Prologue
242 Words
The Crystal began to c***k on the night the stars fell silent.
No one noticed at first.
In the highest tower of Aetherion Keep, the Heart Crystal pulsed as it had for centuries—steady, radiant, eternal. Its light spilled through stained glass windows and bathed the marble halls in silver-blue brilliance. The priests knelt in reverence, whispering ancient hymns passed down from the Starborn Queen herself.
Then the light flickered.
A single fracture split across the surface of the Crystal like a line of lightning trapped in glass.
The High Seer felt it before she saw it. A sharp gasp tore from her throat as visions flooded her mind—cities swallowed in shadow, oceans boiling under crimson skies, and a girl standing alone at the edge of a burning kingdom.
The girl’s eyes glowed like shattered starlight.
“She has awakened,” the Seer whispered, her hands trembling against the cold stone floor.
Below the tower, the people of Elyndor slept peacefully, unaware that the barrier between their world and the Shadow Veil had weakened. Unaware that the darkness beyond the mountains had begun to stir.
Deep within the Crystal, something ancient shifted.
Not a god.
Not a demon.
But a memory.
And far beyond the kingdom walls, in a quiet cottage surrounded by wild lavender fields, a seventeen-year-old girl woke from a dream of breaking stars.
Her palms were glowing.
And somewhere in the distance, the Crystal cracked again.
- Writer
