The Shattered Star: Chronicles of Andarin
When a falling star fractures the world and shadows gather at the edge of reality, one young villager dreams of darkness and flame. Joined by a rogue mage and a haunted ranger, Eiran embarks on an epic quest spanning haunted forests, besieged cities, and forgotten deserts. As ancient secrets unravel, and allies and enemies blur, Andarin’s last hope lies in forging the impossible—from the shattered pieces of the world, a new dawn...if he survives the night.
Beneath the Root
Roots tangled above and earth closed in tight as the world’s own silence. Beneath smoke-pressed sky and battered hearts, they found the mouth of the fissure—a gash in the hills where wind soughed chill from the depths, edged by pulsing moss and the smell of damp, ancient secrets.
Talin knelt, brushing frost from the fissure’s lip. “Not made by water,” he murmured, tracing a furrow where green threads snaked into black. “Or by any quarryman’s steel.”
Mira shifted the pack on her shoulders. “The land’s wounds bleed downward here.”
Narsa’s eyes flicked, wide and glass-bright, as if she tasted magic thickening the shadows. “Layers below roots—old as the world’s first winter. Something was burned deep.”
Eiran gripped the star stone, feeling the sick rush of both purpose and dread. Every dream warned him: what slumbered below could not stay hidden. Now, kneeling at the riven mouth with Talin beside him, Mira steady and Narsa quivering between defiance and awe, he shuddered, knowing this descent would change them all—one way or another.
The descent was a blind man’s crawl. Talin moved first, lamp hooded to a sliver, the pale flame trembling on old greaves and brittle muddied boots. Eiran followed, careful to keep his hand on the rough curve of stone or root, unsure at which point one became the other. Mira brought up the rear, teeth gritted, blade ever near; Narsa moved just behind Eiran, breath sharp, muttering syllables that made the hairs on his arms stand tall.
Down they wound, the air thickening, alive with the wet breath of the earth. Roots pressed in—some as thin as hair, some thick as a grown man’s arm. The walls shifted, raw and new in places, elsewhere pebbled with jewel-like nodules pulsing a faint inner glow. At their feet, the path split, buckled, folded and refolded by mythic violence. Eiran lost sense of up, of hours, of the world they’d left behind.
At last, in a place where the roots spread like a spider’s den, the tunnel yawned wider, stone hollowed by centuries of secret water. Here, the party stopped. The faint glimmer from Eiran’s star stone illuminated the walls—slick with oily age but scored with patterns: spirals, stars, symbols whose meaning tugged at the edge of memory.
Narsa knelt first, pressing her palm to the wall. “Look here. Language—even older than Astryn’s lintels. This is… pain, set to form. The world’s foundation?”
Mira crouched, frowning. “Describe it.”
Narsa’s voice trembled—caught between reverence and terror. “The fall of the star. The sky broken by envy. Roots devouring fire—threads binding what remains. A shield shaped by sacrifice. And— something beneath it all. A name scratched out, replaced with…” She squinted as the symbols shifted in the lamplight. “A presence. Darkness. Hunger.”
A deep groan shivered through the rock. For a moment, every root in the chamber pulsed, drawing inward as if the ancient envy was still alive. Eiran pressed the stone closer. Vision whirled behind his eyes—
He stood, and did not stand, at the world’s bottom. A cavern the size of mountains, lit by nothing but his own dream-fire. Before him spread a star, vast and vulnerable, glimmering in infinite facets. Around it: roots, half-light, and something coiled in patient, pitiless hunger.
He saw the star fall. He heard the world scream—a sound of birth and murder at once. Fragments spiraled, carving furrows in the land, weaving magic and memory into flesh and continent. Where each shard landed, the roots reached up to grasp them, drag them down. And in the coiled dark, a shape resolved: a face half-shrouded by hood and shadow, hands slick with star-blood.
Who are you? Eiran’s mind called.
A betrayed one. The first child of light and root. I remember the pact that broke the sky.
The vision warred with him—images lancing through heart and bone. He saw a splintered host, memories burned into the stone itself: circles of cultists kneeling, speaking in a tongue that hungered for endings. The hooded figure lifted the last shard, setting it into the root’s hungry heart…
Pain ripped through Eiran. He fell to his knees as the vision dissolved—a flood of black and silver, unmaking.
He came to himself unable to say how much time had passed, Mira’s grip hard on his shoulder, Talin’s wary shadow framing them, and Narsa kneeling beside, face blanched.
“What did you see?” Mira pushed, low and urgent.
Eiran struggled. “The star… fell, yes, but not only from the sky. There was betrayal—the darkness clawed up through the roots. Someone, something—set this in motion, wearing both light and shadow.”
Narsa recoiled, shaking her head. “That’s not possible. Magic can wound, but this—this is power meant to bind or birth, not destroy.”
Talin pressed past pain in his voice. “The world was made to hold both hope and rot. If there was betrayal, who benefits?”
Silence. The deeper truth, lurking like a knife in water, left them all unwilling to guess—until, all in a rush, the tunnel quivered with new urgency. A moan echoed along forgotten corridors, roots lashing against ancient stone as if to warn or hunger. Mira drew her sword with trembling hands. “We should go. This place… remembers too well.”
They found another arch—this one smaller, almost swallowed by writhing roots. As the party passed beneath, Eiran staggered, feeling the star stone pulse, heat and ache bleeding through his ribs. Narsa’s breathing grew ragged, as if the air itself thickened to bind her. Sweat sheeted down her cheeks; she lingered behind, eyes locked on a sigil at the tunnel’s mouth.
In that moment, Mira—ever vigilant—caught something in the corner of her eye. Narsa’s hand brushed Eiran’s pack, lingering just a little too long. Her fingers tensed, jaw clenched with some invisible strain. Mira spun, voice a knife in the hush: “What are you doing?”
Narsa jolted, meeting Mira’s stare. The air vibrated, as if old roots whispered a lullaby of compulsion in Narsa’s ear. Her own voice was thin, not entirely hers. “It sings… through the stone. It wants—needs—to touch the root again. Just for a breath.”
Eiran whirled, startled. “Narsa, why—?”
Narsa shrank back, suddenly wracked with guilt and confusion, shaking from more than exhaustion. “I don’t know—Voices in the wood, the old tongue. Telling me I could end the ache, if I gave it the stone.”
Talin moved to shield Eiran. Mira stepped between Narsa and the others, hand on her dagger—but not yet raising it. “Was this your will?”
Narsa sobbed, voice fraying. “No… yes… It’s louder down here. The roots remember what’s hidden above. And it knows my name.”
In the dimness, Eiran looked into Narsa’s eyes—saw more fear than malice. With trembling hands, he passed her a measure of trust, holding her wrist not in accusation but grounding. “If the world aches through you, you don’t have to carry it alone. Not now.”
For a heartbeat, nothing moved. Then: Mira eased her grip; Talin lowered his stance, though suspicion lingered. At last, Narsa gasped, falling to her knees, choking on relief and regret. “It won’t win. Not through me. I swear on my life.”
The roots hummed with ancient, distant disappointment. The stone softened its fever-glow. Tension did not vanish, but an unsteady truce settled among them.
They pressed on, battered but together, the path winding ever deeper, cold now with the memory of betrayal and the taste of raw, primordial truth. Each wondered—often in silence—at the cost of wounds offered and secrets kept. But still, the star’s dim light led them onward.
At last, above a slick ledge where pale water whispered, they paused—one party, unified by nothing but scars and the thin hope the world might yet be remade. The darkness watched. The roots, unseen, strained toward the surface. And in each heart the old question echoed: when all is broken, where does loyalty truly begin?