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.
The Mirror Lake
Night retreated in pearly strips before the party as they pressed east, the marshes of Andarin waking below a sullen sky. Trees lifted from the fog like the skeletons of giants. Ancient reeds whispered against one another in the cold wet hush. After all the wind and terror behind them, Eiran, Mira, and Narsa moved quietly, united by survival and wariness more than certainty. Their supplies were scant, their wounds unbound by time. But they knew, somehow, that they were drawing close to the first of the lost star shards: that the visions and riddles had not misled, and that the marsh itself conspired both to test them and to show mercy.
It was Eiran who first felt the pull—a humming in his chest where the star stone rested, a tremor in the soles of his feet. He paused at the edge of a half-frozen stream, uncertain, then pressed on, wordless. Mira shared a haunted glance with Narsa but followed: trust, by now, was earned mostly through endurance. Birds fled at their passing, vanishing into curtains of damp willow. Once, they crossed a rise and glimpsed the tracks of a great beast—no animal of flesh, but prints burnt into mud, six-toed and luminous, always leading toward the pale heart of the marsh.
By mid-morning, the world began to change. The mists grew brighter, grains of colored light sparkling in every droplet. Even the sounds of frogs and insects grew distant, as if smothered beneath velvet. The reeds bent aside with a hush as the trio reached a clearing—a wide bowl where the ground fell away, revealing a lake so smooth and still it seemed cast from silver.
Not a ripple marred its face. Not a branch or leaf or even a bird brushed its skin. Yet the far bank shimmered impossibly far and near, as if depth and nearness were one. The moment they stepped to the brink, each saw not just their reflection, but the living, breathing likeness of themselves on the water—gazing back with an awareness unmistakably alien and yet intimately close.
Narsa tensed, her eyes dark as molten glass. “Magic like this—it’s old. Older than anything in Astryn, maybe. Tread lightly.”
“What is it?” Mira murmured. “A guardian? Or a trap?”
But Eiran felt the star stone beat like a second heart, and that heartbeat almost seemed to echo from the waters themselves.
They settled to their knees or haunches at the edge, wary but unable to look away from what they saw. For a moment, the only sounds were their own breathing and the low thrum that vibrated, faint but insistent, through earth, water, and bone.
The lake spoke first in the rippling of images. Three mirrors, three selves.
Eiran’s reflection loomed up before him, the lines of his face drawn deeper, his eyes ringed with bruised hollows. But then, as the mirrored Eiran gazed back, he smiled—not with bravery, but a knowing undertow.
“You carry ghosts,” said the other Eiran, rising calmly from the water’s skin. “You clutch that stone as if it could make sense of all you’ve lost. You think survival is guilt. Why do you still run?”
Eiran flinched. “I don’t—” But the lie soured as he said it. “I don’t want to leave anyone behind. I don’t want to be the only one left.”
The reflection spread his arms wide, and the world in the water swelled: flames atop Vael’s roofs, shadow-beasts circling, still-life tableaus of the lost—Tanelle at her oven, the Elder’s gentle smile. “You ran. You lived. You will always live with that. You owe them, don’t you?”
“I do.” Eiran’s voice caught on a jagged stone inside. “But I—”
“You’ll lose everyone again if you let this rule you.” The reflected Eiran leaned close, voice edged with sorrow and steel. “Carry them as memory, not as chains. You are more than fate. You are choice. If you hate yourself enough, you’ll bury hope with the dead. If you forgive yourself…”
Eiran’s fists trembled. He knelt low, resting his brow on the frozen grass. “How?”
“By refusing to let pain decide for you. By loving what’s left, not mourning only what’s gone.”
A great wind moved over the mirrored water. The flames in the vision flickered and blew out. Vael was still lost, but Eiran’s face lifted, older and less afraid. The reflection smiled, real this time, and vanished in ripples. The pain didn’t ease, but it became bearable—a wound, not a sentence.
To Narsa’s right, Mira stared at her own reflection. The lake did not show a warrior; it revealed a woman young and exhausted by too much loss, wearing both a noble’s sorrow and a wanderer’s armor. Her mirrored self’s eyes blazed with accusation and weariness.
“Who would follow you, Mira of the broken houses?” the reflection demanded. “You lost your home, your kin. You run because there is nothing left. Or is it that you cannot admit you desired escape?”
Mira recoiled as if struck. “No. I stayed as long as I could. I fought. I held the walls.”
“And when the walls fell, who did you blame?” The reflection’s voice was soft now, almost kind. “Would you have saved them, if only you’d been better? If only you’d been the hero they needed?”
Mira’s mouth trembled. “Maybe. Maybe not. But I wish—gods, I wish there’d been time to try.”
The reflection reached out, fingers barely ghosting Mira’s cheek. “Is the world kinder to those who never try? Or those who try and fail?”
Mira didn’t answer. Instead, she remembered the faces of those in Farhold, not just those she’d failed, but those she’d helped—Eiran, Talin, Narsa, the battered refugees. Each life touched by her grit, her refusal to let terror win.
“I don’t know if I’m fit for any of this,” she whispered to her own shadow. “But I have to be. Because no one else will try.”
And for the first time, Mira saw in her reflection something wounded and proud and unbroken—a person not because she’d never failed, but because she’d risen anyway. The mirrored gaze softened, tears glimmering. “Then live for them. But allow yourself to be more than their memory.”
With that, the image fractured, returning only her own, unfamiliar and beloved all at once.
Narsa’s vision flickered now—her reflection dark, rimed with blue flame, hair wild, face set in a glittering mask between madness and fear. It spoke in her own voice, lurching between mirth and contempt.
“Run long enough, and you become a shadow. Use enough power, and it burns you hollow. Which will you choose, Narsa? They all fear you, they need you, but you owe them nothing.”
Narsa, for once, dared not answer with a joke, a sneer, or a curse. She let her hands flex, feeling the latent magic stored beneath her skin.
“I’m afraid,” she admitted. “Not just of their dying, but of my own hunger for more. Magic makes me strong, but it makes me—lonely.”
The mirrored Narsa smiled, cold and bright. “Very. You could be a storm, a queen of ashes. Or you could let yourself be seen.”
“I don’t want ashes.” Narsa’s voice steadied. “And I’m tired of being alone.”
Her reflection’s cruel mask slipped, replaced by something young and bright-eyed. “Then wield your fire with gentleness, not rage. Trust that you’re wanted. Or drown.”
Narsa’s hand braced the cold ground. In her palm, a spark shivered, blossoming quietly, not to wound but to warm. Her reflection shimmered, smiled, and then was gone, leaving only her own bewildered, hopeful face staring back.
A great hush swept the clearing. The lake’s shimmer brightened, resolving now into a single, silver-bright rift running out across the water. The mirrored figures reappeared, only these were strangers—each marked with the sign of the black star, cultists’ faces now reflecting the party’s fears, hopes, and futures.
For a moment, Eiran felt himself teeter on the brink—what if they remained at war forever with the pieces of themselves, doomed to repeat their traumas, their failings? Then, the star stone glowed, a beam spinning out to touch the water’s surface. The fake cultists dissolved, replaced by three shapes: one broken star, held by three hands—one pale and slim, one brown and sure, one scarred and trembling. The message was obvious, urgent, and yet as gentle as breath:
Broken, but together. Only as whole as the wounds we accept. Only as powerful as the love we let live beside the loss.
The vision faded, the silver rift across the lake narrowing into a narrow path aglow with star-light. In that moment, all three travelers realized it was the only way forward—the marsh’s secret, only visible after yielding to the mirror, to truth.
“Shall we?” Mira asked, and though her voice shook, it was with laughter—not fear. She offered her hand to Narsa, then to Eiran. He accepted. Narsa wiped at her wet cheeks, but not from shame any longer.
They stood, renewed not by answers, but by the courage not to look away. Their reflections followed for a breath, then melted, smiling, into the lake. Forward, along that shining ribbon, the road to the next shard gleamed: dangerous, yes, but changed by the simple grace of hard-won self-truth. Behind them, the marsh closed, swallowing sorrow. Before them, the future—wounded, mending, and suddenly, beautifully possible.