From the balcony above, the High Council watched.
"Is he responding to any of the rites?" asked one of the elders, their voice muffled by incense smoke.
"He mimics them, Recites what he's told. He has control. But.." the second elder hesitated, "..he does not speak to them."
"Because they are not truly his," said Maravin the High Priest. 'We gave him stars not through choice, but through sacrifice. Power without soul."
"And yet he survives, murmured the third councilor. "Most would have been torn apart."
"He is stable," the High Priest said "He is… obedient. But obedience without faith is a blade without a hand to wield it."
Malek stood from the throne.
He wandered the chamber barefoot. His hand touched the cold stone of the walls. The floor. He found a mirror and stared at himself. He found a mirror and stared at himself. He tried to smile. It didn't reach his eyes.
A whisper from a corner-a child's voice, but not his.
He turned. No one.
Another trick.
Another lie.
He sat again and tried to listen to the stars inside him.
There was nothing.
Only silence.
Malek felt truly alone in this world.
He closed his eyes. Reached deeper. Dug into the emptiness where something should have lived.
Then he saw a flash. Not from within, but from beyond-a silver light, distant and quiet. A silver of moonlight across a mountain stream.
He did not know what it was, but it felt.. Full.
Alive.
He opened his eyes.
"..Who was that?" he whispered to no one.
The stars inside him said nothing.
But somewhere, far beyond the Temple, far beyond stone and sacrifice, Selene's mark shimmered on the child who had escaped.
Malek did not yet know the name Orion.
But the hollow inside him did.
---
Just outside the Kingdom of Lithonia an eleven year old boy in a forest with Silver Gray hair and grey blue eyes with a crescent moon in his right eye trains alone in a forest glade in the early dawn.
The moon lingers faintly overhead.
Orion's wielding a wooden longsword , practicing smooth movements that mirror moon phases-something Isol taught him
"You must learn to flow, not fight. Like the tide." Selene's voice was gentle but filled with knowledge.
"I don't want to run anymore,"
"Then learn to become still enough that nothing can move you."
The crescent mark pulses faintly with moonlight, The bond is growing deeper.
Orion returns home and lives in a modest cottage on the edge of the city. It's old but warm. Inside, Amelia brews morning tea.
She greets him with a tired smile and a kiss to his forehead.
She's aging faster than she should. The stress of these ten years of fear and escape have taken their toll on her. Her eyes still flick to the door sometimes when the wind howls.
"Nightmares?" Orion asks.
"No," she lies. "Not anymore."
The door suddenly opens and its Isol, in her dark leathers. She's stricter now but still kind. She's been shaping Orion's training for years, focusing not just on combat but discipline, intuition and control.
The three of them formed a nice quiet family.
---
Lithonia was alive beneath the morning sun.
Orion moved through its outer streets like a shadow trailing between stone and light, head down, shoulders tucked, as he always did when the whispers started. The city had grown taller since he first arrived-it's marble towers rose like needles into the sky, many crowned with glass that caught the stars and scattered them down like rain.
Children played in the square near the lower district fountain, tossing a ring of woven vines. Some bore faint glows beneath their sleeves or behind their eyes-faint star-marks from bonds formed in early childhood. Others had none, and did not seem to care.
Not like Orion.
He watched them a moment too long. One of the boys glanced his way. Then nudged the others. They all turned.
"There he is," one whispered.
"His mark's on his eye," said another, voice low but sharp. "He was born with it."
"Does it glow when he sleeps?" one asked.
Orion kept walking, arms drawn in. He didn't answer. He never did.
They didn't mean harm, most of them. But curiosity cut deeper than cruelty sometimes.
People in Lithonia respected the stars-but they feared them, too. Especially ones that chose without warning. Especially ones like Selene.
That evening, Orion sat on the sloped rooftop of their cottage, his legs dangling over the edge, the city below aglow with silver lanterns and soft laughter. The sky above was clear-a rare, perfect tapestry of constellations.
Isol joined him without speaking. She sat beside him, arms crossed over her knees, and gaze skyward.
"What do you see tonight?" she asked after a while.
Orion pointed. "That ones the Dancer," he said, tracing a line between seven bright stars. "And that's the Watcher."
"Good. What about the gap between them?"
"Void star. Fell before the others."
She smiled faintly. "You remember."
"You made me memorize all of them," he said. "Even the dead ones."
"They're the most important ones to remember," she replied. Her voice turned thoughtful. "You're nearly twelve now. The Academy will call soon. I've seen the messengers around the city. They're asking about you."
Orion stayed silent.
"They'll want you trained. Tested. Evaluated."
Still, silence.
She turned to him. "They know about Selene."
At that, his brow furrowed. "Do they know I was supposed to be carved?"
Isol's mouth pressed into a hard line. The question hung between them like a blade..
"No," she said. "And they don't need to." He nodded slowly.
After a moment, she reached into her satchel and pulled out a small, leather-bound book. Its edges were worn, pages curled with time.
"This was mine," she said, "Before I left. Before I stopped believing in what they were doing. It's full of myths. Real stories, about real star-bearers who fought to be more than tools."
She handed it to him. He took it like it might fall apart in his hands.
"Thank you," he whispered. "You'll need it. And not just for the stories."
They sat there a while longer in silence, watching the stars shift in their slow, eternal dance.
---
Far from Lithonia, beneath vaulted obsidian halls, Malek stood before a dark, polished pool. The water was perfectly still, yet shimmered faintly with starlight that didn't belong to the sky.
He was taller now, but still a boy. Only twelve. He looked older when he didn't move.
Three stars glimmered faintly beneath his skin-burning, stolen stars. Their power swelled behind his eyes, but the silence between them was louder.
No voices. No warmth. No beings.
The stars in him were hollow.
He reached a hand toward the pool, and the water rippled. For a moment, an image-fleeing and pale-passed across it: a boy in moonlight. A crescent glowing over one eye
"There's someone else like me," Malek murmured.
Behind him, an elder of the Cult stepped forward. "Yes, Celestial. But unlike you…he was chosen."
Malek's hand closed into a fist.
"Then I'll make the stars choose me," he said.
And the mirror dimmed.