Chapter 3 — The Star-Eater’s Throne
1057 Words
POV: Damieon
The dream begins with falling.
Not the kind where you wake before you hit the ground.
This time, I never stop.
Stars rush past me like shattered glass—blazing trails of silver and fire tearing through endless black. My body feels weightless, but my chest hurts like something is pulling my heart forward faster than the rest of me can follow.
The wind screams.
The stars scream.
And somewhere beneath it all…
Something is calling my name.
“Damieon.”
The voice is not loud.
It is vast.
It does not echo in my ears.
It echoes in my bones.
I twist in the falling dark, reaching for something—anything—and the stars suddenly rip apart like a curtain being torn in half.
I land.
On bone.
A floor made of ivory-white bones fused together like marble. Skulls form the pillars. Ribcages arch into cathedral ceilings. The entire throne room is built from the remains of creatures so ancient their shapes do not resemble anything living now.
At the far end of the hall…
A throne waits.
It is carved from crystalized starlight and blackened bone, glowing with a dark radiance that makes my eyes hurt. Something sits upon it.
No.
Not sits.
It is grown into the throne.
As if the throne itself is only an extension of its body.
The figure is enormous—humanoid in shape, but wrong in proportion. Too tall. Too still. Its limbs stretch unnaturally long. Black wings made of folded darkness frame its sides like living void.
Its eyes open.
And the universe goes silent.
They are not red.
Not gold.
Not silver.
They are collapsing stars—endless spirals of dying light trapped inside sockets of living night.
Nytherion.
The name explodes through my head without being spoken.
I try to run.
My feet will not move.
I try to scream.
My voice is gone.
Slowly, impossibly, it rises from the throne.
The sound of its movement is not footsteps.
It is gravity shifting.
Every bone in the hall sings in response.
“You wear the blood that was stolen from me,” Nytherion says.
The voice is layered with countless others, as if galaxies are speaking through one mouth. The sound presses into my chest until I can barely breathe.
“I don’t belong to you,” I whisper.
My voice sounds very small.
Nytherion tilts its head.
“I shaped your bloodline before your kind had language. I hollowed suns to forge your ancestors. You exist because I allowed it.”
My skin burns.
Symbols ignite across my arms—constellations carving themselves into my flesh in molten light. I cry out as they burn, twisting into shapes I somehow understand even while fear crushes my lungs.
“He does not belong to you!”
Alex’s voice tears across the void.
Moonfire erupts between us.
For a heartbeat, I’m no longer alone.
Riley stands beside Alex, wrapped in silver and flame. Mason’s shadow rises behind them like a living wall. The celestial throne room trembles as their power collides with the fabric of the dream.
Nytherion laughs.
A sound like worlds breaking apart.
“You still cling to the illusion of choice,” it says. “Even as the universe bends itself toward him.”
The throne cracks.
Stars leak from the fractures like blood.
“You cannot shield him from what he is becoming. The Royal Moon forged him in love. I will forge him in eternity.”
The chamber begins to collapse inward.
Gravity turns sideways.
Alex lunges for me—
And Nytherion moves.
It crosses the impossible distance in a single shift of space.
Its clawed hand wraps gently around my chin.
The touch is ice.
Void.
Infinity.
“You feel it, don’t you, little star?”
Pain explodes through my skull.
Images tear through me—
Galaxies devoured.
Civilizations erased from time.
Kings kneeling in starlight.
Bloodlines severed mid-generation.
And always…
Children.
Heirs.
Taken.
Claimed.
Reforged.
“I am the ending of endings,” Nytherion whispers. “And you are the key that will reopen the gate I once ruled.”
I scream—
And my power answers.
Light detonates outward from my chest in an uncontrolled surge. Constellations rip free of my skin and form burning sigils in the air between us.
Nytherion recoils for the first time.
Its eyes narrow.
“Ah,” it murmurs. “You are already awakening.”
Alex reaches me then, wrenching me from its grasp as Riley throws up a wall of lunar fire between us and the throne. Mason pulls us back, shadow and silver colliding violently with the throne’s gravity.
Nytherion watches.
Smiling.
“You may borrow time,” it says. “But blood always remembers its architect.”
The hall implodes.
Stars vanish.
The throne fractures into endless falling light—
And I wake screaming.
I bolt upright in my bed, lungs struggling for air, sweat soaking my nightclothes. My arms are burning.
Real burning.
Alex is there instantly, hands gripping my shoulders.
“Damieon! Damieon—look at me!”
Riley stands at the foot of the bed, power already flaring in her palms. Mason blocks the doorway like a living weapon.
The symbols are still there.
Constellations glowing faintly beneath my skin.
Proof it wasn’t just a dream.
“He touched me,” I choke. “He knows me.”
Alex’s face goes white with fury.
“Elara,” she snaps into the ward-sigil.
Within seconds, the sorceress appears in a ring of silver fire. One look at my arms and her breath catches.
“The Star-Eater has marked him,” she whispers.
Riley grips the bed frame until the wood splinters.
“Then we erase the mark.”
Elara shakes her head slowly.
“The mark cannot be erased.”
Alex’s power surges violently.
“Say that again.”
Elara meets her gaze without fear.
“It can only be challenged.”
Silence crashes into the room.
I swallow hard.
“He said I was the key.”
All three of them turn to me.
“And he meant it,” Elara says quietly.
Outside the palace, the sky trembles.
Far beyond the atmosphere, something ancient shifts its attention fully toward our world for the first time.
And in the dark between stars…
Nytherion smiles.
- Writer
