Kaelen and the Song of the Shard Stars

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The path was barely visible. A narrow ridge of rock and light, slashing like a seam through the dark stone. Above her stretched a sky that was not blue, not black, but woven with silver—as if someone had shattered the firmament and shattered it into a thousand shimmering shards. Kaelen sat on Varaan's back, who strode with sure footing across the shimmering rock. No wind blew up here, no sounds came from the depths. The world was silent, but not empty. It was a silence that carried something within it. Anticipation, perhaps. Or memory. "So this is the Ridge of Lyrrenhal," she murmured. "The place where stars die." Varaan hummed softly, his breath rising like steam into the clear air. Around them, cracks in the rock glowed, emitting a pale glow—not fire, but something cold, almost spiritual. Like light that had forgotten where it came from. The ridge led them higher, and the further they went, the more clearly she heard it: a humming, barely perceptible but steady. It sounded like glass beginning to sing. Not with tones, but with resonance. Kaelen felt it in her bones, in her fingertips, even in her breath. "They call it the song of the splinter stars," the old mapmaker had said. "But what's singing, Miwen, are no longer stars. They are the fragments of what were once wishes." Now she understood what he had meant. The splinter stars were no longer celestial bodies, but fragments of something greater—memories, dreams, decisions lost in the last light. And they sang. Each differently. Each with a voice audible only to those who had listened. Kaelen dismounted. The ground beneath her feet was solid, but it vibrated as if breathing. She stepped to an edge of the ridge and looked down. Far below her floated the shard stars—thousands of fragments of light, slowly circling in a stream of silence and shimmer. They flickered as if following an invisible rhythm. One of the shards rose. Only a small one, barely larger than the palm of a hand. But as it approached, Kaelen felt something stir within her—a memory that was not hers. An image. A voice. A moment that never happened, but was still true. She reached out, and the shard touched her fingertips. A sound pierced her, clear and strange and familiar all at once. Not a word, not a sentence—but a feeling: If you become what you remember, who will you be when you forget? Kaelen closed her eyes. The shard hovered above her open hand, spinning slowly, showing her fleeting scenes—a child on the shore of a glassy lake, a woman with eyes like hers, but older, smiling beneath a falling sky. Everything shattered into light as she blinked. Then the shard fell back into the depths. Slowly. Quietly. Kaelen exhaled.