Stone corridors. Falling debris. Dust is choking the air. My bare feet pound through endless monastery halls. The nave rafters are collapsing. The ceiling is caving in as I run for the doorway to the underground tunnel. The world splitting open above me, and the years afterward I spent locked away in the dark.
Not again.
From inside the house, Lila cries out. The sound of breaking glass follows, then the ugly grind of masonry tearing apart as a jagged crack snakes up the brick facade on the exterior wall.
My instinct is to run for her.
But heat blasts down from above in a sudden, unnatural wave, dragging my gaze upward.
The sky is red—bleeding.
Orange-red fire spreads across the sparse clouds, devouring the dark in widening veins of molten color. The rumble has become a tearing roar, as if the atmosphere itself is being ripped open. A massive surge slams into us—a heat-wrapped wind rushing through the trees, carrying the metallic bite of burnt pine.
Beside me, Orán inhales sharply. He points.
I follow his finger—and see it.
Through a break in the canopy above the house, an enormous sphere of fire rips across the tree line, low and fast, leaving the world aflame in its wake.
Orán swears under his breath in a language older than any I know.
Seconds later, the impact hits.
Not here, but close.
It’s jarring, and I nearly lose my footing. If it weren’t for Orán’s hold, I’d be on my knees in the dirt.
The shock wave ripples through the ground beneath our boots. The earth buckles and rolls, and an arcing wall of light and compressed air slams through the woods with brutal force. Trees bend, snap—some tear free entirely, roots ripping from the soil as they’re wrenched from the earth, dirt exploding upward in their wake.
Orán steps in front of me without thinking, his body a shield as fire blooms outward in a violent surge. It races through the forest, leaping from tree to tree faster than my eyes can track. At the far edge of the blast, a towering column of flame and smoke unfurls, churning skyward before billowing out in a widening, destructive swell.
The heat turns unbearable.
The black smoke—suffocating.
I drag my shirt over my face as embers rain through the canopy and whip around us. The forest is being swallowed whole, and godly act or not, there is nothing I can do to stop it.
Orán’s hand comes up, palm out. Power hums from him like an electric current, pressing against both my skin and my senses. For one terrible moment, I think he might unleash it fully—that Heaven might answer through him right here and fight back.
Instead, he creates a barrier around us, and for a moment, the heat is gone, even as it continues to burn the world around us.
Orán glances back, eyes lit with reflected flame and horror. “It’s a star—a fallen god,” he says. “And a sign.”
My stomach drops.
“Meaning?”
“The Starfall is happening. Meaning Judgment is now,” he says, voice tight. “But it’s much too soon.”
I stand frozen as the fire spreads this way, knowing it isn’t just coming for me.
It’s coming for my sanctuary.
My safe haven.
My work.
The lives I’ve saved.
