The journey back to Silverwood was silent.
Not for lack of words—but because neither Maelin nor Caelum could bear to speak them. The sky had shifted. Since Maelin bore the Crown of Starlight, she no longer walked like a girl who had found answers—she moved like a storm that knew it was coming.
As they approached the city's edge, the sky was painted in bruised crimson and smothered gold. A thin fog curled at their feet. From the high ridge, Maelin saw Silverwood laid out like a broken map: familiar towers, the glittering Threadbridge, the domes of the Observatory—but everything beneath that red star felt… smaller. Dimmer. Unreal.
The gates groaned as they opened. The guards did not smile. They watched her like she was a comet crashing toward them—not a girl returning home.
Silverwood was still beautiful—but not alive.
Children no longer chased ribbon-kites down alleys. The central market was shuttered. The gardens she once walked with her mentor Elara had withered. The sky's red glow had begun to steal color from the world. Even the flowers closed early, curling as if in fear.
They reached the old Scholar's Quarter just before curfew.
Everything smelled of candlewax and old parchment—yet something was wrong. The air was thicker. Every echo lingered too long.
Inside the Archive Tower, Maelin walked the memory of her past. She had once sat in this hall, her fingers smudged with ink, mapping imaginary constellations. Back then, the Whisper was just a mystery.
Now it was a war.
In the heart of the Archives, the starlit dais flickered erratically. Elara—her former mentor—stood alone in the center, hunched over a scroll that trembled in her hand.
"Elara," Maelin called softly.
The older woman turned. Her eyes were sunken, aged in weeks. When she saw the locket—cracked, glowing faintly—her expression shattered into fear and awe.
"You opened it…"
Maelin nodded. "The stars are lying to us. The Crown awakened something ancient. I've seen it. I've heard it. The Hollow Light—Liraen—is rising."
Elara backed away. "He was just a myth."
"No," Maelin said. "He was a warning. A piece of the Choir that tore itself apart… and now he's come to sing backward."
As Maelin placed the Celestial Locket on the dais, it opened again—revealing a second chamber: delicate threads of starlight, entwined around a name burned into silver.
> Liraen.
Caelum stepped closer. "He's not just coming to destroy us. He's coming to unwrite everything. The sky. The songs. Time itself."
A rumble beneath the ground.
Then silence.
Then… one single star overhead blinked out. Then another.
Maelin looked upward, her voice calm but shaken:
> "He's already begun."
---
Scene Shift: Outside the City
Upon a cliff of jagged bone and ash, the fallen Choir stood beside their master.
Liraen, draped in celestial ruins, stared toward the city. His eyes were hollow, reflecting no stars—only memory.
His voice was like wind moving through a broken flute:
> "Let Silverwood remember.
The sky was never theirs to write.
The Whisper was mine first."
---
To be continued in Chapter 41…