Threads of Starlight

Aster woke with a jolt.

For a long, disoriented moment, she couldn't tell where she was.

The room felt unfamiliar. Her body felt too heavy, her breaths shallow and uneven. Sweat clung to her skin despite the cold creeping in from the slightly open window. She blinked, chest heaving, as her mind scrambled to separate dream from reality.

No—not a dream.

A memory.

It burned behind her eyes like an afterimage, refusing to fade. The celestial garden, bathed in twilight. Selene’s hands clutching hers, warm despite the sorrow that laced their final moments together. The desperate promise, I’ll find you again, hanging between them like a vow written in the stars.

Aster sat up too quickly, and a sharp wave of dizziness crashed over her. She swayed, pressing a hand to her forehead. Her skin was clammy, her heartbeat erratic, like her body was struggling to keep up with something far greater than itself.

She exhaled shakily, rubbing her arms.

Why was it so cold?

Her apartment was never this cold. But now, the air was frigid, her breath nearly visible in the dim light. The world outside was stirring, muffled voices from the street below, the distant hum of morning traffic, but inside, everything felt wrong.

She glanced down at her hands. They were trembling.

The weight of something unseen lingered on her skin, ghosting over her fingertips. She swore she could still feel it, the warmth of Selene’s touch, the way their fingers had intertwined, desperate and unyielding. The memory of it sent a shiver down her spine.

Aster flexed her fingers, trying to chase away the sensation, but it lingered.

Something was happening to her.

Something was breaking.

She sucked in a sharp breath, trying to ground herself. She needed something tangible, something real.

Her gaze lifted to the window.

And then...

Aster froze.

The sky was painted in the pale hues of morning, the last traces of dawn giving way to a soft, golden light. But there, suspended in the vast stretch of blue, was a single, faint star.

It shouldn’t have been visible. Not against the brightness of day. But it was there. And it was pulsing.

Aster’s throat tightened. She didn’t know how, but she knew—

It was watching her.

And then, something else. The plants by her window. They were vibrant and thriving just yesterday, and now they were wilting. The edges of their leaves curled inward, their once-strong stems drooping as if they were struggling to hold themselves up.

Aster shot out of bed, heart hammering, reaching out instinctively.

The moment her fingers brushed against the petals, they crumbled... Into dust.

Selene couldn’t move.

She sat curled up by the window, knees pulled to her chest, fingers tangled in the fabric of the oversized sweater draped over her frame. The city outside stretched endlessly, neon signs flickering, car horns blaring, the constant hum of life never ceasing.

But it all felt distant. Like she was watching it through the wrong lens, slightly out of focus.

Her pulse was uneven, her skin unnervingly warm. It felt like she was running a fever, like something inside her was burning, reaching, pulling, unraveling from the inside out.

And then, there were the echoes. The voices that weren’t voices. The whispers that weren’t quite words. The weight of something she couldn’t name pressing down on her chest, filling the empty spaces between her ribs.

Selene squeezed her eyes shut, but the memories still surged forward. A hidden garden. A desperate goodbye. Golden light splitting them apart.

Her own voice, shaking, breaking...

“Aster—”

Selene sucked in a breath and opened her eyes.

The room was too bright.

Colors felt too sharp, too vivid, the deep blues of the sky bleeding into unnatural purples, the whites of the buildings almost blinding. The sounds of the city were louder than they should have been, the buzz of a streetlamp outside her window a low, grating hum against her ears.

Everything was too much.

Too bright. Too loud. Too real.

And then—

Snap.

Selene flinched.

Her gaze darted down to the sewing kit on her desk, where a delicate thread lay broken, frayed at the edges.

She hadn’t touched it. She hadn’t even been near it.

But the golden thread, the same one she had picked out just yesterday, the one she had planned to use for her next collection, had snapped cleanly in two.

Like something unseen had severed it.

Selene shivered. Her fingers hovered over the broken thread, hesitant, uncertain.

And then, slowly, she turned her gaze upward toward the vast, endless stretch of sky.

She wasn’t sure why she did it. Only that something inside her knew to look.

Her breath hitched. The stars. They weren’t twinkling. They were pulsing. Like a warning. Like a response.

Selene’s fingers curled into her sweater. The air in her room was thick, suffocating, charged with something she couldn’t name.

And before she even realized she was speaking, the words slipped out, soft, certain, and utterly terrifying.

"This isn’t over."

The moment the words left her lips, the lights flickered. A cold gust of wind swept through the room, rattling the windows despite the stillness of the night outside.

And far above, past the towering skyline, the stars burned brighter.

The soft hum of technology filled Janus’ sleek office, the walls lined with digital screens displaying data sets, market trends, and AI projections. It was a space of precision, of control—every detail curated for efficiency.

Janus thrived in order. In logic. In things that made sense. Which was why the sudden, unexplainable drop in her chest made no sense at all.

She sat at her desk, fingers frozen above the keyboard, staring at the holographic display in front of her. The numbers blurred. The world tilted, just slightly, just enough for her to feel it.

Not again.

Her phone rang.

Janus blinked, grounding herself before answering. "Mirael?"

"You felt that too."

Mirael’s voice was steady, but Janus could hear the undertone beneath it, the same sharp-edged uncertainty tightening her own chest.

Janus exhaled, leaning back in her chair. "I don’t know what I felt."

Mirael didn’t respond right away. In the background, the muffled sounds of a busy street filtered through, voices blending with the distant hum of passing cars, the occasional clatter of a food cart.

Then, Mirael’s voice returned, quieter this time.

"It’s them, isn’t it?"

Janus didn’t answer. She didn’t have to. The silence between them said everything. But just as she was about to say something, Mirael spoke again. "If we step in too soon, you know what could happen."

Janus’ grip on her phone tightened. "I know."

She didn’t say it out loud, but the truth sat heavy in her chest.

The last time someone had interfered too much, they’d lost them anyway.

"That’s a bad pull," Maia murmured, staring down at the tarot spread on her desk.

The dim glow of fairy lights cast shifting shadows across the small room, the scent of incense curling through the air. The card before her, The Tower, stood ominous and unwavering.

Disruption. Sudden change. A crumbling foundation. A cosmic shift.

Stellaire, lounging on the couch with her phone, barely glanced up. "Are you sure it’s a bad thing? Maybe it’s just a dramatic reveal. You do love those."

Maia didn’t answer. Her fingers lightly traced the edge of the card. The candles flickered. And then, the temperature dropped.

Stellaire sat up. The air had weight now. A thickness. An energy that sent a prickle down her spine. For once, she wasn’t smiling. "You felt that, didn’t you?" Stellaire’s voice was quieter, more serious than usual.

Maia closed her eyes.

It was happening.

She should have expected it. She had seen it before. And yet, as she looked down at The Tower, a whisper, one she hadn’t heard in a long time, echoed in her mind.

"Interfere too much, and the universe will reset what was never meant to be."

Her fingers stilled against the table.

The soft melody of a grand piano filled the empty concert hall, echoing off the high ceilings in waves of quiet elegance.

Cyra’s fingers moved fluidly over the keys, the familiar weight of ivory and ebony grounding her in the moment. She had played this piece a thousand times before, notes flowing like water, a seamless cascade of sound.

Gaela sat a few rows back, flipping through an art magazine, the pages rustling as she occasionally glanced up to watch Cyra play.

It was a peaceful morning. Routine. Stable.

And then, Cyra’s fingers faltered. It was barely noticeable, just a single missed note, an almost imperceptible break in the flow. But Gaela heard it. She lowered her magazine, eyes sharp as she studied Cyra’s expression.

Cyra had gone still. Her hands hovered above the keys, unmoving, tense.

"Cyra?" Gaela’s voice was soft, measured.

Cyra didn’t answer right away. Instead, she turned her gaze upward toward the high, arched windows that let in the early morning light. A soft frown settled between her brows. Gaela followed her gaze. The sky outside was bright. Clear. Normal. But something felt off. The air had shifted just enough for Gaela to feel the change press against her skin.

Neither of them said anything for a long time. Eventually, Cyra lowered her hands to her lap. Gaela closed her magazine. "We should be ready," she said quietly.

Cyra nodded once.

But just as Gaela turned the page in her magazine, she caught sight of something that hadn’t been there before. A smudged, inked phrase at the bottom of the page, faint but unmistakable:

"Nothing comes without cost."

She stared at it.

A warning.

A reminder.

Their morning had started as something peaceful. It didn’t feel that way anymore.

The celestial friends had lived among humans long enough to recognize when the balance was shifting. And right now, it was. Dramatically.

Janus sat in her high-rise office, fingers tightening around her phone, Mirael’s voice still lingering in her ear.

Mirael stood on the edge of a foreign city, staring up at a sky that felt too still, too silent.

Maia watched as the candles on her desk flickered, The Tower card staring back at her like a warning she couldn’t ignore.

Stellaire, normally full of reckless amusement, remained uncharacteristically quiet, a strange weight settling in her chest.

Cyra sat frozen at the piano, the music inside her suddenly distant.

Gaela placed a gentle hand on her shoulder as if bracing for the inevitable.

And somewhere, miles apart, Aster and Selene were waking up to a world that no longer belonged entirely to them.

A world that had started shifting.

A world that wasn’t just responding to them—It was deciding.

At first, it was subtle.

Aster woke up feeling sluggish, as if sleep had done nothing to ease the weight pressing against her body. No matter how much she rested, an exhaustion far deeper than simple fatigue settled into her bones, an ache she couldn’t shake. She tried to ignore it, brushing off the sluggishness as a lingering effect of restless dreams. But as the hours passed, the heaviness only grew, sinking into her limbs like something unseen was pulling at her, tugging at the very essence of her being.

By midday, standing in the middle of her farm, she knew something was wrong.

The crops, ones she had nurtured for years with careful hands, were wilting. Their leaves curled in on themselves, stems drooping as if retreating from some unseen force. Aster knelt in the dirt, fingers digging into the soil, expecting to find a reason. Drought? Pests? Disease? She had dealt with all of those before. But the soil felt the same, the air smelled the same, only the life was missing.

She pressed a hand to her forehead, sweat trickling down despite the crisp air.

Something was being taken from her. Something she couldn’t fight.

Selene sat in her studio, shoulders tense as she stared at the fabric stretched before her. A delicate gold thread shimmered under the light, woven carefully through the design until, with no warning, it snapped.

The sound was barely audible, just a soft pop, but the moment it happened, her breath hitched. She hadn’t touched it. Her hands hovered inches away, completely still. The fabric hadn’t shifted. The tension in the thread hadn’t been pulled taut. And yet, it had unraveled, the fine strands fraying at the edges as if something had severed it with invisible shears.

A chill ran through her spine.

She reached out hesitantly, her fingertips grazing the broken ends. The thread was delicate, intricate, a part of a design she had been working on for weeks. And yet, just like that, it had come undone.

A sharp pang hit her temples, and she inhaled sharply, pressing her fingers against her forehead. Her focus wavered. The studio lights felt too bright. The sounds outside, cars passing, people chattering, distant music, were suddenly too much. Too loud, too sharp, too overwhelming, as if the entire world had tilted just slightly off balance.

Her hands curled into fists. Something was wrong. The punishment was creeping in. The signs became harder to ignore.

Aster stood at the edge of her farm, the wind teasing loose strands of her hair as she surveyed the land she had built with her own hands. But something felt… off. The air was too still, thick with an unspoken tension that pressed against her skin like an unseen weight.

She wiped the sweat from her brow, expecting the usual burn of the afternoon sun, but instead, the light around her dimmed. Not from passing clouds. Not from the slow descent of evening. The sky itself darkened as if something vast and unseen was shifting above, stretching shadows where there should have been none.

Her heartbeat quickened. Then, it happened. The stars pulsed. In broad daylight.

Aster’s breath hitched. She took an instinctive step back, dirt shifting beneath her boots. It wasn’t normal. It wasn’t possible. And yet, there it was. A flickering pattern in the sky, too deliberate to be mistaken for a trick of the light. Like a heartbeat. Like a warning.

A chill ran down her spine.

Far away, in the heart of the city, Selene felt it, too.

She had been sketching, the golden embroidery thread from earlier still sitting in front of her, broken and untouched. The whir of the sewing machine had filled the studio, the comforting rhythm grounding her until it didn’t.

The air shifted.

Her fingers trembled as she reached for the edge of her work table, gripping the wood so tightly her knuckles turned white.

Her breath came out uneven, her pulse ringing in her ears. It was subtle, a disturbance just at the edge of her awareness, but she felt it.

Aster.

Her name whispered through Selene’s mind, unspoken but certain.

Something was coming. And it wasn’t done with them yet.

It started with a whisper.

At first, Aster barely heard it. A soft hum, like the distant echo of a song, brushing against the edges of her consciousness. It was just a flicker, a shadow of something bigger, and yet it carried with it a weight that settled in her chest. But soon, the hum grew louder, sharper, twisting into something more distinct, curling into words she couldn't quite grasp.

Her breath quickened, and the world around her began to blur, her surroundings distorting like a painting smeared by the hand of fate. The exhaustion that had been slowly eating away at her intensified, every muscle in her body screaming in protest. The air around her thickened, making each breath feel heavier, as though gravity itself had increased just for her.

And then her knees buckled.

The ground rushed up to meet her with a cruel finality. Aster gasped; the air knocked out of her lungs as her palms scraped against the dirt. The world spun in dizzying circles, the sky above her shifting in shades of unnatural darkness. She could feel it, a pressure, like something unseen was pressing down on her chest, constricting her lungs, suffocating her from the inside out.

Her vision flickered like the last remaining fragments of a dying star. She saw it, just for a moment, golden light swirling around her. A voice called her name, familiar and distant all at once.

Selene...

The name was a breathless gasp, hanging on the edge of her mind, like a memory that wouldn’t stay in place.

Meanwhile, across the city, Selene felt it, too.

She stumbled backward, a jagged breath tearing from her throat as a sudden, searing pain jolted through her. Her hands flew to her chest instinctively, as though trying to hold the pieces of herself together. But it wasn’t a physical wound. There was no blood and no external injury. But something inside her was unraveling, something she couldn’t name, something deep in the core of her being, was being torn apart.

Her body trembled, and she swayed on her feet, the sensation of being pulled in two directions at once overwhelming her. She gripped the edge of the work table with white-knuckled fingers as if that might keep her from slipping away entirely.

And then she saw it, her hands, still trembling, holding the fabric she’d been stitching. The golden thread, the same thread she had worked so carefully into the design, began to unravel before her very eyes. No tension. No mistake in her movements. It was as if the thread itself was escaping from her, loosening and winding backward, slipping through her fingers like it never belonged to her at all.

Selene sucked in a sharp breath, the air feeling colder as her pulse roared in her ears, louder than the universe itself.

The punishment had begun.

And somewhere, beyond the veil of the mortal world, those who had once sworn to protect them felt the weight of the choice they would soon have to make.

To interfere... or to let fate take its course.

The celestial realm watched in silence.

And as the fabric of their lives continued to unravel, both in their hands and in their hearts, the universe waited.

Would Aster and Selene defy fate?

Or would they be torn apart, lost to the current of time and memory before they had the chance to reconnect?