The night sky was no longer familiar.
Where countless stars once shimmered, entire constellations had vanished.
The heavens were dimming, their glow devoured by something unseen.
At first, the astronomers believed it was an illusion, a mere shift in the cosmic cycle.
But when the first star fell from the sky, burning like a bleeding heart, the world understood that something was terribly wrong.
Arka watched the falling light from the balcony of the rebuilt fortress.
The silver glow that once filled the heavens had begun to fade, leaving only a hollow darkness between the clouds.
He could feel it in his veins, a faint trembling in the rhythm of creation itself.
Liora stood beside him, her hands clutching the ancient tome of the Star Archives.
"Another one has fallen," she whispered. "That makes twelve this week."
Arka nodded.
"It's the Third Light," he said softly. "It's no longer sleeping."
The Signs of the New Era
All across the world, strange phenomena began to appear.
Mountains hummed with deep vibrations, as if the earth itself was alive.
Rivers shimmered with reflections of unseen skies.
And in the distant east, a colossal rift opened in the sea, swallowing islands whole.
The beasts were restless. Even the calmest of them began to howl at the darkened heavens.
Their instincts sensed it long before the scholars could explain.
Something beyond light and shadow was awakening.
Garran reported from the front lines.
"The ley lines are reacting violently. Magic is unstable in every region.
We've lost contact with the southern clans. The stars above their land have gone completely dark."
Arka's expression was unreadable.
He placed his hand over his chest, feeling the faint pulse of the Blood of the Fallen Sky.
"It's not chaos. It's a calling. The Third Light wants to rewrite the world."
Liora looked at him, fear and curiosity blending in her eyes.
"Rewrite? What do you mean?"
"Creation and destruction were never enemies," Arka said. "They were two sides of the same force.
But if the Third Light rises, it won't balance them. It will erase both."
The Dream of the Silent Star
That night, Arka dreamt again.
He found himself walking through an empty world, where no sky or ground could be seen.
Only light. Endless, pale, and quiet.
In the center stood a figure made of glass and starlight. Its face was neither human nor beast, yet its presence was overwhelming.
"Your kind has spoken too loudly for too long," the figure said.
"The world remembers the noise of life, but it has forgotten the beauty of silence."
Arka stepped forward, unafraid.
"If silence means oblivion, I will not accept it."
"Then you will be the first to vanish when it comes," the figure replied.
"The Third Light does not destroy out of malice. It merely restores stillness."
Before Arka could respond, the figure reached out and touched his chest.
A wave of pain erupted inside him, and he saw visions of stars dying, oceans turning to glass, and beasts fading into light.
He woke with a gasp, sweat soaking his skin.
The fortress trembled as if echoing his nightmare.
The Gathering Storm
By morning, the fortress had received word from the north.
A new kind of creature had appeared on the frozen plains.
They had no physical form, only shimmering silhouettes shaped from starlight and mist.
They did not attack, nor did they speak. They simply walked, leaving trails of silence wherever they passed.
When Arka arrived at the observation tower, he saw them through the crystal mirror.
Dozens of luminous figures moving together like a river of light.
Each one pulsed faintly with energy that was neither holy nor corrupted.
Liora murmured, "They're neither of Kael's darkness nor your light. They are something else."
Arka's eyes narrowed.
"They're fragments of the Third Light."
As he watched, one of the figures stopped and turned toward the mirror.
For a heartbeat, its faceless head seemed to look directly at him.
And then, the crystal shattered.
The Choice of a Sovereign
That night, the council gathered in the throne chamber.
Tension filled the air as generals, sages, and beastlords argued over the next course of action.
"We should attack first," Garran growled. "Destroy those things before they reach our lands."
"No," Liora said sharply. "We don't understand them yet. They might not be enemies."
"They erase everything they touch," another mage shouted. "If that's not an enemy, what is?"
Arka rose from his seat, silencing the room with a glance.
"Enough."
He looked at each of them in turn.
"If we fight blindly, we'll lose more than soldiers. We'll lose what we're trying to protect.
But if we do nothing, the Third Light will consume both the True Star and the False. There will be no world left to defend."
Silence followed his words.
Finally, he continued,
"There's only one path left. I'll face it myself. I'll seek the source of the Third Light before it fully awakens."
Liora's eyes widened. "You'll go alone?"
"Not alone," he said with a faint smile.
He turned toward the window, where the astral wolf spirit waited, its form glowing brighter than ever.
"I have the stars within me… and the fallen at my back."
The Awakening of the Third
As Arka prepared to leave, the fortress lights flickered.
The air turned cold, and every flame dimmed to gray.
In the sky above, a new star ignited pale and silent, yet so bright that it drowned all others.
Every being who looked up at it felt something ancient stir inside their soul.
The Third Light had awakened.
Arka gazed at it, his heart beating in rhythm with the fading stars.
He whispered to himself,
"If you seek silence, then you'll have to pass through my voice first."
The astral wolf howled, and the sound echoed across the world, defying the stillness that sought to swallow it.
The war of light and shadow was no longer the only battle.
A third war had begun.