Prologue

ˈa-stə-ˌri-zəm

A prominent pattern or group of stars, that is smaller than, but similar to a constellation

Within the empty expanses of Khaos’s void, a space not bound by time or place, existing outside the fabric of the universe, where no light shone and sound softly petered out within moments, a single person hummed quietly to herself. She couldn’t remember how long she’d spent in this space, she barely remembered how she’d ended up here, but she knew the time was tick-ticking down to the day it would all end.

Sometimes the quiet, the emptiness grew stifling, weighing across her shoulder, Atlas before the earth, bringing memories of barren wastelands, gray fields, a tall figure standing before her, eyes glinting gold… the choice he’d offered and she had naively taken. Yet even these pained thoughts were fleeting in the vast nothingness of the void, which sucked the memories and echoed sensations away, dulling everything into the blankness which surrounded her.

Within this space of nothingness and a solitary deity, a single speck of light floated down from above, glowing like the first ember struck from flint. It cast light upon the blackened space, the first star to light the eternal night. She lifted her face to the small spark, bangs falling across her eyes. Within moments, more starry flecks were filling the space, revealing the long, waves of dark hair the same hue as the midnight sky draped across her shoulders and curled against the glossy, mirror-black ground. She closed her eyes, feeling for the silvery strings of fate wrapped around her, stitching her soul to an unbreakable vow that had bound her to this space for so long.

“So it is time, then,” she breathed out into the empty space. “Time to awaken, to rejoin the flow of Fate…” she slowly opened her eyes, revealing a glimpse of cobalt, dark and unfathomably deep like the depths of space. “To try again,” the woman inhaled deeply and let it out as a whooshing sigh as she opened her eyes fully, facing them to the sky as galaxies and nebulous clouds of stars and bright colors burst across the empty black sky and were mirrored in her gleaming eyes. “To remedy everything I ruined.”

Her declaration resounded with a firmness that ripped through the void and cut the spider-like threads surrounding her with the ease of a pair of diamond shears. The woman played her fingers across the center of her chest, above her heart, where the threads of fate were bound tightly in looping, mangled knots. The threads wound across her soul remained tight, the one thing she couldn’t, at least for now, rip free of.

The space flashed with light: wind and feeling flooding into the space and onto the woman for the first time in an eternity. Sunlight split over the horizon, glaring into her glowing eyes as the land ripped apart, and stars burst and fell, collapsed and burned all around her.

Overhead, three comets streaked past, and the god trained her eyes on them. She was going to fix everything. No matter what it cost her, no matter how fate might protest. She would pay the price for her own mistakes.