Where the Stars Have No Names

If I had one wish, I would hide the moon and start again. That’s not a confession, but a truth I’d kept buried beneath years of polite smiles and obedient nods. The day I was given the wish, I felt nothing. No joy, no fear, no hesitation. The weight of power rested in my palm—a small, crystalline orb that pulsed faintly with a light no one else could see. The man who gave it to me disappeared as suddenly as he arrived, leaving only the words, “Change anything.”

Anything.

I sat with the orb for hours, maybe days. My mind flickered with images of fixes—grand solutions to humanity’s endless miseries. I could end hunger, cure disease, dissolve wars. But those ideas felt hollow, their scope too small. This wasn’t about mending broken parts. It was about the rot at the core.

So I made my wish.

The world began to collapse, piece by piece, as the ground split open and swallowed the monuments of history. Rivers turned black, choking on the memories of civilizations. The sun bled red before vanishing altogether, leaving the sky heavy. Cities crumbled, their towers falling silent. No screams, no cries—only the sound of silence expanding, consuming.

I stood at the edge of it all, the last breath of the old world swirling around me. This was the moment I’d imagined, the moment where I would begin anew.

But I didn’t.

The orb lay lifeless in my hand, its glow extinguished. I realized too late that starting again was a myth, a fever dream whispered by desperate minds. The ruins stretched endless, a graveyard of what once was and what could never be again.

I sat down, a hollow king in a kingdom of shadows, cradling the wish I could never undo.