Fallen star
Darkness consumed the sky, vast and endless. Stars shimmered like distant embers, but one burned brighter than the rest. A streak of golden light cut through the cosmos, a celestial body hurled into the abyss, weightless and untethered. It fell, spiraling through the universe, slipping between realms, as if fate itself sought to erase it from existence.
Celeste Astra Vale had once been more than this—a being of light, a daughter of gods. The royal halls of her home world echoed with the voices of her people, their faith woven into her very existence. Her kind drew strength from the light, molding it into something tangible, something real. Weapons, shields, even entire structures forged from the brilliance of stars. But war had torn it all apart. A battle against the Dark Elves, merciless and unrelenting, had left her world in ruin. The sky, once alive with radiance, had dimmed with the blood of her people.
And then, she fell.
It was not death that claimed her, but something worse—oblivion. She tumbled through the endless void, pulled through the fabric of time and space, until she crashed upon an unfamiliar world. Earth.
The impact should have killed her. Instead, she woke to the sting of cold metal against her skin, to harsh voices speaking a language she barely understood. She had no memory of the celestial halls she once called home, no recollection of the war that had stolen everything from her. All that remained was pain, confusion, and the unshakable sense that she did not belong.
The men who found her did not see a lost soul. They saw an opportunity. HYDRA, a name she would come to know only through the agony they inflicted, seized her broken form, binding her in chains before she could comprehend what she was. Their scientists, hungry for power, quickly discovered the anomaly in her blood, the energy that lingered in her bones. She became their experiment, their tool, their prisoner.
Decades passed in the blink of an eye, though she did not age as they did. She remained locked away in the depths of HYDRA’s facilities, enduring test after brutal test. They sought to replicate her power, to twist it into something controllable. But light was not meant to be caged. It fought back, even when she could not.
Her memories were shattered pieces of a puzzle she could not solve. The golden halls, the faces of her kin, the whispers of power that called to her in dreams—she did not understand them. HYDRA stripped her of identity, reducing her to nothing more than an asset, a resource to be drained. But even in the darkest of nights, light flickered, refusing to be extinguished.
Then, salvation came in the form of a man draped in the colors of a nation not her own.
Captain America led the assault on the HYDRA facility, a beacon of defiance against the very forces that held her captive. Amidst the chaos of battle, amidst the smoke and gunfire, the doors to her prison were torn open. A man with dark hair and weary eyes lay on a table beside her, barely conscious, metal restraints biting into his skin.
Bucky Barnes.
Neither of them spoke as the fighting raged outside, but in that moment, they were the same. Two souls trapped in an unrelenting nightmare, waiting for a dawn that had never come.
“Hey, we’re getting you out of here,” a voice said—strong, resolute. Steve Rogers.
She did not know his name then. She did not understand why these men risked everything to free those who were meant to be forgotten. But as Steve Rogers shattered her chains, she felt something she had long believed lost: hope.
The light had not died.
It had only been waiting.