Beast Sovereign: Rebirth Of The Star Age

Chapter 5 — The Weight Of Starlight

The night after the battle hung heavy over Starlight Academy. The barrier domes flickered faintly, like wounded eyes trying to stay open. What had happened in the arena was already echoing across every hall, every network thread, every whispered rumor. They called it The Sovereign Incident.

I’m starting to think names have power, and they’re giving mine too much of it.

Rian stood on the academy’s rooftop, staring out into the sea of lights below. The city stretched endlessly, glass towers, magnetic rails, neon rivers weaving between them. But beyond all that beauty, he could feel the hum of something older. Something watching.

He closed his eyes. The memory of that light, his light, still burned behind his eyelids. The stars that had answered him. The energy that shouldn’t exist in this age.

The wind brushed his hair, whispering against the edge of the silence. Then came a softer voice.

“You shouldn’t be up here.”

Lyra.

She moved with quiet purpose, her uniform coat rippling slightly in the breeze. For a moment, she didn’t look like a student, or even an observer. She looked like someone carrying too many secrets in too small a frame.

Rian didn’t turn around. “Can’t sleep.”

“I figured. You left half the academy sleepless after what you did.”

He gave a faint smirk. “Then I guess I’m not alone.”

She stepped closer, her boots tapping lightly against the steel surface. The moonlight curved around her like it knew her shape. “You shouldn’t have used that power,” she said softly. “You’ve drawn every kind of attention now, from the Director, the other academies, even the Central Nexus.”

“I didn’t have a choice,” Rian said quietly. “Kael would’ve triggered the field collapse. People could’ve died.”

“And now,” Lyra murmured, “they know what you are.”

He finally turned to face her. “They were going to find out anyway. This world doesn’t tolerate what it doesn’t understand.”

Her gaze softened. “Then they’ll try to erase it.”

For a long moment, they stood in silence, the night stretching thin between them. Somewhere below, the city’s transit lines glowed like veins of energy. Life went on, indifferent, efficient, blind.

Lyra reached into her coat pocket and handed him a small, silver data chip. Its edges glimmered faintly, etched with runic patterns.

“Selene sent this,” she said. “She found something in the old archives. A map to a sealed chamber under the city. It resonates with your energy signature.”

Rian took it carefully. The chip pulsed once in his palm, faint, rhythmic, familiar.

“A relic,” he murmured. “Or a grave.”

“Either way,” Lyra replied, “you’re not done yet.”

He studied her for a moment. She looked composed, but he could feel the tremor in her aura, that quiet fear she never voiced.

“Why are you helping me?” he asked.

“Because,” she said simply, “someone has to.”

I’m starting to think she’s risking more than she lets me see.

Later that night, he retreated to his dorm’s calibration room, a small chamber lined with reflective panels and suspended data lines. The chip floated in the center of a projection field, its contents unfolding like a living constellation.

Fractured maps. Sealed corridors. Energy frequencies encoded in ancient star script.

And there, hidden among the coordinates, a pulse that matched his own resonance.

“Star language again,” he whispered.

The hologram flickered. For a second, he saw more than data, he saw memory. A battlefield drenched in twilight. Beasts of light kneeling before a falling sun. His own voice, ancient and defiant, echoing through the void.

“If the world forgets us, then we’ll carve our names into the stars themselves.”

Rian gasped and pulled back, breaking the sequence. His heart pounded with unnatural rhythm, part human, part something else entirely.

I’m starting to think the past isn’t done with me yet.

He ran a hand through his hair, steadying his breath. But the air around him felt different now, heavier, aware. The Nexus network itself seemed to ripple as if sensing his awakening.

Then the system spoke.

[Alert: Unregistered energy fluctuation detected.]

[Source: Dorm sector 7B.]

[Classification: Star-Origin Anomaly.]

Rian muttered a curse. “Too soon.”

He closed the projection and sealed the field, but he could already hear distant footsteps approaching, quiet, methodical, synchronized. The Director’s security drones.

He slipped out through the side corridor, activating his personal dampener. The device flickered faintly, masking his energy trail as he moved through the narrow maintenance shafts.

The academy above him was alive, cables pulsing with data, walls humming like arteries of an enormous machine. Rian moved like a shadow between those currents.

I’m starting to think this place is less a school, and more a cage.

He reached the outer atrium, a vast dome filled with luminous flora and artificial waterfalls. The air shimmered faintly with static. He stopped at the edge of the observation bridge, where the holographic skyline stretched into the horizon.

Someone was waiting there.

Kael.

He leaned against the railing, his usual grin replaced by something sharper, colder. The light from the dome cut across his face, highlighting the faint scar at his jawline.

“I knew I’d find you here,” Kael said. “You’ve been busy, Starboy.”

Rian didn’t answer. His hand hovered subtly near the dampener control.

“You didn’t just break the system in that arena,” Kael continued. “You rewrote it. The resonance spike registered across every network. Even the Director couldn’t suppress that data.”

Rian’s eyes narrowed. “So what are you going to do with it?”

Kael smirked. “Depends. I could report you… or I could keep it quiet, for a price.”

“And what would you want?”

Kael stepped closer. “The truth. Who are you really, Alden? No first-year should wield energy like that.”

Silence stretched between them. Then, Rian said quietly,

“Someone who doesn’t belong here.”

Kael studied him for a long time, then exhaled a low laugh, not mocking, but almost… impressed. “You’re dangerous. I like that. But careful, in this place, danger doesn’t make you powerful. It makes you disposable.”

He turned to leave, then paused. “They’re watching you, Rian. Not just the Director. The Nexus Core itself.”

When Kael was gone, Rian stood still, the echo of those words lingering like smoke.

I’m starting to think I’m already inside their game.

Hours later, he met Lyra again in the data tunnels beneath the observatory wing. She had a portable scanner in one hand and a faint glow of unease in her eyes.

“The signal’s moving,” she said. “The system’s trying to quarantine your resonance signature. They think it’s viral.”

“Let them try,” Rian replied. “They don’t understand what it is.”

“Then explain it to me,” she pressed.

He hesitated. The words tasted heavy, like memory dredged from an old wound.

“It’s not magic. It’s not Nexus energy. It’s what came before, what the world was built on. When the stars still sang, and beasts carried the will of the constellations.”

Lyra stared at him, realization dawning slow and fearful. “You mean… the Age of Beasts?”

He nodded. “I was there, or what’s left of me was.”

For a moment, the tunnels fell silent. Only the soft hum of the data lines filled the air. Lyra’s face paled slightly, the weight of his confession sinking in.

“That’s impossible,” she whispered.

“Maybe,” he said. “But the system recognizes it. That’s why it’s afraid.”

She looked at him, not as a classmate, but as something ancient, fragile, and powerful.

“What are you going to do now?”

Rian glanced at the data chip in his hand. Its pulse had synchronized with his heartbeat.

“I’m going to find the chamber. Whatever lies beneath the old city, it’s calling me.”

Lyra stepped forward, her voice barely a whisper. “Then I’m coming with you.”

He shook his head. “You shouldn’t.”

“I already have,” she said simply. “And if the Nexus marks you as a threat, then I’ll be marked too.”

For the first time in a long while, Rian smiled, faint, weary, genuine.

I’m starting to think I’m not alone anymore.

Far above them, in the Director’s observation chamber, a row of holographic displays shimmered with lines of data.

[Anomaly Detected – Subject: Rian Alden.]

[Energy Pattern: Star-Origin Type.]

[Directive: Monitor. Capture if necessary.]

The Director leaned back in his chair, eyes sharp as glass. “So it begins again,” he murmured. “The Sovereign stirs.”