The Hollow Stars

The skies once sang with light.

Long before kingdoms rose and fell, before stone was shaped into towers and fire bent to will, the world of Vareth Tal was ruled by the Celestials — immortal beings born of starlight, keepers of the constellations and stewards of time’s endless turning. They were not gods, but close enough: luminous, mighty, and terrifying in their silence.

Among them were the Starbearers, mortals chosen by the Celestials to wield fragments of the heavens — radiant shards called Celestones, capable of bending the laws of nature, memory, and fate itself. For a thousand years, Starbearers upheld the balance between the realms of earth and sky, speaking for the stars when they grew distant or fell dim.

But the stars have gone out.

One hundred years ago, on the Night of the Hollowing, the heavens blackened. Every star winked from existence. The Celestials vanished. The Celestones shattered. And the world fell silent under a sky of endless dusk. Without starlight, crops withered. Oceans grew still. Time itself became unreliable — days shortening without warning, seasons looping or stopping entirely. The great cities of Vareth Tal collapsed into war and superstition. Kingdoms blamed one another. Armies burned temples once devoted to sky-worship. The age of star-guided reason ended in flame.

Now, the world lives in fear of the dark above.

In the ruins of the once-glorious Ecliptic Dominion, hidden beneath the shattered dome of the Temple of the Sunwake, a girl named Seren Vale wakes from a sleep that should have lasted forever.

She remembers nothing — only flashes: the scent of burning oak, the feel of blood on her fingers, and the shattering of a great mirror that reflected not faces, but stars. Around her neck hangs a chain with a single stone, cracked and pulsing dimly with an unnatural light. And on her skin, a mark: the sigil of Aetherion, the lost constellation of balance.

She is told by her rescuers — scholars and rebels known as the Skybound Circle — that she was found encased in crystal at the heart of the Sunwake Temple, perfectly preserved. They call her a Relic, a Starbearer from the age before the Hollowing. But Seren feels no divinity, no power. Only confusion… and a deep, growing fear.

Because something else woke with her.

Strange shadows now move through the night — not creatures, but absences, voids in the shape of men. They have no eyes, no mouths, and they erase anything they touch. Entire villages disappear with no sound, no struggle, no trace — only circles of silence and bone-dust. These creatures seek the last remnants of starlight in the world… and Seren carries one of them.

As she journeys across a crumbling world alongside a reluctant Skybound historian, a mercenary who dreams of other lives, and a mute child who draws stars no one can see, Seren begins to unlock fragments of memory — and power. She learns that the stars were not simply light in the sky, but anchors, tethering reality to stability. Their vanishing was no accident. It was engineered.

The Celestials were betrayed — not by mortals, but by one of their own: a being once called Nytheron, who believed the stars were cages and that true freedom could only come from their extinction.

And Seren?

She was his chosen blade.

In a past life now unraveling, Seren was the final Starbearer, gifted the forbidden Celestone of Oblivion, a shard not of light, but of pure unmaking. She was meant to sever the last star from the sky, ending the age of divine order. But something stopped her — or perhaps someone — and her memory was sealed to protect the world.

Now, with Nytheron stirring again and the last lights of the world dying, Seren must decide whether she is a weapon, a redeemer, or something else entirely.

She carries the last hope of the heavens — or their final death.

And the stars are watching.