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 Night of the Crescent Moon
Moonlight spilled silver and strange over the broken hills, painting barely-there shapes in the shadow by which half a world now traveled. Eiran trudged at Mira’s side, boots stifled by old needles and black loam, breath drawn sharp with each step. Behind, Narsa limped—the silver glimmer in her eyes faded beneath exhaustion—and Talin brought up the rear, bow in hand, every muscle a taut line of vigilance. None spoke much. The velocity of flight, of necessity, drove them ever eastward, beyond the buried city’s reach, into a wildness that felt old as fear itself.
Above them, a crescent moon carved a thin sickle through clouds. Its light was both comfort and warning—a blade’s edge, cutting the dark, but revealing movement in the hollows and ridges. More than once they paused, pressed into the lee of a fallen pillar, listening to the scuffle of unseen things. Since departing the crystal-lit vault, a sense of being hunted had grown with each slow hour.
It was Mira who called for a halt: “We’ll never make sense of the next mile if we collapse along the way.”
They chose high ground, camp set braced against a rune-scored boulder facing a shallow ravine. Fire was forbidden; light too great, too quick to gift their position to whatever prowled beyond. Instead, they gathered in the lee, cloaks pulled close, sharing scant rations and what warmth could be traded in silence.
Narsa shivered, fingers trembling as she ran them along the etched crystal rod she’d salvaged. “It’s too quiet,” she muttered. “Too many eyes.”
Talin crouched on the boulder’s edge, scanning the line of trees. “They’re not animals out tonight. Cultists, maybe. Or the shades their prayers conjure. Stay awake.”
Eiran rested his back against the boulder, star stone burning like a smolder in his palm. “We need to move again soon. If they find us—”
“They will find us,” Mira cut in. Her tone did not admit hope, only resolve. She fingered the ancient lens, its star-inscribed facets flashing dully. “But if the Testor was right, maybe what we found below can buy us more than a few desperate moments.”
A lull, then. The hush before wind, before breaking, before choice. Somewhere far off, a wild dog howled—but it was met not by echo, but by silence, and then a different call: low, human, rising in ritual cadence. The party stiffened as one. Talin’s face shadowed more than moonlight. “That’s a summoning tongue.”
Mira's hand crept to her sword. “On me. If they come, break for the gap by the ravine. Rods and artifacts at the ready, Narsa, Eiran. Talin—”
But the warning came too late.
The trees on the eastern side erupted with black-robed figures, faces hooded except for glimmers of fevered eyes and the black star inked across every cheek and brow. They moved not as men, but like something orchestrated—each step a measured promise of violence. Shadow-creatures flickered behind ranks, amorphous and half-born. A leader stepped forward, fingers pressed to a cracked, moon-white mask. “The shards are ours; the marked boy dies tonight.”
No time for speeches—just a rush. Bolts of inky fire arced from outstretched cultist hands, striking the stone and splitting earth. Mira surged up, flinging the lens before her. It amplified the moonlight, forming a fractured curtain of silver that shimmered as the attack hit. Screams echoed; the nearest cultists recoiled, faces smoldering where the light touched their marks.
Narsa found her feet, staff raised high, arcane syllables rolling from her lips. The ground bloomed with unnatural growths—roots snapping up, tangling the cultists’ advance—but where shadow-creatures touched those roots, they shriveled and turned to ash, darkness flooding forward. Narsa’s eyes blazed, power searing through her, barely kept in check.
Talin did not hesitate. He drew one of the rods, slamming it into a socket in the stone. Lines blazed radiant blue, forging a hasty ward—a web of force before the gap. “Pass through, now!” he grunted. Eiran and Mira dashed for the opening, Narsa limping as she fought to keep her spell from fracturing with fear.
A shadow-creature surged past the ward, twisting its form to clear the edge. Talin intercepted, blade flashing. The thing recoiled, fluid blackness slashing out. Talin’s cry split the night—part pain, part defiance. He bared his teeth, holding ground as the party broke through the gap.
Mira halted, torn. “Talin—”
He shook his head, jaw clamped, free hand flinging another rod to her. “Go! You’re the only ones who understand what’s at stake. I’ll buy you moon and breath.”
Narsa faltered, desperate. “I can—”
“Run!” he barked, and spun, launching himself into a crush of cultists, each arrow finding an unguarded heart, each strike buying a heartbeat for his friends.
The ravine lay before them—a drop into dark, with only the faint shimmer of moonlight on wet stone. Mira took the lead, twisting the lens until the fractured light formed a bridge of wavering luminescence. “Quickly, before the magic fails—”
Eiran slipped, Narsa caught his arm, half-carrying, half-dragging him. Behind, Talin’s shouts rose and then were drowned by the crashing of shadow, the clang of blade on bone, and a sudden, blinding burst as the last ward crashed. The night rang with violence and the sobbing soundtrack of the wounded and the damned.
On the far side of the ravine, Mira unspooled the last of the rods, slamming it into the earth and severing the moonlight bridge. The land cracked; a roar of splintered magic cascaded down the walls as the cultists stumbled after, halted at the brink.
But their escape had come at dire cost. For every moment of freedom, Talin’s form burned in Eiran’s mind: back bent, sword raised not to triumph, but to shield.
Narsa slumped, more spent than before, voice gone raw. “He’s alone—gods, did we—?”
Mira’s voice quivered, barely bridled. “He knew what he did. He chose us. Now we can’t let it be for nothing.”
Shouts rose; cultists were already seeking another way around. Worse, more shadows advanced from the west, drawn by violence and prophecy alike. As the party fled into clustered stones, the press of the woods snatched away all sense of path and direction.
A fork came—one side choked with brambles, one split by a dry streambed. Narsa, too weak to argue, gestured east; Mira motioned Eiran to follow her through the stones. Eiran hesitated—he could not lose anyone else—but the cult’s horns sounded, and he made the only possible choice: to live, and fight, and grieve later.
They broke: Narsa vanished into thorn-shadow, the other two stumbling along the fractured streambed, deeper into the wild. The screams of cultists, the wail of something unnamable, faded behind them. For now.
At last, the world shrank to breath and ache. Eiran and Mira huddled beneath a mass of roots, rain masking their tears. “We’ll find them again,” she promised, though even star-stone and prophecy could not say if she lied.
That night, beneath the crescent moon’s blade, the road fractured—each friend’s fate a new line in a story now written by loss, defiance, and the memory of a warrior’s last stand.