The Zenith Star
A sudden light in the empty sky. A gift, a warning or a lie?
Introduction
A night sky deprived of the dance of flickering starlight. No constellations. No myths. No lingering stories waiting to be shared.
The heavens had grown silent and what remains is the suffocating blackness overhead, draped in the dusty shroud of the frayed, withered veil. The moon still limps along its path, pale and sickly, like a witness that no longer cares.
Distant. Disappointed.
This is what the night has become: a vast nothingness, a humming void that echoes in every survivor's heart.
And then, in that black canvas, a light suddenly appears.
A single crimson star. A flicker of grandeur. A spark that rises through the Abyss and sears itself into the sky - straight overhead, no matter where you stand. It doesn’t move. It doesn’t blink. And yet somehow, it feels like it sees you.
It’s comforting, in the way a lie can be.
A brief moment of direction.
An anchor in a world that spins on a shattered compass.
“Funny how a single light in the sky makes people forget the rest of the world’s still burning.”
A light that shouldn't be
I was ten the first time it came. The world was still fresh from breaking. We huddled in the ruined village, eyes turned skyward, though none of us knew what to expect. The night was too dark. Too empty. Then a crimson star blazed straight overhead. It didn’t move. It just… waited. For three days it stayed, and I remember how scared everyone was. What new horror was this? I wasn’t afraid, though. Back then, I thought it was a miracle.
A promise that felt a lot like hope.
Seven years later, the star came again. This time, my eyes weren’t as wide; there were more questions than awe. The world had eaten hope and spat pain back in my face too many times. But still, the red miracle didn’t hurt us - not like everything else did. So, on the last day, we celebrated. It felt strange. Out of place. We sang. We smiled.
Some even dared to dream.
The star returned once more, when I was twenty-four. This time we waited for it, holding our breath in fear it wouldn’t come. But it did. And a sigh of relief ran through all of us. We were tired. Broken from the waiting. We needed a miracle.
Its light was like the calm before the storm. The breath before the fall.
In a few years, it will come again. I’m already dreaming of it. Life has become cruel, but maybe it’s worth enduring, if only to see that magical light one more time.
I don’t know what I’d do if the Zenith Star refused to appear.
If it doesn’t come back...
I don’t think I will either.
At the Zenith
The Zenith Star appears once every seven years, without warning or reason. It tears across the sky in a breath, then halts, dead center above the heads of all who look for it.
Straight overhead. Always.
No matter where you are, it claims your sky.
And there it stays: three days, three nights, unmoving. Pulsing faintly, like something breathing slow. Watching carefully.
The sky knows no other lights. It forgot constellations long ago.
Night is black, heavy, godless, until the Zenith Star carves itself into it like a god’s wound, burned into the heavens.
It shines through cloud, ash, and storm. Untouchable.
It gives no warmth. It hums no voice.
But when it appears, the world changes.
Survivors call it luck. Some call it grace.
Others, a trap wrapped in the mantle of unreachable perfection.
Since the Cataclysm, the Star has returned three times.
The first time, the world froze. It was feared like a cursed signal. A sign that the sky was awakening to seek vengeance.
The second time, they stared; wondering what gifts it brought, and what it wanted in return.
By the third, they gathered, before it even rose.
To celebrate. To sing.
To pray.
To remember what hope once felt like beneath the weight of torment.
When the Star Appears
Crops bloom overnight, even in poisoned or salted soil
Water clears, drinkable without boiling or filtration
Dead tech flickers to life, running briefly
Signals resurrected, messages are sent and heard
The air lifts, and breath comes easier
Magic steadies. For three days, no Wyld Surges.
Under the Crimson light
Thoughts of the Living
Humanity marks the coming of the Zenith Star not by calendars but by hope, folded into every long-awaited breath. Across shattered remnants of the world, the living prepare - each in their broken way. Some fall silent. Others raise voices in song or ritual. Nearly all offer something to the strange light that dares to disturb the dreams they buried.
In the ruins and shadowed hollows, the Star’s arrival cuts through the endless haze like a cold promise. Sky-altars rise from rust and bone, standing mute beneath its gaze. Families share their scraps beneath that unblinking eye, whispering names of the lost; praying their memories might ride the light beyond the void. Children learn to watch without stirring; wanderers paint faint red marks on skin, hoping the Star will see and spare them in the dark days to come.
Those born beneath its glow are called blessed, marked by a rare fate. To die beneath the Star is considered mercy, as at that moment, the body does not twist into the gnashing hunger that twists so many dead into monsters. Outside the light, the fallen do not rest. Flesh warps, eyes open too wide, and restless hunger drags their souls into torment - lost to the endless night. Under the Star’s cold pulse, the world feels less heavy. The air thins; wounds sting less; the waiting dulls. It is no salvation. No reprieve from the cruel grind. But a moment when broken things might, just briefly, fit together again.
Then the Star fades.
And the silence that follows is louder than any scream. Shadows sharpen. Cold sinks deeper. The weight of survival crushes harder. The light is gone, but the memory of it leaves scars of longing that are often too deep to heal. Still people await its return, wishing that its promise of life would be one day fullfilled.
Thoughts of the Undead
To most Immortals, the Zenith Star is a bad omen, one that warns and hates them. It burns high and cold, a crimson eye that pierces the endless night, unblinking and merciless. Where they once walked unseen and sovereign, under its gaze they become exposed; hunted not by mortal blades, but by something they consider far older and colder.
They say the Star does not merely watch.
It judges.
It sees unlife tangled in decay, the endless hunger etched into their bones, and finds only condemnation. In its silent vigil, the Immortals feel the weight of an inevitable reckoning, a slow unravelling destined to sweep away their ancient dominion. When the Zenith Star burns overhead, the Immortals usually fall mute, their gatherings silent and rar. No whispered plots rise in its presence; no blood is spilled unless there is a grave reason. Instead, they shrink into shadows darker still, carrying the heavy dread in their blackened hearts that the Star’s coming heralds the erosion of their power, the tightening noose of extinction.
To them, its light is not a cause of celebration. It's a relentless specter, a reminder that the immortal curse is not a gift but a sentence, and that at some point a verdict will come that they will not be able to escape.
When the Star fades the Immortals steel themselves once more. But since the first time it appeared, they know, deep in whatever thoughts remain in their paranoid minds, that one of its returns will bring the reckoning they cannot outrun.
Whispers of the Mages
Mages regard the Zenith Star with measured eyes: part awe and graditute, part suspicion and fear. To those who bend the raw pulse of magic, its arrival is both a boon and a warning; a crimson flame shining bright across the sky.
For three days and nights, the chaotic tides of the Aether Paths still. The maddening Wyld Surges hold their breath. The world’s magic steadies, offering a fleeting window where spells can be woven with uncommon precision and rituals completed without catastrophe. It is an opportunity they cannot afford to ignore. Carefully, cautiously, mages prepare months in advance, studying the star’s past appearances, refining ancient incantations, and whispering prayers to forces both known and forgotten. In the Star’s glow, they glimpse order in chaos, a momentary bridge across the abyss.
Yet beneath the relief lies a wary truth. The Star’s calm is a brittle gift, and stories circulate of strange backlash; of surges twisted and amplified once the crimson light fades. Some say the Star itself watches, as if waiting to claim its due. Mages do not celebrate beneath the Zenith Star. They observe. They calculate. They hope to glean from its brief radiance a secret long lost, a spark of control in a world spinning toward madness.
When the Star vanishes, chaos returns. But for those few days, magic is a fragile thread woven tight and in that slender moment, the impossible feels within reach once more.
Until it dawns again
The Star never lingers.
One moment, it hangs above the world; breathing, pulsing, watching. The next, it’s gone. No dimming. Just absence. The sky seals once again, and the silence that follows feels worse than before.
At first, the world only seems to return to normal. But normal, here, is broken and wrong. Machines flicker dead. Magic bites again. The air thickens. Sounds seem distant, like they’re pushing through water. People sleep less. Or too much. The ground feels heavier beneath their feet, as if remembering the weight it forgot while the light was overhead.
And then, obsession begins.
By now, few speak of the Zenith Star as a celestial mystery. Instead, they think of it as a presence. As a thing that knows all too well what it needs. One that has its own reason to return. Its cycle is too precise, its gaze too personal. It arrives like it remembers you. And some begin to live only for it. A glimpse. A pattern. A flicker of direction in a world where everything else turns to ash. After only three appearances, whole communities begin to shift. Shrines become sanctuaries. Dreams center around a crimson point. People mark themselves in red and wait.
Mages feel it more than most. Some still pretend the calm that accompanies the Star is pure. That the Wyld Surges sleep during those three nights, and nothing more. But behind closed doors, among circles of ash and warded chalk, the wiser ones whisper a quieter truth: The Surges do not stop. They wait and what was cast in safety will one day demand its cost.
And it will be paid in full.
Still, they prepare for the Star’s return. As do many. Not out of ignorance, but out of need.
Because without it, the world is just darker.
Colder.
Heavier.
The Star is a sign that their suffering leads somewhere, that their endurance might still earn something.
Because if not...
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Wow, your recent articles are really making me feel the feels <3 A strong part of me really hopes this star is benevolent, because all the people suffering deserve peace and reprieve.
That means a lot to me CG! Thank you so much <3