Chapter 2: The star that shouldn't be
Arno took the card with him back inside. He didn't know what it was, nor who was talking to him, but the deck had ruined his life once. He wasn't going to trust any cards more right off the back.
He grabbed his original card and brought the two of them together. They merged into one. "Who are you?" Arno whispered to the card in his hand
...
Arno's ears turned red. He thought about how silly he must look, hunched over and whispering to a blank card. All of a sudden he heard a bang on his door.
Arno hesitantly approached his door and looked through the glass pane near the top.
He was shocked at what he saw. A young man in leather armor drenched in blood was leaning against his door, grabbing at his torso. It was winter, and snow was covering the ground all around Arnos hut. Arno could see the trail of blood the young man left as he limped away from the woods and toward the hut.
Arno quickly hid the blank card within the folds of his cloak and opened the door.
The wounded man collapsed forward as soon as the door gave way, his weight nearly knocking Arno over. Blood seeped through his leather armor, dark and glistening, staining the wooden floorboards. His breath came in ragged, wet gasps—each one a struggle.
Arno hesitated only a second before dragging him inside. He wasn't a healer, but he'd patched up enough of his own wounds to know the basics. The man groaned as Arno propped him against the wall, his face pale beneath streaks of dirt and sweat.
The stranger's blood pooled between the floorboards, thick and glistening under the flickering firelight, each drop a dark mirror of the chaos outside. His breath came in shallow, wet gasps, his fingers twitching against the rough wool of Arno's cloak as if trying to claw his way back from the edge of death. Arno pressed his palms harder against the man's ribs, but the wounds were too deep, the damage too severe, and the metallic scent of blood filled the cramped hut like a funeral incense.
"Who did this?" Arno demanded, his voice low and rough from disuse.
The stranger's eyes, glassy with pain, locked onto his, and for a moment, the air between them hummed with something unnatural. His lips parted, not to speak, but to exhale a shuddering breath that carried the faintest shimmer of silver—like starlight given form. Then, with a sudden, desperate strength, he seized Arno's wrist, his grip like iron, his skin burning with an unnatural heat.
A surge tore through Arno's veins.
The world dissolved into light.
Not the warm glow of fire, nor the pale wash of moonlight, but the cold, relentless radiance of distant stars, searing through muscle and bone, rewriting him in ways he could not comprehend. His back arched, his mouth open in a silent scream as the power flooded him, too vast, too alien, too alive to belong in mortal flesh. The stranger convulsed beneath him, his body withering like parchment in a flame, the last of his stolen strength pouring into Arno in a single, violent transfer.
Then—
Silence.
The light vanished.
The stranger's hand fell limp.
Arno collapsed forward, gasping, his body trembling with the aftershocks of something that should not have been possible. His skin prickled, his blood singing with a foreign energy, his vision sharpening until he could see the individual fibers of the wool blanket beneath him, the minute cracks in the hearth stones, the slow, creeping shadow of a spider in the far corner.
He flexed his fingers.
They glowed.
Faintly, fleetingly, but undeniably—a silver sheen clinging to his skin like the last embers of a dying star.
The Intruders Arrive
The door exploded inward before he could process what had happened.
Splinters rained across the floor as three figures stepped through the wreckage, their cloaks black as void-touched ink, their faces hidden behind silver masks etched with constellations. Starborn Cabal. Hunters of the Deck's blessings, thieves of celestial power, and now, it seemed, assassins sent to finish what their comrades had started.
The lead intruder tilted his head, his mask glinting in the firelight as he surveyed the scene—the dead stranger, the blood-smeared floor, Arno kneeling amidst the wreckage with starlight still fading from his hands.
"How interesting," the assassin murmured, his voice smooth and amused, the cadence of a man who had long since stopped being surprised by the whims of fate. "The Abandoned One has stolen a gift that was never his."
Arno's fingers curled into fists. The energy inside him pulsed in response, restless, hungry, but already slipping away like water through a sieve.
The assassin raised a gloved hand, and the air between them thickened with the scent of ozone. "Give us the card, and we'll make your death painless."
Arno's eyes had widened in shock. He didn't know how they knew about the card he picked up, but he wasn't going down without a fight. He bared his teeth. "Come take it."
Arno moved faster than thought, his body propelled by the last dregs of the Star's stolen power. His dagger flashed like a comet's tail, slicing through the first assassin's guard before the man could react, the blade finding the gap between ribs with unnatural precision. The masked figure crumpled without a sound, his blood joining the stranger's on the floor.
But the energy was already fading.
The second assassin lunged, his own dagger aimed for Arno's throat, and Arno barely twisted away in time. The blade grazed his collarbone, drawing a thin line of fire across his skin. He staggered, his limbs turning leaden, the celestial strength leaching from his muscles like sand through an hourglass.
No. Not yet.
With a snarl, he reached—not for the assassin, but for the weight in his cloak, the card he had hidden there, the one that had waited ten years to be drawn again.
The blank card burned against his chest.
And for the first time, it answered.
A pulse, deep and resonant, like the heartbeat of something ancient.
The last of the Star's power—the energy that should have faded—twisted.
Instead of vanishing, it was sucked inward, drawn into the card like water into a parched throat. The glow in Arno's hands winked out, but the card grew warmer, heavier, its surface shimmering for the briefest moment with a silver sheen before returning to empty white.
The assassin froze.
"What—?"
Arno didn't let him finish.
He drove his dagger into the man's gut, then whirled to face the third attacker—
But the power was gone. Truly gone.
The last assassin laughed, low and cruel. "The Star's touch was never yours to keep, boy." He raised his blade. "Now die like the mistake you are."
A crossbow bolt took him in the throat.
He choked, staggered, then collapsed like a puppet with cut strings.
Behind him, in the ruined doorway, stood a hooded figure with a smoking bolt in hand and a smirk on their lips.
"You're welcome," they said.
The Star's power was gone. Mostly.
But not all of it.
As Arno caught his breath, his body aching, his mind reeling, he realized something:
A fragment remained.
Not the overwhelming rush of celestial strength, but something quieter, something deeper—a sliver of the Star's essence, buried in his bones. His senses were sharper than before. His reflexes quicker. And when he concentrated—
A faint, silver shimmer traced his fingertips.
Permanent.
But at what cost?
The hooded stranger stepped over the bodies, their boots leaving dark prints in the blood. They eyed Arno with something between curiosity and pity, their gaze lingering on the blank card still clutched in his hand.
"That," they said slowly, "shouldn't be possible."
Arno wiped blood from his mouth. "What part?"
"All of it." The stranger's smirk faded. "The Star's blessing isn't transferable. And that card?" They nodded to the blank slate in Arno's grip. "It's not just empty. It's hungry."
Arno looked down. The card was warm. Alive.
And for the first time in ten years, he felt the weight of its attention.