The Starborn Codex: Entry II

The Star That Broke the Sky

It did not fall quietly.

The oldest texts claim the heavens split with a sound like a thousand bells shattering at once, light tearing the dark from horizon to horizon. Some thought it the end of their world. Others knew better.

A single star cracked loose from the firmament and plunged toward the earth, burning a path through cloud and ether. When it struck, it did not bury itself. Rather… It burst.

We call it the Starfallen now, though it was never truly a single thing.

In its death, it made many.

Five fragments tore away from the impact, arcing outwards, each veined with a different breed of power. They streaked across land and sea like meteors that refused to go out, embedding themselves in five very different places:

• In the mountains that would one day blaze with Ember’s forges.

• In the high, wind-scoured peaks that would become Sky’s dominion.

• In ravines the night would not abandon, where Shadow would one day make its halls.

• In gardens and forests so lush they seemed to hum, where Bloom would weave abundance.

• In the deep places, beneath moonlit waves and shifting tides, where Pearl would claim the depths.

Around each fragment, the land itself changed.

Fire burned hotter and cleaner in Ember’s domain, gold and steel bending like silk beneath the hammers. In Sky’s reach, the air grew thinner, clearer; thought itself seemed to sharpen. Shadow’s shard bled night into stone, carving hollows where light hesitated, and secrets learned to breathe. Bloom’s fragment fed root and vine until the earth erupted in colour. Pearl’s piece sunk into seabed and shell, and the tides above shifted as though answering a call.

The power did not create the Courts.

The Courts formed because power always demands a shape to live in.

And so, over time, Regents rose around each fragment — chosen by blood, or brilliance, or simple audacity — to tend, guard, and wield what the Starfallen had left behind.

For a time, there was peace.

Or something that looked like it, from far enough away.