Chapter 4 —The Celestial Hunters
1500 Words
The dream began in silence.
Eirena stood once more beneath the dying stars, her hands drenched in their light. Each pulse of the heavens bled into her skin until she could no longer tell where she ended and the cosmos began. She felt her mother’s voice curl through the darkness—soft, commanding.
You cannot unmake what was born of sacrifice.
The stars screamed. Their light turned to thorns, piercing her chest. She fell and woke to Kael shaking her shoulder.
“Eirena. Wake up. They’ve found us.”
Her eyes snapped open. The fire had burned down to embers. Dawn-mist hung low across the Vale, but through it moved shapes sleek, winged, glimmering faintly blue.
Celestial Hunters.
Six of them, descending in formation like shards of falling sky. Their armor shone with the Queen’s sigil, and each carried a staff tipped with living flame.
“How did they reach us so fast?” Kael hissed.
“The thorn’s awakening must have marked us.” Eirena rose, the shard hovering to her side like a loyal ghost. “They’re bound to its light.”
“Any chance of diplomacy?”
“None.” She drew a breath, eyes flashing. “Run.”
They sprinted through the hollowed fields, frost crunching beneath their boots. The Hunters followed in eerie silence wings slicing the air, their bodies leaving comet-trails of light. A bolt struck the ground beside Kael, exploding in a blossom of blue fire that threw him off balance.
He rolled to his feet, coughing. “You said run, not explode!”
“Then keep up!” Eirena grabbed his hand, pulling him toward a ravine that split the valley floor. They leapt across a fallen arch into shadow just as another blast scorched the ridge behind them.
Kael’s heart hammered. “You’ve fought these things before?”
“No one has and lived.”
“Reassuring.”
She ignored him, eyes darting to the ravine walls. Runes glimmered faintly beneath the lichen old sigils of binding. She traced one with her fingers, murmuring an invocation. The symbols flared to life, and the stone shifted, opening a narrow tunnel.
“This way!”
They plunged inside as light flooded the entrance. The tunnel sealed behind them, plunging them into darkness. The air smelled of earth and metal; drops of water echoed from unseen depths.
Kael caught his breath. “What now?”
“We keep moving. The wards will slow them but not stop them.” She lifted her hand, and the thorn flared, bathing the passage in silver light. Shadows retreated from its glow.
“Your magic’s getting stronger,” Kael said.
She nodded uneasily. “Stronger… and stranger. I can feel the thorn inside me, whispering. It wants to be used.”
“Maybe listen later? When we’re not being hunted by cosmic death birds?”
Despite the tension, she laughed softly a sound he realized he’d been missing since they left the palace.
The tunnel curved downward, opening into a cavern vast as a cathedral. Crystals jutted from the ceiling like frozen lightning, reflecting the thorn’s light in fractured rainbows. In the center stood an ancient monument: a circular dais ringed by statues of winged figures. Their faces were serene, but their eyes bled dark streaks of stone.
“The Sanctum of Fallen Stars,” Eirena whispered. “A temple built for those who defied the first Queen. It shouldn’t exist anymore.”
Kael stepped carefully onto the dais. “Looks like it’s been waiting for someone.”
As if in answer, the thorn drifted from Eirena’s side and settled above the monument. The statues’ eyes flared, and a voice like wind through broken glass filled the cavern.
‘Bearer of light unbound… you awaken the debt of the stars.’
Eirena froze. “Who speaks?”
‘Those who tried to end the Crown before you and failed. The Queen’s Hunters come. Take what we could not wield.’
The dais cracked. From within the stone rose a bow carved of translucent crystal, its string spun from starlight itself.
Kael whistled softly. “Guess the decor’s interactive.”
Eirena grasped the weapon. Power rippled up her arm, familiar and wild. She felt the thorn respond, weaving its pulse into the bow’s heart.
At that instant, the cavern roof shuddered. A blast of blue fire tore through the tunnel—The Hunters had breached the wards.
“Positions of cover?” Kael asked.
“None worth dying behind.”
“Didn’t think so.”
The first Hunter dropped through the opening like a meteor, landing in a spray of stone dust. Its wings folded into a mantle of light, spear aimed directly at Eirena.
She loosed an arrow. The starlit shaft struck the spear mid-flight, shattering it into sparks. The explosion lit the cavern like dawn.
The Hunter reeled, but two more descended immediately, circling like wolves. Kael darted toward one, slashing with his dagger. Steel met light, sending ripples of energy across the floor. The dagger glowed brighter, feeding on the fae magic as if hungry.
Eirena fired again each arrow a fragment of pure brilliance but every shot left her weaker. The thorn within her chest throbbed painfully, its whispers growing louder.
More, it urged. Let me burn them.
She faltered. For a heartbeat, the light around her flickered. A Hunter seized the opening, hurling a bolt that struck her shoulder. Pain seared through her. She stumbled, vision white.
Kael caught her, dragging her behind a fallen pillar. “Eirena! Talk to me!”
Her breath came in gasps. “It wants control.”
“Then tell it to shut up.”
“It’s not that simple!”
“Neither’s dying!”
He peeked around the pillar. The Hunters regrouped, forming a triangle, energy building between them. “Whatever you’re gonna do, do it fast!”
Eirena closed her eyes. The thorn’s heat pulsed in rhythm with her heartbeat. She drew the bow once more, but this time she didn’t reach for the thorn’s power. She reached past it into herself. Into the memory of the stars before the Crown.
The air stilled. For an instant, every crystal in the cavern dimmed. Then the arrow formed black instead of silver, its light inverted.
She released.
The arrow flew soundlessly, passing through the Hunters like a shadow. When it struck the far wall, it blossomed outward in silence. The blast consumed light instead of giving it, swallowing the Hunters whole. When it faded, only drifting ash remained.
Kael blinked. “That… was new.”
Eirena swayed, nearly collapsing. He caught her again. “Easy. You did it.”
“No,” she whispered, trembling. “I unmade them. That wasn’t supposed to be possible.”
He studied her face pale, eyes haunted. “What matters is you’re alive.”
She looked at the bow, its glow now faint, almost afraid. “Every time I fight, I feel the Crown’s pull grow stronger. If the thorn keeps feeding, I’ll become what I’m trying to destroy.”
“Then we’ll find a way to stop that too.”
She met his gaze. “You say that as if it’s simple.”
“I’m a mortal,” he said with a half-smile. “We specialize in impossible odds.”
They rested among the shattered statues. Kael bandaged her shoulder with strips torn from his cloak. The wound sizzled faintly beneath the cloth, glowing where the Hunter’s fire had touched her.
“You’re burning,” he said.
“It’s celestial fire. It marks me as prey.”
“Can you heal it?”
She shook her head. “Not without the Queen sensing me again.”
Kael cursed softly. “Then we move before more arrive.”
“Not yet.” Eirena looked toward the bow, lying where it had fallen. “This weapon isn’t meant to kill it’s meant to remember. The darkness it unleashed came from my own fear. If I keep using it like that…”
“You’ll lose yourself.”
“Yes.”
He exhaled slowly. “Then we’ll fight differently next time.”
She smiled faintly. “You talk as if there will always be a next time.”
“There will be,” he said simply.
For a moment the only sound was the slow drip of water from the cavern roof. It felt like the first quiet they’d had in days.
Far above, unseen by either of them, the remnants of the Hunters’ light streamed skyward back to the Queen.
Isolde felt it strike her crown like a shiver. The connection snapped, leaving a scar across her magic. She rose from the throne, fury sharp enough to crack the marble beneath her feet.
“Three Hunters gone,” she murmured. “So the thorn chose her after all.”
A shadow detached itself from the pillar beside her a tall figure draped in obsidian armor.
“Shall I pursue them, Majesty?”
“Yes, Arion.”
- Writer
