crown chooses not the pure," whispered the robed figure closest to her.
"It chooses the burdened," said another.
"The ones who will bleed, and still rise," said a third.
The crown of stars descended.
It touched Maelin's brow.
Flames roared upward.
And she screamed—not from pain, but from the weight. The knowledge. The visions of futures that might come. Cities underwater. Skies cracking with silence. And in each, her own face… older, hardened, sometimes with tears, sometimes with fire in her eyes.
When the flames died down, Maelin stood straighter. Her eyes now reflected not just the stars—but the void between them.
"I know what the Whisper meant now," she said quietly. "It never promised salvation. It offered a choice."
Caelum stepped forward cautiously. "What did you choose?"
Maelin turned to him, and for the first time, smiled like someone who had let go of the past.
"To remember," she said, "what the stars want us to forget."
And somewhere, far beyond the mountain, the sky began to unravel.