Goddess of the Stars

The inhabitants of Crusdelsur, a simple yet orderly town of stellar mages in the south of the continent, were quiet and contemplative people. They were accustomed to measuring the passage of time by the movement of the stars and the gentle creak of brass telescopes on clear nights.

And within every single one of them dwelt a shared feeling that reached into every map they charted, every prayer whispered at dusk, and every journey they undertook.

It all ended with Datia, the Goddess of the Stars.

A century ago, the stars did not exist.

The night sky was nothing more than a bottomless rift, a pitch-black canvas suffocated by the presence of a dead Moon that merely floated high above like a piece of tarnished, lusterless silver.

Until she walked among humanity.

She wore no armor nor royal crests—only a pale robe that seemed woven from threads of light. In her wake, the shadows along the roads receded. With a simple wave of her hands, she wove threads of white brilliance to guide the lost, or molded the mist into barriers that beasts dared not cross.

Most importantly: she could heal.

It was said that the young woman healed entire fields ravaged by a black plague, calmed beasts that had succumbed to madness, and eased the pain of the sick whose veins were marked by withered dark lines. And in doing so, she came to a realization: people weren't falling ill by chance. There was something malignant in this world.

"Corruption," she called it.

Far from cowering, she resolved to face it head-on.

She knew where to go; she claimed to be guided by "lights in the sky."

Many wrote her off as mad.

Others followed her into the inhospitable north. And upon their arrival, they beheld a terrifying, supernatural monster. Like a demon, yet forged from storm and shadow, as vast as the sky itself.

Datia confronted it.

With her breathtaking powers, she stood against the darkness. She fought valiantly before the eyes of those who had followed her. But the monster was formidable and cunning. Datia suffered terrible blows, and despite her endurance, she was pushed to the brink of the precipice—a bottomless abyss that devoured everything that tumbled within.

All seemed lost.

Until Datia looked into the eyes of her faithful followers. She smiled with a motherly sweetness, and though she stood far in the distance, her voice rang clear in everyone's ears:

“Do not fear, my children. For when the night is at its darkest, I will be the light that guides you home.”

With that, she turned her gaze back to the monster. The incarnation of shadows surged forward to deliver the finishing blow.

In an instant, a flash of pure white engulfed the vision of all present. A pillar of blinding white light shot into the heavens, piercing through the dark creature and gradually permeating the black canopy of the firmament.

And after another powerful burst of light, it was all over.

The monster was nowhere to be seen.

The dark night sky had been illuminated by an endless sea of tiny lights. Thousands of silver and azure specks ignited all at once, tearing through the veil of gloom forever. The Moon, once dim and lifeless, now shone with an albino halo so vibrant that it lit up the mountains all the way to the horizon. Those who looked up fell to their knees, bathed for the very first time in the warmth of the starry firmament.

That was the true sky, liberated by Datia.

They tried to approach the girl... but she was no longer among them.

In her place, a humble yet radiant white stone had appeared. That was Datia; that was what she had become.

Those who witnessed the miracle constructed a grand altar in her honor: a tall stone tower, built in commemoration of the pillar of pure light that had pierced the heavens.

Then, the faithful placed Datia’s stone at the apex of the tower. It began to shine with a brilliance that could only be compared to the light of her sacrifice—a light visible from days of travel away, which also generated a unique effect above the Lighthouse: multicolored auroras, undulating waves of green, violet, and gold that danced across the night sky as if they were alive.

They named the stone the Sky Torch. The tower, the Lighthouse of the End. The lights in the sky, stars—just as Datia used to call them when speaking of the celestial guidance she felt.

And ever since, all three protected the world from Corruption, preventing the darkness from dimming the sky and reassuring travelers that, from somewhere up above, Datia would always be watching over them.

The faithful dispersed throughout the world. Some returned to their homes, while others went on pilgrimages to spread the miracle they had witnessed. But others—scholars and seekers of truth—traveled to the far end of the world to build a society that worshipped Datia.

They wished to thank her. To ask for her protection. But above all, to learn about her.

They learned to navigate by the stars, just as she had told them was possible. They built altars to offer harvests in honor of her immense sacrifice. They charted celestial maps and mapped out constellations—which were nothing less than the footprints of the Goddess's journey, patterns drawn to remember that the light always had a path to follow.

They named the settlement Crusdelsur, and in that remote yet hopeful place, Daniella was born. A girl who had heard this story until she knew it by heart, who dreamed of using the power Datia and the stars had granted her for good. And who dreamed, with hopeful eyes, of traveling to the northernmost edge of the continent to see the lights of the lighthouse alongside her mother.

What she could never have imagined was coming face-to-face with Datia Herself.

The tales and fables did complete justice to the truth. Datia was a woman of ethereal, timeless beauty, with long hair the color of ripe wheat beneath the moonlight and eyes of a green so deep they seemed to hold entire constellations within them.

Except her eyes were not warm and merciful as described in the legends. They were laden with overwhelming exhaustion, clouded by fear, and pleading—like those of a frightened child.

“Goddess... Datia?” she managed to articulate in a whisper that barely escaped her throat.

“Help me!” the voice cried out again.

It wasn't a desperate scream, but even within her divine voice, the urgency of a command was undeniable. Daniella stood completely paralyzed.

“Um...”

Before she could say anything coherent, Daniella felt the world begin to spin violently. There was no ground beneath her feet, only an uncontrollably twisting and distorting reality.

The velvet firmament shattered into a thousand crystal shards. Through the cracks, visions flooded her mind without mercy. She saw an abyss of subterranean tunnels, a cavern whose living rock walls bled a thick, dark sap—an ash-like miasma suffocating the earth. She saw the looming shadow of something colossal crouching in the gloom, guarding a faint glimmer.

And in the center of that blackness, floating above a pedestal of corrupted stone, resplended it.

It was a faceted gem of perfect edges and divine geometry, pulsing rhythmically with a warm, pure white glow. The light fought desperately against the darkness attempting to devour it.

The vision shifted abruptly, thrusting her toward the surface. It soared above the clouds, coming to focus on a solitary, menacing peak—a mountain with steep slopes shrouded in a raging blizzard of snow and ash.

“Please...”

Datia reappeared before her. She was crying.

“MINE!”

“AAAHHH!”

Daniella tried to bolt upright, but her legs tangled in the blanket, sending her crashing onto the floor with a loud thud. She groaned, though the physical pain was completely secondary in that moment.

She was back in her small balcony, midday sunlight pouring over her delicate skin. Her breath remained ragged as she clutched her racing heart and her cloak. The visions battered her mind like a raging tempest.

“What... just... happened?”

The first thing she recalled was that final scream—a guttural, scale-laden roar, as though the very abyss of the world had sought to devour her whole. She squeezed her eyes shut, every tiny hair on her body standing on end. She didn't want to know what had caused that screech in the slightest.

Then she remembered how it had all begun. Standing right before her had been Datia, the Goddess of the Stars Herself. And for some strange reason, she had been pleading for her help. That was even more chilling than the roar.

And then... the visions. Daniella’s head spun as if she had lived seven lifetimes inside that kaleidoscope of colors. But three of them stood out crystal clear.

'The Stone.' She remembered the faceted gem of perfect edges, glowing with a pure white light. 'There was no doubt about it. That was the Sky Torch. Datia's sacred stone.'

'Then, the subterranean tunnels,' where the walls dripped with dark, ash-colored sap. She remembered the vibrating echoes of deep caverns and the distorted creatures slithering through the shadows, enveloped in miasma.

'And finally, a mountain.' An isolated peak surrounded by an eternal storm of snow and ash—one that, to any ordinary person, would have looked like just another mountain in the range.

“Wait... I know that mountain.”

Daniella focused on a specific detail from the vision. Along one of its slopes lay a rock fissure with a peculiar shape. Daniella was certain she recognized it. And she knew exactly what that meant.

“I have to go to the library,” she declared with absolute urgency.

What had usually been her quiet routine now felt like the most important mission of her life.