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, of course, knew better.
A single star cracked loose from the firmament and plunged toward the earth, burning a path through cloud and ether, bursting as it blazed.
We call it the Starfallen now, though it was never truly a single thing.
In its death, it made many.
Six great fragments tore away from the impact, arcing outwards, each veined with a different breed of power. They streaked across land and sea like meteors, embedding themselves in places the world would never again quite recover from.
Five are named easily in the sanctioned histories:
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.
The sixth is less often spoken of now. But history does not forget cleanly; and the scars it left remain in the Realms even now.
Around each fragment, the land – the air – 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; and over time, thought itself seemed to sharpen. Shadow’s shard bled night into stone, carving hollows in the crevices where light dare not touch; giving the guarded, the unnamed and, over time, the ostracised, a place to call home. Bloom’s fragment fed root and vine until the earth erupted into life and colour. Pearl’s piece sunk into seabed and shell, and the tides above seemed to shift as though answering some ancient call.
The power did not create the Courts. At least, that is not how we see it.
Rather, the Archivists record that the Courts formed because power, naturally, will demand a shape to live in.
And so, over time, High 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.
