The Star That Followed Her Home

Asteria noticed the star on Thursday.

It hovered just above the horizon when she left school, brighter than the others, pulsing faintly like a heartbeat. At first, she thought it was a drone or maybe a weather balloon catching the sunset, but it moved when she moved—sliding along the sky as if tethered to her shoulder.

She tried ignoring it. Hard to ignore something that refuses to ignore you.

By the time she reached her street, the star had dipped lower, trailing her like a curious animal. She walked faster. It followed faster. She stopped. It stopped.

Her breath fogged in the cold air. “Okay,” she whispered. “That’s weird.”

The star pulsed once—soft, warm, almost reassuring.

She ran inside.

That night, she dreamed of a corridor made of starlight.

The walls shimmered with constellations she didn’t recognize, shifting and rearranging themselves like living maps. At the far end of the corridor stood a door carved from obsidian, its surface rippling like water. Something behind it breathed—slow, deep, ancient.

Asteria reached for the handle.

A voice whispered behind her ear.

Not yet.

She spun around, but the corridor was empty.

She woke up with her heart pounding and her sheets tangled around her legs.

The next day, the star was closer.

It hovered just above the neighbor’s roof, bright enough to cast a faint glow across the street. People walked by without noticing. Dogs didn’t bark. Birds didn’t scatter. It was as if the star existed only for her.

At school, she kept glancing out the windows. The star hovered above the football field, patient, watchful.

During lunch, her friend Jessa nudged her. “You, okay? You look like you saw a ghost.”

“Not a ghost,” Asteria muttered. “Just… something weird.”

Jessa raised an eyebrow. “Weirder than your usual weird.”

Asteria didn’t answer. She couldn’t explain it without sounding unhinged.

That night, the dream came true.

The corridor. The constellations. The obsidian door.

This time, the breathing behind the door was louder.

And the voice was clearer.

Soon.

By the third night, Asteria stopped pretending she wasn’t terrified.

The star now hovered outside her bedroom window, close enough that she could see swirling patterns inside it—spirals, runes, galaxies folding into themselves. It wasn’t a star. It was an eye. A cosmic eye is watching her.

She pulled the curtains shut.

The light bled through anyway.

She didn’t sleep. Not really. She drifted in and out, slipping into the corridor again and again. Each time, she got closer to the door. Each time, the breathing grew heavier, like something enormous was waking up.

At dawn, she found a mark on her wrist—a faint glowing sigil shaped like a spiral. It pulsed in time with the star outside.

She covered it with a sleeve and tried not to scream.

On the fourth night, she gave up fighting it.

She stood at her window, staring at the stars. “What do you want from me?”

The star brightened, flooding her room with white-gold light. Her vision blurred. Her knees buckled. The world dissolved.

When she opened her eyes, she was standing in the corridor again—but this time, she wasn’t dreaming.

She could feel the cold under her bare feet. She could smell the metallic tang of starlight. The constellations on the walls shifted as she breathed.

The obsidian door loomed ahead.

And the star—no longer a distant watcher—hovered beside her; its light forming a humanoid silhouette. A figure made of galaxies and nebulae.

“You called me,” the figure said, its voice echoing like a thousand overlapping whispers.

“I didn’t,” Asteria said, backing away. “I don’t even know what you are.”

“You dreamed of the Gate. You walked the Path. You bear the Mark.” The figure gestured to her wrist. The sigil blazed through her sleeve. “You are the Key.”

“I don’t want to be anything,” she said. “I just want to go home.”

The figure tilted its head. “Home is behind the door.”

“That’s not my home.”

“It will be.”

The breathing behind the door grew thunderous, shaking the corridor. Dust fell from the constellations. The obsidian surface bulged outward, as if something massive pressed against it.

Asteria stumbled back. “What’s behind there?”

“Your destiny.”

The door cracked.

A sliver of darkness seeped through—pure, absolute, hungry. It wasn’t the absence of light. It was the devouring of it.

Asteria felt it tugged at her bones, her thoughts, her memories.

“No,” she whispered. “Close it.”

“You were born to open it,” the star-being said. “To awaken the Sleeper.”

The crack widened. A tendril of darkness slithered out, brushing her ankle. Her skin burned with cold.

She screamed.

The corridor flickered.

The star-being reached for her.

The darkness surged.

And then—

Asteria jolted awake.

Her room was dark. Her sheets were soaked with sweat. Her wrist was bare—no sigil, no glow. The curtains were drawn. No star shone through them.

She sat up slowly, heart hammering.

A dream. Just a dream.

She laughed shakily, rubbing her face. “God, I need to stop eating cereal at midnight.”

She swung her legs out of bed.

Her foot touched something cold.

She froze.

The floor beneath her was smooth. Too smooth. Not wood. Not a carpet.

She looked down.

Starlight shimmered under her toes.

Her breath caught.

The corridor stretched out before her, constellations shifting along the walls.

And at the far end, the obsidian door cracked open.

A single whisper drifted through.

Now.