Backstory: The Star and the Storm

There was a time before the war.

Before the world split into two broken halves — the Celestials who worshipped order and the Riders who danced with chaos. Before names like Mirelha and Dacre were whispered as curses in the night.

There was only the sky.

And the sky was whole.

The Celestials were born of stars — each soul a flicker of ancient light, each life a delicate thread in the tapestry of the universe. They believed in balance, in the quiet order of things: beginnings and endings, life and death, rise and fall. To them, death wasn't a cruelty but a necessary page in the book of existence — a gentle hand guiding the living into the unknown.

And Mirelha… she wasn't like the others.

Where the other Celestials burned like suns — bright, blinding, demanding to be seen — Mirelha was a star long past its prime. She glowed softly, silver and cold, the quiet after a storm. Her aura shimmered not with fire, but with galaxies — tiny constellations that spun slowly around her like forgotten poetry, verses no one cared to read.

She didn't speak much, but when she did, her words felt like velvet and smoke. There was a sadness to her — a longing she couldn't name — as though her soul had been born with a wound it never quite healed from.

She was the Angel of Death.

But not because she wanted to be.

The Celestials didn't ask if you wanted to be something. They decided for you.

She would guide souls, they said. She would close eyes and quiet hearts. She would be the last thing people saw — a beautiful, sorrowful light to comfort them in their final moments.

And so, she did.

Until she met him.

---

The Riders were the opposite of everything the Celestials stood for.

Born from ruin, they weren't just men and women — they were storms given skin. They existed to destroy what the Celestials built, to remind the world that nothing — not empires, not love, not even the stars — lasted forever.

Where the Celestials whispered about balance, the Riders screamed about freedom.

And leading them was Dacre.

The Rider of Cataclysm.

His name was a promise — a reminder that destruction wasn't a question, but an eventuality.

Dacre wasn't a wild storm — not like his siblings.

Where War rode with fire in her hair and a sword in her hand… where Famine left fields rotting and lips cracked with thirst… Dacre was a quieter kind of ruin.

The kind that came slowly.

The earthquake you didn't feel until the ground split open beneath your feet. The first crack in a dam before the flood swallowed a city.

He was the storm on the horizon — distant, silent, but inevitable.

But there was something else — something unspoken.

When the storms passed… when the cities crumbled… Dacre would stay behind.

He would stand in the rain, his black hair dripping, his ember eyes distant — watching what he'd broken. There was no satisfaction in his gaze — only a quiet, unbearable ache.

A part of him wondered if there was a way to end something without destroying it.

But the world didn't ask what he wanted to be.

They called him Cataclysm. And so, he was.

---

The prophecy broke everything.

It was an old seer — her voice like rustling leaves and crumbling bones — who spoke the words that would ruin them all:

> When a star falls in love with a storm,

The sky shall crack,

The earth shall bleed,

And the world shall turn inside out.

The Celestials thought it was a warning — that love between their kind and the Riders would tear the world apart.

The Riders thought it was a promise — that the world was meant to shatter, and love was just another spark to light the fuse.

And so, they broke the fragile peace.

The Celestials wove spells into the sky to dim the stars, hoping to weaken the Riders' hold over the storms.

The Riders lashed back, unraveling the threads of fate wherever they could — turning fields to ash, summoning rains that drowned kingdoms.

And somewhere in the middle of it all — two names began to matter more than they should have.

Mirelha and Dacre.

A star and a storm.

A girl who carried galaxies on her skin.

A boy who carried ruin in his bones.

---

They met at the Midnight Citadel.

It wasn't meant to happen — not really.

The Citadel was neutral ground — a silent, ancient place where even the fiercest enemies could not lift a hand against one another. Magic bound the stone, and the air felt thick — like the building itself held its breath.

Mirelha didn't expect anyone else to be there that night.

She was standing in the grand hall, her hand resting lightly against a cracked pillar — one that still hummed with old spells. Her wings, dark as raven feathers, hung behind her like a shadow made real. The constellations around her glimmered softly, circling her in slow, delicate loops.

She didn't hear him at first.

She felt him.

Like the moment before lightning strikes — that sharp, electric anticipation in the air.

Then —

"Angel."

The voice wasn't what she expected.

It wasn't wild. It wasn't cruel.

It was rough — low — like the echo of distant thunder.

When she turned, she saw him.

Dacre.

He was taller than she'd imagined — broad shouldered and sharp jawed, with hair like midnight and eyes like dying embers. His armor was blackened steel, lined with runes that glowed faintly red — not like fire, but like something still smoldering.

But it wasn't his armor that caught her off guard.

It was his face.

He looked… tired.

Not the kind of tired sleep could fix — but the kind of tired that came from carrying the weight of a thousand ruined things.

"Rider," she replied — soft, a breath more than a word.

And for a moment — just a single, fragile moment — they were only a boy and a girl.

Not a Rider.

Not an Angel.

Just two people — standing too close, breathing the same air, feeling something they weren't ready to name.

---

But the world doesn't stop for stolen moments.

There were wars to fight. Prophecies to fulfill. Bloodlines to protect.

And yet —

Somewhere deep in their bones, they both knew:

The prophecy wasn't about love destroying the world.

It was about the world trying to destroy them.