The star fragment burned like a wound in the center of Joren's palm.
Kael watched carefully as the village troublemaker flexed his hand, the celestial piece pulsing with an unnatural red light that seemed to push against his skin from the inside.
Joren had found the fragment three weeks after the sky shattered, and everyone could see how it was changing him.
Where once Joren had been a lazy woodcutter with more attitude than ambition, now he moved with a predatory intensity that made even the older men in the village nervous.
His muscles had grown stronger, his eyes sharper.
"Stay back," Kael warned, positioning himself between Joren and the group of younger children who had been gathering water from the well.
Joren's laugh was different now. No longer the casual mockery of a village nuisance, but something cold. "Or what, farmer's son?"
The village of Riverstone had changed. Before the night the stars fell, it had been a quiet place. Farmers worked their fields. Merchants traded goods. Children played in the streets. Now, everything was uncertain and chaotic.
Some villagers had been transformed by the star fragments, granted abilities that defied explanation. Others had been broken, their minds fractured by powers they couldn't comprehend.
Kael knew he was neither strong nor particularly remarkable. At seventeen, he was lean from farm work, with hands calloused and thickened from years of helping his father. His black hair was always slightly messy, his clothes were old.
In the old world, he would have been unremarkable. In this new world, that might just keep him alive.
"You don't want to do this, Joren," Kael said, his voice steady.
The fragment in Joren's hand pulsed again. A strand of red energy leaked out, scorching the ground where it touched. The younger children behind Kael whimpered.
Market day in Riverstone used to be a celebration. Now it was a battlefield of unspoken tensions. Few villagers had fragments that granted minor abilities. A farmer who could make crops grow with a touch, a weaver whose threads shone in several colors.
Others, like Joren, had received fragments that seemed to hunger for something more.
Joren took a step forward. "Move, little Kael. This doesn't concern you."
But it did concern him. Kael had watched what these fragments did to people. Had seen how they twisted good men, how they offered power that always, always came with a price.
Three weeks ago, old Marcus, the kindest man in the village, had found a fragment that let him see glimpses of the future. Within days, the visions had driven him mad.
He now sat in the corner of his tavern, mumbling about shadows and destruction, his eyes perpetually fixed on some horizon only he could see.
Kael's hand unconsciously drifted to his wrist covered by his sleeves. Something was there. Something he hadn't told anyone about. A fragment so subtle, so quiet, that he couldn't tell that it was there sometimes.
"Last chance," Joren growled.
The red fragment flared. Kael could feel its heat from where he stood.
What happened next occurred so fast that later, no one could agree on the exact sequence of events.
Joren lunged. Infront of the fragment in his hand, a blade of pure crimson energy formed. The children screamed. Kael stepped forward, not away.
And then... something happened.
A sound. Not loud, but profound. An invisible wave that seemed to come from Kael.
The fragment in Joren's hand flickered. His attack, so certain moments before, suddenly felt uncertain.
Joren stumbled.
The children behind Kael were untouched.
"What..." Joren began, but he never finished the sentence.
The marketplace went silent. Even the wind seemed to pause.
Kael felt something on his wrist. The fragment he'd kept secret. It wasn't just a fragment. It had a mind of its own. And for the first time, it had done... something.
"Everyone all right?" he asked, turning to the children.
They stared at him wide-eyed. Not in fear, in something else. Wonder, perhaps.
Joren recovered quickly. The red fragment reshaped itself, burning with renewed intensity. "This isn't over," he snarled.
But something had changed. And they all knew it.
Later that evening, in the small house at the edge of Riverstone, Kael's hands were shaking as he prepared dinner for his father. The incident in the marketplace played over and over in his mind.
What had that been? The fragment—his fragment, had done something. But what?
His father, Marcus (not to be confused with the tavern owner), was a practical man. A farmer who believed in hard work and simple truths.
He'd survived the chaos that came after the night the stars fell by keeping his head down, not by drawing attention.
"Where is your sister?" Marcus asked, his tone laced with annoyance.
Kael paused for a moment, furrowing his brow as though the answer required serious contemplation. Then, with a faint shrug, he replied, "She's probably out practicing that thing... what was it called again? G-gym... gymnastics, right?"
The word tumbled awkwardly from his lips, unfamiliar and almost absurd in the context of their lives.
Marcus let out a sharp sigh and rubbed the bridge of his nose, the frustration clear in his expression.
Gymnastics. The word carried with it a lot of misunderstanding and pointlessness that he couldn't quite shake.
It had all started one seemingly ordinary morning. Kael's sister had woken up with an intensity in her eyes and a fervor in her voice that unsettled everyone.
She spoke of a dream—no, a prophecy, she insisted, delivered by the gods themselves. In this divine vision, she claimed, the gods had revealed to her an ancient form of combat, an art known as gymnastics.
From that day forward, she had thrown herself into practicing this so-called combat art with unwavering dedication. Twisting, flipping, and leaping with a determination that bordered on obsession, she declared it her calling.
She believed, without a shadow of a doubt, that this was her path to becoming part of an part of the upper society, knights maybe, or even part of the upper nobility.
"Damn it," Marcus muttered, shaking his head. "How do we convince her that it was just a dream?"
Kael didn't answer immediately, instead staring down at the table where part of their dinner had been set.
Finally, Kael gave a helpless shrug, his expression a mixture of resignation and quiet amusement. "I don't think we can. She's too... committed."
With that, they began their meal, the clinking of utensils against plates filling the void left by words they did not dare to speak aloud.
"You're quiet," Marcus said, sitting at the wooden table. "More quiet than usual."
Kael considered his words carefully. His father didn't know about the fragment. No one did. "Just thinking," he said.
But thinking, in this new world, could be a dangerous thing.
Outside, the first stars were emerging. Not the stars from before—these were different. They looked broken, fractured, missing a parts of itself.
And somewhere, far from Riverstone, a plan was taking shape. A plan that would change everything.
A plan that started with a boy. With a fragment. With a possibility.