Chapter 15: Day 1 Princess Starlight Part 3

The ICU room was cold and sterile, filled with the sharp scent of antiseptic and machines.

It was a place cleaned to keep life going, but the faint smell of sickness still clung to the air like a ghost.

The only sound was the steady beep of Emily’s heart monitor, a lonely rhythm in the silence.

Each beep felt like a question, a fragile link to a world she seemed ready to let go.

I stood at the foot of her bed, the bright lights above reflecting off the clear IV tubes running from her thin arm.

She looked so small, like a pale doll lost in the white sheets.

My heart pounded in my chest, out of sync with the calm beeping of the machine.

A quiet warmth in my chest, faint but real, held me steady in the storm of fear.

I looked up, my eyes moving across the faces of my friends.

In the tense silence, we shared a wordless understanding.

Leo stood tense, his usual energy pulled tight. Hands opening and closing at his sides. The fire in his eyes was gone, replaced by the alert focus of someone ready to fight.

Arya stood straight, arms crossed, her face calm but intense. She was clearly trying to make sense of everything, her usual sarcasm gone, replaced by fierce protectiveness.

And Rose, her hand over her heart like she was trying to steady it, watched with wide, tearful eyes. Hope and pain battled on her face, fragile but burning.

And Ash…

Ash simply watched me, his gaze steady and thoughtful.

There was a flicker of something I couldn’t name, not surprise, but a quiet recognition.

It was like he was seeing the outcome of something he’d understood all along.

My throat was tight, dry like dust.

I looked at the two people who mattered most right now.

Arthur Web stood hollow, shaped by grief.

Beside him, Martha looked so drained by fear and exhaustion she seemed ready to break.

Their shared sorrow filled the room like a heavy weight.

“Arthur,” I said quietly, my voice low but clear in the silence.

“I need your wife’s permission too. She has to trust us. I can’t do this without her consent.”

I paused, giving him a moment to take it in.

“You have to be the one to tell her what you believe is possible.”

Arthur took a shaky breath, rough and strained, like it hurt to breathe.

Slowly, with great effort, he pushed himself up from the chair.

His movements were stiff, like every part of him ached under the weight of his grief.

He didn’t look at me, his eyes were locked on his wife.

His face was streaked with tears and heavy with guilt.

He stumbled toward her, each step making him seem smaller.

“Martha,” he said, his voice rough and broken.

He reached out and took her hands. His own were shaking, but he held on tightly.

She flinched, a small, quick movement, and her tired eyes shifted from his face to mine, then to their daughter’s still, small body.

“Martha, listen to me,” he said, pleading, his eyes locked on hers. “This boy… I don’t know how, I don’t understand it, but… he can help her.”

Martha blinked, staring at him like she hadn’t heard right.

Then her voice came, thin and cracked.

“A boy?” she whispered. “Arthur… she has cancer. Real, brutal, cancer. Doctors can’t help her. And you’re telling me a boy can?”

She shook her head, a bitter laugh escaping her. “Are you hearing yourself? This isn’t hope. This is… this is desperation.”

Arthur’s shoulders shook.

“I know how it sounds,” he said, voice cracking. “I wouldn’t believe it either. But I saw her, Martha. For a moment, she was breathing, calm, peaceful. Like the pain was gone.”

Tears streamed down his face. “I don’t have answers. I don’t even have hope anymore. Just this, this one thing. And I need you to trust me. Please. Just… let me try.”
He sank to his knees in front of her, clinging to her hands like they were the only thing keeping him from falling apart.

“Please, Martha. I’m begging you.”

Martha stared at him, her face unreadable.

Then slowly, she looked at me, then at their daughter.

Her lips pressed into a thin, trembling line.

“I don’t believe it,” she whispered, eyes still fixed on their daughter. “None of it. Not miracles. Not magic. Not anymore.”

She looked at Arthur, her voice barely holding together. “But I see what this is doing to you. And I know how much you love her.”

Her hands tightened slightly around his. Her eyes welled, but no tears fell.

“So if there’s even the smallest chance… even if I don’t understand it…”

She took a shaky breath.

“Then do what you have to. Just… save her.”

With their consent given, a fragile, unified front forged from despair, I turned to my sister.

“Iris,” I said, my voice resonating with that quiet warmth. “My father… he described the kind of person who could guide a lost soul like Emily.”

“He said it couldn't be someone weighed down by their own despair.”

“It needed to be a hero.”

“Someone who embodies light, who inspires hope, whose very presence is a defiant act of optimism.”

I offered her a small, weary smile, trying to convey a strength I wasn’t sure I possessed.

“I believe it’s you, Iris.”

Iris’s eyes widened, a flicker of her old, terrified uncertainty returning, and the horrors of the morning’s revelations still clinging to her.

“Rey, I… I can’t… After what I know, what I caused…”

“Yes, you can,” I said, my gaze unwavering. “That knowledge, that pain you carry, it doesn't disqualify you. It makes you the perfect hero for her.”

“You understand her pain. You know what it feels like to be hunted, to be afraid.”

My voice softened, becoming more intimate.

"I will build the bridge. But you… you are the one who has to walk across it."

"You are the one Emily needs to see, the voice she needs to hear."

"Emily needs Stellaris, no, she needs Princess Starlight.”

I held out my hand to her.

“Please. Be her hero one last time.”

A tremor ran through her, a visible battle playing out across her features as she wrestled with her shame and my impossible request.

The fear in her eyes didn't vanish, but it was overshadowed by a fierce, protective resolve, a sudden blaze of light.

She took a deep breath and nodded, placing her cold, trembling hand in mine.

The moment our skin touched, the world dissolved.

[Alter Ego EX]-Synchronization 10%

[Alter Ego EX]-Aspect

[Third Eye A]-Bullet Time

My will focused not on projection, but on connection.

I initiated the link, a terrifying and intimate psychic melding, targeting Iris with a crucial limitation: Synchronization at ten percent.

No more.

It was a desperate gambit.

A prayer that this low-level psychic bond would be enough to create an Alter Ego of Iris without harming her, without fusing us into a single, screaming entity.

At this threshold, we would remain ourselves, distinct and separate.

But a subtle, powerful empathic bridge would form between us, our strongest emotions bleeding across the link as a profound, undeniable echo.

The sterile ICU room warped around us.

The rhythmic beeping, the hum of machinery, the sharp smell, they all faded, stretched thin, then ripped away like paper, leaving a vast, internal silence.

Our bodies faded as our minds, linked by a quiet thread, sank into a shared inner world.

We were no longer two separate bodies in a hospital room.

We were two distinct minds, operating in tandem, sharing a single, impossible field of vision.

We were shimmering, translucent forms of pure thought and will, our individual essences clear, yet bound by this new, powerful, perceptual connection, standing on the precipice of a broken world.

Emily’s mindscape.

It was exactly as I had glimpsed it before: a desolate, grey wasteland under a starless, perpetually twilit sky.

The ground was a uniform, ashen dust that seemed to swallow all light, all sound, all hope.

Then the bleak landscape began to flicker and glitch, like a corrupted video file.

For a split second, the desolate plain would be replaced by a vivid, silent, phantom image, a memory replaying itself on an endless loop of torment.

There, just a few feet away, a spectral image of apparently Emily’s friend flashed into existence.

She hugged a smaller, healthier Emily, but her eyes, wide and nervous, darted towards a non-existent door, her expression tight with an urgent, palpable need to escape.

The image held for a breath, silent and damning, then dissolved back into grey dust.

A few yards further, another phantom scene flickered to life.

A boy, his face pale with shock and a revulsion he couldn't hide, looking down at his vomit-splattered graphic novel before turning and fleeing.

He left a ghostly afterimage of shame and abandonment that hung in the air like a bad smell.

And then, the most brutal one.

It shimmered directly in front of us, vast and overwhelming.

The violent, strobing red and blue of phantom police lights painted the grey dust in terrifying, pulsing waves.

The silent ghost of her father, his face a mask of terror and rage, swung a baseball bat in a wide, desperate arc.

The final, deafening CRACK of the gunshot was a silent, concussive wave that we felt through our psychic link, a tremor of pure, undiluted horror that shook our very essences.

The image of Arthur crumpling, of her mother's silent, world-ending scream, of the bright, shocking bloom of blood on the floral carpet.

It all played out, held for a moment of agonizing, breathtaking clarity, then collapsed back into the oppressive grey, leaving only the whispers of its pain behind.

Through our shared link, I felt Iris's sharp intake of psychic breath, a wave of profound horror and pity that washed back into my own mind, amplifying the ache I already felt.

“Oh, Rey… this is… this is her world?” she projected, her thought a pure, sorrowful chord that resonated in the emptiness.

“This is her pain,” I sent back, my own essence aching with a shared empathy. "It's a prison of her worst moments, replaying over and over.”

And there, in the center of that desolate, glitching plain, was the flickering ember of Emily’s consciousness.

It was curled in on itself, a tiny, fading light, seemingly oblivious to the horrific scenes playing out around her. She had been beaten down by them for so long she no longer reacted, simply accepting the despair as its reality.

“Emily!” Iris cried out, her voice echoing in the vast, soundless emptiness.

The small, flickering light that was Emily barely stirred.

Iris took a deep psychic breath, her form wavering slightly as she focused her will.

She called out again, her voice imbued with a soft, melodic quality, the voice of Stellaris, a beacon of warmth in the cold grey.

"Emily… look up… a star… is waiting…"

The grey world seemed to shudder at the sound, a ripple spreading from her voice, causing the ashen dust to swirl.

The resistance was a palpable thing, like pushing against a thick, heavy curtain of water.

The ember of Emily’s consciousness flickered, a faint, almost imperceptible turn towards the sound, a momentary stirring, before dimming again, defeated.

"Emily… you belong… speak your heart… they will hear."

This time, the landscape reacted more violently.

A low, mournful wind rose from nowhere, whipping the ashen dust into our translucent forms, a psychic static that tried to drown out her words. The resistance was stronger now, actively pushing back, reinforcing the despair.

Emily's ember wavered, then curled tighter in on itself, retreating from the hopeful sound.

"Emily… wake up… please… wake up…?"

The plea was softer, more desperate.

The grey wasteland seemed to solidify in response, the oppressive silence deepening, swallowing her words before they could even reach their target.

There was no reaction at all this time.

The silence was absolute.

"Emily! It’s me! Stellaris! I’m here! You have to wake up! Please! Please, Emily!"

Her voice rose, frantic now, laced with a dawning fear.

The ground beneath us trembled, and one of the phantom imges, the one with the gunshot, flashed violently, its silent horror aimed directly at us.

A defensive, lashing-out from the mindscape itself.

The resistance was now an active, hostile force.

"Emily! Listen to me! It’s Stellaris! I’m here! You have to wake up! Fight! For your Mommy and Daddy! For yourself!"

Iris projected everything she had into that final cry.

The grey sky above us seemed to crack, not with light, but with a deeper, more profound darkness.

The whispers of Emily's pain, previously a faint undercurrent, intensified into a roaring chorus of self-loathing that slammed against our linked consciousness, threatening to overwhelm us, to drag us down into the despair.

The mindscape was actively fighting her, rejecting her.

A fortress of hopelessness repelling all attempts at rescue.

"Thanks, Iris," I projected, my own essence aching from the psychic backlash.

I materialized Moonlight Aquamarine in my hand, its cool, phantom weight a familiar, grounding comfort.

“It seems like it's still not enough… but there's still hope.”

I hesitated, the next step feeling like a leap into an even deeper, more dangerous territory.

“I know this is sudden, but do you remember the novel Skill Holders?”

In the dim glow of her mental space, Iris’s form shivered as if struck by a sudden wind. Her faceted eyes widened.

“Of course,” she murmured, her tone taut with disbelief. “That was my father’s work. I’ve studied every chapter, every footnote. I know it better than anyone.”

I met her gaze, unwilling to falter.

“Then do you remember the skill Alter Ego EX?”

For a moment, all thought seemed to freeze in her mind.

The faint hum of her psychic aura stuttered as recognition dawned, her entire being trembling.

“Alter Ego EX?”

The words came slow, as if she were tasting something impossible.

“You’re… saying you’re using it right now?”

I projected a nod.

“I didn’t want to bring this up now, but I have to. You're the only person who truly understands that novel.”

“It was never completed, but I remember your father used to discuss his ideas with you, the deeper applications.”

I paused, gathering my will.

“I have a plan, but it’s incomplete. Have you heard of an application of Alter Ego called Conceptualization? It was hinted at in the novel as a way to modify the rules of a mindscape.”

Still stunned, Iris replied, her thought-form solidifying with focus as she accessed the deep well of her memory.

“Yes… I do. But I never imagined that knowledge would actually be useful one day.”

“Conceptualization is indeed a form of Alter Ego, but it doesn't exactly change the rules of a mindscape. It changes how those rules are applied.”

“Think of it this way: if you're a surgeon operating on a patient, Conceptualization lets you switch that patient into a robot.”

“But that doesn’t make the operation easier.”

“Instead of being a doctor, now you have to be a robotics expert.”

“It’s like choosing your poison.”

“I see…” I murmured, my own thought a low hum of processing.

A grim, desperate resolve took hold.

So be it. We would choose our poison.

[Alter Ego Ex]- Conceptualization

“Conceptualization: Princess Starlight,” I commanded, pouring every ounce of my will, my focus, my hope, into the very fabric of this desolate world.

The grey, lifeless landscape around us didn't transformed.

The glitching images of pain, the ashen dust, they dissolved into a torrent of light and color, reforming, reconfiguring into a vibrant, living realm.

The perpetually twilit sky exploded into a dazzling canvas of swirling nebulas and glittering constellations.

The flickering ember of Emily’s consciousness vanished.

In its place, reaching into the heavens, stood the World Tree, its branches laden with leaves the size of mountains, its trunk a continent of living wood.

But the sight was a breathtaking horror.

Monstrous creatures, insectoid and writhing, were gnawing at the tree.

Not dozens, not hundreds, not millions, but trillions upon trillions.

They swarmed over the colossal leaves, tore at the mountain-sized roots, and bored gaping holes into its continent like trunk. Entire branches were turning pitch-black, corrupted, covered with a skittering, devouring plague.

The rules had shifted. We were now in real, immediate danger.

The insectoid monsters, the Legion of Devourers, noticed our presence, their multifaceted eyes turning towards us, their chittering a psychic scream of hunger.

“This isn’t Emily’s desolate world anymore, this is Princess Starlight world manifested,” I said, my essence vibrating with urgency. “Iris, look closely: the World Tree is Emily’s body, her soul made real in this realm.”

“Every shimmering leaf is a part of her life force.”

“Those creatures… they’re the physical manifestation of her cancer. They’re devouring her from the inside out.”

Iris’s form quivered, her eyes flickering like a faulty projection.

“Her soul… her body made whole,” she whispered, voice trembling.

She reached out tentatively toward the glowing trunk, as if afraid to touch what she saw.

“But… how can this be? If her life force is here, then every wound to the Tree is a wound to Emily herself.”

She swallowed hard, the weight of that realization pressing down on her.

“If those monsters keep spreading, they’ll consume her entirely.”

Her light dimmed for a heartbeat as she fought to steady herself.

“What… what do I do?”

“This realm shifted the rules. We can’t fight those monsters directly, so call it,” I urged Iris, my essence vibrating with alarm as the ground trembled under the advance of the Legion.

“Call what?” she projected, her own form wavering with a fresh wave of fear.

“The Starlight Wand!”

One of the ultimate artifacts pf Starlight world.

In the lore, it wasn't just a weapon; it was a test.

A key to salvation, a sentient judge of character that would only answer the call of a true hero—a soul of pure, unwavering light.

And I believe that Iris will pass the test.

“I can’t,” she whispered, her form shrinking back, her light dimming. “Someone like me… a fraud, a coward who ran… I’m not worthy.”

“You have to!” I insisted, as the first wave of chittering horrors scuttled towards us, their needle-like legs clicking on the vibrant, newly-formed ground.

Reluctantly, her voice a faint, desperate thought, she whispered, “Starlight Wand…”

The monsters drew closer, their needle-like legs clicking on the vibrant ground, their psychic hunger a palpable wave of malice.

“LOUDER!” I roared, a psychic shockwave of pure, desperate will.

Iris screamed.

Her voice was no longer a whisper but a raw, desperate, soul-deep cry that echoed across the mindscape, a sound of profound self-doubt and an even more profound, desperate love.

“I know I’m not worthy,” she sobbed, voice trembling. “But please… Starlight Wand… help me!”

The sky remained still.

Too still.

The kind of silence that presses down on your chest.

The sky remained still.

Too still.

Iris stood beneath it, heart pounding, throat dry.

No light.

No answer.

Just the chittering of the Legion drawing closer, dozens, hundreds, swarming over the blackened earth like a living tide.

Her fingers clenched hard until her knuckles went white.

Was this it?

Was no one listening?

Had she dared to hope, for nothing?

Tears welled in her eyes.

“Please,” she whispered, voice cracking. “Don’t leave us alone, don’t leave Emily alone…”

Then,

A sound like the heavens ripping apart.

A crimson blaze tore through the clouds, brighter than a thousand suns.

The air vibrated with raw power as the Starlight Wand descended, no longer a myth, but an overwhelming presence.

The monsters halted.

Their mandibles clicked in confusion. Twitching antennae stiffened. Spiked legs buckled as that light struck some ancient, buried fear in their hive-minds.

They screeched, an ear-splitting, metallic chorus, and recoiled, some skittering backward, others collapsing into frenzied spasms.

The Wand did not pause.

It did not aim for the horde.

With blinding speed, it plunged,

not into the ground,

but into Iris.

In a breathtaking cascade of light and ethereal energy, she transformed.

Her simple clothes dissolved into a flowing gown of rose-gold and starlight-blue, shimmering with an inner luminescence.

Her hair ignited, becoming a river of pure, flowing light.

Vast, feathered wings of pure energy unfurled from her back, bathing the world in a soft, defiant glow.

She was no longer Iris, the frightened girl.

She was Princess Starlight, a magical girl made real, beautiful, powerful, and transcendent.

“Starseek!” I commanded, a psychic nudge, a reminder of her purpose.

She raised the wand, her expression one of fierce, loving determination.

“Starseek!” she called out, her voice resonating with a power she didn't know she possessed.

The stars in the sky brightened, converging on a single, distant point on the vast, besieged World Tree.

With a final, brilliant flash, Iris, Princess Starlight, vanished, teleported to Emily’s side.

And I was alone.

The Legion of Devourers, recovering from their momentary fear, turned their collective, hungry gaze on me.

I didn’t have time to think, to fear.

One of the monsters, a hulking beast with scythe-like claws, charged, its psychic shriek of hunger a physical blow against my mind.

But before it could reach me, a flash of pure, midnight-black energy sliced through the air.

A blade, forged from shadow and sorrow, pierced through the creature’s head, dissolving it into a puff of acrid smoke.

I stared in shock.

It was the Void Sword, the legendary, cursed artifact of Shadow Sapphire.

It hung in the air before me, humming with a dark, familiar power.

I stood frozen, the chittering of trillions of monsters fading to a dull roar in my ears.

My mind, reeling, could only form a single, bewildered, whispered thought.

“…But I’m a boy.”