The moon glowed low and amber, a strange color that painted the cobblestone streets in molten gold. People said when the moon burned that way, something in the world was shifting.
I didn't believe in omens.
At least, not yet.
I was supposed to be sleeping, but sleep rarely comes easily these days. Turning eighteen meant I was expected to choose a path; an apprenticeship, a trade, a purpose. My best friend Mira already had hers. My cousins all had theirs. I had… nothing but the ache of not knowing where I belonged.
So instead of sleeping, I slipped out into the cool night air, letting the quiet soothe me. Our village of Ashvale was peaceful at that hour. A lantern swung lazily in the breeze as I walked toward the forest's edge.
The woods always made sense to me when nothing else did. But that night, something felt different. Charged. Alive.
A faint glow flickered between the trees.
At first I thought it was fireflies—Ashvale was full of them in summer—but this light didn't dance. It pulsed. Like a heartbeat.
I stepped closer.
The glow brightened.
A warm wind stirred the leaves, brushing against my skin like a whisper.
Come.
The light drifted deeper into the forest, as though waiting for me. Against every sensible instinct, I followed.
When I reached the clearing, I stopped breathing.
Floating above the ground was a fragment of light, no larger than my fist, swirling with colors I'd never seen before—gold, rose, violet, and burning white. It hummed softly, a sound like distant chimes.
It wasn't just beautiful.
It felt… familiar.
Like a memory I had forgotten.
"What are you?" I whispered.
The moment the words left my mouth, the fragment flared bright—blindingly bright.
The world snapped to darkness.
A force slammed into my chest, knocking me backward. My body hit the ground, but the pain barely registered, because the light… entered me.
It rushed through my veins like liquid fire, searing but not burning. Filling every corner of me. Claiming me. My vision blurred, shifting between the forest and flashes of somewhere else—towering spires, a burning sky, shadows crawling like smoke, a man with silver eyes reaching out his hand—
Then it was gone.
I lay still, gasping, trembling, waiting for the world to stop spinning.
But the world didn't stop.
I did.
For a long moment, I couldn't move.
When I finally sat up, my palms were glowing—softly, faintly, the same shimmering gold as the fragment of light.
"No," I whispered, shaking. "No, no, no…"
Magic.
Real magic.
Not the small charms the village healers used, not the illusion tricks wandering mages performed at festivals.
This was ancient. Wild. Forbidden.
And it was inside me.
"What in the stars' name have I done?"
Before I could gather myself, a sharp crack echoed behind me. A branch snapping under a hurried footstep.
I spun around.
Someone was standing at the edge of the clearing.
Tall. Cloaked. A hood shadowed their face, but even from a distance, I could feel their presence—cold, intense, dangerous.
And then I saw their eyes.
Not human eyes.
Silver.
Just like the vision.
The stranger stepped forward, voice low but unmistakably urgent.
"You," he said, staring at my glowing hands. "You weren't supposed to awaken yet."
My heart stopped.
He knew.
He knew what had happened—what I had become.
I scrambled backward, pulse racing. "Stay away from me."
The silver-eyed stranger raised both hands—not in attack, but in surrender.
"I won't hurt you," he said softly. "But you need to come with me. Now. Before they find you."
"Who?" My voice trembled.
He hesitated, as though saying the name would make it real.
"The Shadowborne."
A chill shot through me.
Everyone in Elyndor knew the stories. Ancient creatures made of darkness. Lost souls twisted by magic. The reason the old laws forbade humans from touching celestial power.
But those were just bedtime warnings.
Weren't they?
A heavy gust of wind surged through the clearing, and the trees suddenly bent as if bowing to something unseen.
The stranger stepped closer. "We don't have time. You carry the Ember now—the power that can tear the realms apart or bind them together. If the Shadowborne sense it, they will come."
My hands trembled harder. "I don't want any of this!"
He looked at me with something like sorrow. "You were chosen whether you want it or not."
The ground beneath us trembled.
A distant howl split the night air.
Not human.
Not an animal.
Something in between.
The stranger's eyes widened. "They're here."
He grabbed my wrist, his touch warm, startling, grounding.
"Run," he whispered. "Please."
With the moon burning overhead, the forest alive with danger, and a power inside me I didn't understand, I ran into the night—guided by a man I didn't trust but couldn't leave behind.
And that was the night everything changed.
The night the stars chose me.
The night my real story began.