Stellar Fragments
Stellar Fragments: When Steam Meets the Void, Who Will Light the Last Star?
The morning mist over Port Belen reeks of rust.
Zhou Mingrui never expected a crumpled oilcloth bundle, scavenged from a dockside jump, to tear open a rift to the Astral Plane. But when he unwraps it—a leather-bound book with a seven-pointed star embossed on its cover, its pages swirling with constellations—he feels a primal pull, like the stars themselves are whispering his name.
This is 1873, and Port Belen is a city teetering between progress and chaos. Steam engines roar, but the clocks tick backward. Corpses in morgues scribble "Eclipse Prayers." Dockworkers go mad, screaming of a "whale with a thousand eyes." All roads lead to Stellar Fragments, a forbidden text rumored to hold the key to stopping the Astral Leviathan—a colossal entity slumbering in the void, its awakening marked by the "Void Solstice": when seven stars align over Port Belen, and reality itself begins to unravel.
"You have the Starwatcher’s mark," says Claire, the scarred astrologer of the Night Owl Society, sliding the book across a creaky oak table. Her brass bracelets clink with constellations. "The last Starwatcher vanished a decade ago, leaving only this warning: When the seven stars kiss the Void, the Leviathan wakes. Only the Starwatcher can anchor reality—by becoming part of the stars themselves."
But Zhou is no hero. Just a grad student of 19th-century occultism, now trapped in a game of cosmic stakes:
A steam-powered astrolabe explodes in his hands, its needle pointing to "Void."
A noble heiress’s "spirit pigeons" grow feverish, pecking at the sky where the Leviathan’s "void eyes" glow.
The city’s Eclipse Value—measuring the breach between worlds—creeps up: 0.01%, 0.03%, 0.05%...
In the flickering light of an old church basement, the Night Owl Society gathers. Seven "Astral Artifacts" lie scattered: a moonstone gear humming with pale light, a cracked whistle that silences mad machinery, a pocket watch frozen mid-tick… Five more remain. Without them, the Leviathan’s shadow will consume Port Belen.
But Stellar Fragments holds a final, blood-chilling clue: "To bind the stars, the Starwatcher must bleed."
That night, the Leviathan rises. Its gargantuan form breaches the mist, scales glinting with countless eyes, each one staring at Zhou Mingrui—and the book clutched in his hands.
He grips Stellar Fragments, recalling his professor’s words: "Occultism isn’t about controlling the cosmos. It’s about finding light in the dark."
Now, with nothing but flesh and starlight as his weapons, Zhou must decide: Will he become a star to stop the void… or be swallowed by it?
