ASTROLABE OF FATE

The abbey was never silent. Not truly. Stone breathed. Wood groaned. And Brother Caelen Thorne could hear all of it because he was the only monk awake at Vespers. 6'4" of trouble, ducking under doorways meant for smaller men. His shadow stretched across the scriptorium wall and the novices swore it moved before he did. _“The demi-god walks,”_ they whispered, crossing themselves. _“Don’t look at his eyes. Angel blood, they say. Cursed.”_ Caelen hated the name. Demi-god. As if 27 years of copying gospels, fasting until his ribs showed, and kneeling until his knees were stone meant nothing. He wasn’t holy. He was just tall. Just late. Tonight, he was late again. The grain messenger from York was 3 days overdue. Without it, the abbey would eat prayers for dinner. Caelen knew it in his bones the way he knew ink would run if he pressed too hard. He was excellent at counting time. Atrocious at changing it. “God’s order,” Abbot Bernard would say, patting his shoulder and barely reaching his chest. “Not yours to fix, brother.” So Caelen fixed manuscripts instead. His quill scratched Latin onto vellum. _Tempus non sanat, sed vulnerat._ Time does not heal, it wounds. He’d written it 400 times. He still didn’t believe it. A cold draft slipped through the arrow-slit. The candle guttered. For one breath, darkness. Then moonlight hit the loose stone beneath the prie-dieu. Caelen frowned. He’d copied that psalm yesterday. The stone hadn’t been loose yesterday. He knelt — all 6'4" of him folding awkwardly — and pried it free. Inside: a brass disc. Rings within rings. Markings he didn’t recognize. Arabic beside Latin. And a blue stone, cracked clean down the middle. A compass? No. Too complex. A pilgrim’s toy? Possibly. His thumb brushed the blue stone. The world hiccupped. Light poured from the c***k. The outer ring spun backward, screaming metal. The scriptorium dissolved. Stone to dust. Dust to stars. The psalm on his page bled into constellations. A voice, not his, not God’s, murmured: _“You’re late, Brother Thorne. But not for grain. For her.”_ Then nothing. Caelen fell. He landed on his knees. Hard tile instead of stone. Air that smelled like nothing — no incense, no earth, no rain. Just… clean. Wrong. He opened his eyes. Lights. Bright as the sun, but cold. No flame. Glass walls. Metal tables covered in tools he couldn’t name. And a woman. She was tall. 5'9" at least, which made her the tallest woman he’d ever seen. But he still towered over her by 7 inches. When he stood, he had to duck under lights that buzzed like angry bees. Her curly hair was a wild cloud, tied up with what looked like a sharpened stick. Glasses sat crooked on her nose. And her clothes. Oh, Mother Mary. Her legs were bare from the knee down. BARE. Covered only by dark fabric stretched tight a. Her upper body was wrapped in faded blue cloth with white letters: N-A-S-A. It clung to her, she needs to be persecuted for such abominable dressing,a thin coat the color of storm clouds. The fabric was too fine to be rags,but the Strange cut? Scandalous.Like a beggar who'd stolen a noblewoman's wardrobe and lost the sleeves. Caelen’s first thought: _She must be cold. Or a player. Or both. God forgive her._ The woman stared at him. Then her eyes went wide. She took in his height, his brown robe, his bare feet, the blue glow pulsing from the brass thing in his hand. “Jesus Christ,” she breathed. “You’re taller than the doorframe. Taller than my advisor.” Caelen rose slowly. 6'4" unfolding in a room built for smaller people. The brass thing pulsed. Once. Twice. He bowed, awkwardly, and said: “Peace be with you, daughter. Tell me, Aren't you cold? Your dressing is not appropriate, you could be stoned for this. And… how did I get here?” he looked around. Liora blinked. Daughter? Did this gaint just call her daughter? “Where are you?” she repeated. Then she looked at her outfit. Limited edition Balenciaga cargo pants. 2026 drop. $890. NASA vintage tee she'd distressed herself. Her advisor said she had" impeccable taste." This man in a burlap sack thought she looked like a beggar. Liora's brain shorted out. She laughed. Sharp, disbelieving. " Buddy, i think you're the tall,creepy, fashion disaster here. She looked at the room. At the equipment. At him. “Buddy, you’re in the Cambridge Astrophysics Lab. You literally fell from above me. I was testing the gravimeter and then there was blue light and you—” Caelen frowned. Buddy? Creepy?Cambridge? Gravimeter? None of those words meant anything to him. Caelen frowned, gripping the brass disc tighter. “Cambridge is a day’s ride from the abbey. I was in the scriptorium a moment ago. This room… it is not the scriptorium. The walls are glass. The light has no flame.” Liora stared at him. The robe. The bare feet. The way he spoke. She took a step closer. “Okay, what year do you think it is?” “Year?” Caelen glanced down at the brass disc. The blue stone pulsed. “The Abbot keeps the calendar. But it is autumn. Harvest is late.” Liora’s mouth opened. Closed. “You fell through my ceiling holding that thing,” she said slowly, pointing at the disc. “That looks like an astrolabe. A really old one. But it’s glowing. And you just said you don’t know the year.” Astrolabe. Caelen turned it over. The markings meant nothing. He’d thought it was a compass. “I found it beneath the prie-dieu,” he said. “It shone, and then the world… tilted.” Liora looked at the disc. Then at him. 6'4", built like a statue, eyes full of confusion, not madness. She huffed a laugh. Nervous. “Okay, Giant. I don’t know if you’re pranking me, or if that thing actually did something impossible. But you can’t stay here. Security will—” “Security?” Caelen stepped forward. The room tilted for him. “Is that your lord? Tell him I mean no harm. I only wish to understand how I came to be in this glass room.” He reached for the edge of a metal table. His sleeve pulled up. Liora saw it: forearm, corded muscle, and a thin white scar across his palm. “Are you hurt?” she asked before she could stop herself. Caelen followed her gaze. “A quill knife. I was 14. Proof that haste makes a man bleed.” Liora, who had catalogued 300 medieval artifacts, had never seen a scar like that. Too clean. Too real. “You’re not a reenactor,” she whispered. “Your hands… they’ve actually worked.” Caelen tilted his head. looking at the NASA write up on her blouse confused. “Work is prayer. What is your prayer, woman without sleeves?" Woman -without -sleeves.Liora bit her lip to stop laughing. This was insane. This was impossible. This man was 6'4" and looked like he'd been carved from a cathedral wall and given the personality of a sad librarian. He thought NASA was a prayer. A snort escaped her. Then full laugh. " Oh my God. You think I'm a nun? Sweetheart, this is space agency merch. We landed on the moon. Which you probably think is cheese." Cealen recoiled like she'd cursed. "Blasphemy. The moon is God's lamp. And do not call me sweetheart. I took vows." She couldn't believe her eyes, this big man looked like she just molested him. " Vows of what? Bad tailoring?" Liora took a step closer, despite every rational cell screaming not to. He smelled like old books and rain. And he was staring at her pants like they'd personally offended the Pope. She pointed at her chest. “N-A-S-A. It’s not a prayer. It’s… the name of people who study the stars. Like you, maybe?” Caelen frowned at the letters. Then at her face. “You study stars? In a glass room? Without parchment?” “Without parchment,” Liora confirmed. “Look, I need to—” The brass disc jerked. A gear ground forward. Blue light spilled between his fingers and lit up his jaw, his throat. Caelen’s eyes snapped to hers. “It moves again. What—” “Not sorcery,” Liora said quickly, backing up. “It’s probably a mechanism. Giant, put it down—” Too late. The disc flared. Light exploded between them. Liora’s last thought: _He has eyelashes that should be illegal._ Caelen’s last thought: _She does not lie. But nothing she says makes sense._ Then the gear clicked. And the world jumped again. ---