Chapter One: The Star That Should Not Have Fallen
The first thing Amara heard was her own name.
Not spoken by a servant.
Not whispered by a guard.
It came from the darkness beyond the balcony.
“Amara…”
She froze.
The voice was impossible to place. It sounded young and ancient at once, as though several distant voices were speaking through the same breath. Beneath the words was a faint ringing sound, like a silver bell heard underwater.
Again, it called her.
“Amara…”
This time, the voice spoke from directly behind her.
She spun around.
Nothing.
Moonlight stretched across the empty balcony.
Amara's pulse quickened.
Then the sky turned black.
Not the ordinary darkness of night—the stars themselves seemed to disappear, one by one, as though an invisible hand were swallowing them.
A single star remained.
It burned crimson.
Then it fell.
The streak of red light tore across the heavens and vanished behind the northern mountains.
A heartbeat later, the entire palace shook.
Glass shattered somewhere below.
A terrible silence followed.
Then the Royal Bells began to ring.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Amara stepped away from the railing.
The bells had only been sounded three times once before, according to the forbidden histories.
The night the Starstone was discovered.
The night an entire kingdom disappeared.
“Princess?”
Amara turned sharply.
Lina stood in the doorway, her face drained of color.
“What happened?” Amara asked.
“I don't know.”
Lina glanced toward the sky.
“There are no stars.”
Amara looked up.
She was right.
The heavens were completely empty.
Except for one.
The crimson star still burned above the mountains.
Then the strange voice returned.
But now Amara understood what made it terrifying.
It never seemed to come from one place.
It whispered from the walls.
From the wind.
From the stones beneath her feet.
And beneath every word was that same faint, distant chime.
Amara.
She gripped the railing.
“Who are you?”
The voice answered in a whisper that seemed to echo inside her own thoughts.
I have worn a thousand names.
The silver chime sounded once.
You knew me before you were born.
Amara's blood ran cold.
“What do you want?”
For several seconds, there was only silence.
Then:
The star remembers.
The voice faded.
The chime disappeared.
And something in the darkness laughed.
Not loudly.
Not cruelly.
Almost sadly.
The palace doors suddenly burst open.
A royal guard rushed onto the balcony.
“Princess Amara, you must come with me.”
“Why?”
The guard looked toward the northern mountains.
For the first time, Amara noticed the fear in his eyes.
“They found something beneath the mountains.”
“What?”
The guard swallowed.
“The Starstone.”
Thunder rolled across the sky.
Far beyond the mountains, the crimson light flared.
And from somewhere impossibly distant came one final silver chime.
Amara stared into the darkness.
For the first time in eighteen years, she wondered whether the stories about the Starstone had ever been stories at all.
Perhaps they had been warnings.
And perhaps the star had not fallen from the heavens.
Perhaps it had been waiting for her.