Astraea floated because it did not believe in grounding itself to anything human.
Its cities were not built.
They were suspended.
Vast rings of star-crystal—harvested from fragments of fallen heavens—hung in the upper atmosphere, glowing with a pale blue light that never dimmed. Upon them rested entire metropolises: towers of white glass, spiraled gardens, and bridges so thin and graceful they looked like strands of woven moonlight. Everything shimmered as if the sky itself had been folded into architecture.
From a distance, Astraea looked like a miracle.
Up close, it was a cage.
There was no soil beneath its people's feet. No real horizon. No place to run that was not already measured, calculated, and watched. Astraeans lived suspended between heaven and the abyss, and they knew it. Every step across a glass bridge carried the faint, constant reminder that a single miscalculation would mean a fall of miles into cloud and death.
That was not a flaw of the design.
It was a feature.
A Society Built on Prediction
Astraea did not worship gods.
It worshipped certainty.
The Oracles taught that the universe was a perfect equation. Every birth, every love, every war, every death was written in the movement of stars. All one had to do was learn how to read them correctly.
The Oracles claimed they could.
So the people surrendered their lives.
Children were tested at birth, their tiny bodies laid beneath crystal domes while the sky above was read like a scripture. Constellations were mapped against their breath, their heartbeats, the electrical flicker of their newborn minds.
Those whose star-signs promised brilliance were taken into the Sky Academies.
Those who did not…
Were quietly removed.
Officially, they were "returned to the ground."
Unofficially, they were dropped.
Astraea's lower platforms hovered miles above the mortal world. Cradles slid along rails to the edge, then vanished into cloud. The screams did not reach the cities above.
Astraea called it balance.
In truth, it was eugenics draped in silk and starlight.
The Oracles
The Oracles were not born.
They were made.
Those children selected by the stars were raised in towers of glass and silence. They were fed information the way other children were fed food. They learned to calculate probability before they learned to read. Emotion was treated as a flaw—something to be controlled, trimmed, or excised.
Their bodies were slowly altered. Crystalline implants replaced flesh, linking their nervous systems to star-engines that processed celestial data. By adulthood, most Oracles were barely human. Their veins glowed faintly blue. Their eyes no longer reflected the world, only constellations.
They could predict droughts.
They could calculate wars.
They could tell a mother when her child would die.
And they believed this made them gods.
Selthyr, Oracle-Primarch
At the pinnacle of Astraea stood the Spire of the Zenith, a tower so tall it pierced cloud and brushed the edge of space. At its summit ruled Selthyr, the Oracle-Primarch.
More machine than man, Selthyr had replaced so much of his body with star-crystal that his original form was little more than a framework. Filaments of glowing blue light ran through his chest like veins of a living galaxy. His eyes were no longer eyes at all, but rotating windows into the sky.
He did not sleep.
He calculated.
Through the Spire's vast arrays, Selthyr could see thousands of possible futures at once. Most rulers ruled through armies.
Selthyr ruled through probability.
And every probability was beginning to bend.
Because of one woman.
The Problem of Mirael
Mirael, Sovereign of Elyndra, was not written in the stars.
That alone terrified Selthyr.
The future around her was… blurred. Paths that should have been fixed splintered when they approached her existence. Wars that should have been inevitable no longer resolved cleanly. Treaties that should have failed instead survived.
She was a variable.
A deviation.
An error in the great equation of fate.
To Selthyr, this was not a philosophical problem.
It was an existential threat.
If Mirael existed, then the stars were not absolute.
If the stars were not absolute, then the Oracles were not gods.
And if the Oracles were not gods…
Astraea had been built on a lie.
The First Lies
Selthyr did not declare war.
He whispered.
Through spies embedded in Elyndra's court, Astraean agents fed carefully constructed rumors: that Mirael was unstable, that the Star Throne was corrupting her, that she was hoarding star-power to become immortal.
None of it was true.
But truth did not matter.
Perception did.
Selthyr sent envoys to Vaelor, Thyren, and Obsidra, each carrying different versions of the same lie, tailored to what they feared most.
To Vaelor:
Mirael plans to dismantle your war-forges.
To Thyren:
She will twist the natural order of life itself.
To Obsidra:
She seeks to bind death to her will.
And to all of them:
If she is not stopped, none of you will survive.
Fear spread faster than armies ever could.
The Sky's Calculations
Within the Spire, Selthyr ran endless projections.
Millions of possible wars.
Millions of dead.
In most of them, Astraea survived.
In some, it thrived.
In a terrifying few…
Mirael won.
Those futures were unacceptable.
Selthyr adjusted variables. He ordered assassinations. He destabilized trade routes. He manipulated star-currents to cause disasters in Elyndran territory.
Each action nudged reality closer to the war he wanted.
Because if the world was going to burn…
He intended to choose how.
The Hypocrisy of Heaven
Astraea called itself enlightened.
Its towers glowed with art and knowledge. Its people spoke of harmony and cosmic order. They held festivals where children danced beneath artificial constellations, celebrating the beauty of the sky that ruled them.
But beneath that beauty was a simple truth:
Astraea did not care who you were.
Only what you were worth to the future.
And Mirael was worth too much.
The Decision
Selthyr stood alone at the edge of the Zenith Spire, gazing into the infinite starfield beyond the atmosphere.
"Mirael of Elyndra," he whispered, though she was light-years away. "You have broken the pattern."
The stars shimmered in his eyes, showing him wars yet to come, lovers yet to die, worlds yet to fall.
"You are not a woman," he said softly. "You are a flaw."
And in Astraea, flaws were erased.
The first fleet was already being assembled.
The first calculations of slaughter already complete.
The sky had decided.
And it had chosen war.