Ixion

I turned the great lens upon it, and I looked into the dark between the stars. And the dark... looked back. It told me everything.

They found me at dawn on the floor of the dome. Where my eyes had been, there was only starlight. Master Olen bound them with black silk... and wept.

I did not need eyes anymore. I could see the dead star, Yr'Thaal, dreaming beyond the sky. And others came to hear what it had told me.

They called themselves the Circle of the Hollow Star. Sister Sussurah never raised her voice. She never needed to. Our prayers were whispers... and the whispers were answered.

I climbed the last branch of the world-tree that still touched the sky, and from it I carved my staff. The Staff of the Unlit Heavens.

In the old dome I built the Starless Orrery. It charts no stars at all... only the ones that are not there.

But Corvane had become a witch-hunter, sworn to the Silver Inquisition. He knew every stair of Highmere... because we had climbed them together as boys.

He came on a starless night and burned the observatory. My Circle scattered into the snow. Three hundred years of Master Olen's star charts... all ash.

Corvane left me alive in the ashes. He said a blind prophet was no threat to anyone. He never listened. I was never blind.

Now Yr'Thaal is rising, and the sky is hatching. The stars were never stars. They were eggs. And every one of them knows Corvane's name.

The Circle chants again, every night. Corvane is coming with his torches. Let him come. I have already seen how his story ends.

Master Olen was wrong. The stars are not the story. I do not count the stars anymore... I count the dark.