Eclipse Veins

Chapter 7: The City Without Stars

The world began again in silence.

No thunder. No divine fire. Only the soft hum of a city waking to morning.

Lyra opened her eyes under a sky colored like pale smoke. For a moment, she did not even know her own name. The world around her pulsed faintly, as if it too were still learning to breathe: towers gleaming with rainwater, streets shimmering in the light that was not sunlight.

She sat up slowly. Her head throbbed. Her palms were streaked with faint silver dust that sparkled, then faded as she blinked.

A voice drifted faintly through her mind-deep, familiar, fading with every heartbeat.

"Follow the light of the next eclipse."

Her breath caught. “Who?”

But the voice was gone.

The city felt too quiet.

People moved around her, laughing, talking, living, but something about them seemed hollow, like echoes trapped inside their own reflections. Every window mirrored her face at odd angles; every shadow seemed to flicker when she turned away.

She tried to shake it off and wandered through the morning crowd.

Neon signs, humming in strange symbols, somehow she grasped.

In the air, ozone and rain were present.

She caught sight of herself in a shop window and stopped.

The girl staring back was her but not quite.

Same silver eyes but softer.

Same scar underneath her jaw, only fainter, as if it had never healed.

And yet, deep in her chest, a soft ache pulsed, something missing, some one.

She found a small café on the corner of the street, The Vein & Vessel. The name sent a chill through her.

Inside, all was warm light and quiet conversation. She sat by the window, her fingers curling around a cup of coffee she didn't remember ordering.

“Rough morning?”

The voice was low and deep, almost teasing.

She looked up and her breath caught.

A man was standing behind the counter, the dark hair falling around his forehead, his eyes an odd color of gold and gray. He wore a simple black shirt, its sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and there was a faint scar on his wrist crescent-shaped.

He smiled faintly when she didn’t answer. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Lyra's heart thudded painfully.

“I… I don’t know. You just seem familiar.”

He cocked his head, surveying her face with a quiet introspection. "Maybe we've met before."

She wanted to laugh it off, but her throat was tight.

Every word he said seemed like déjà vu.

Every glance felt like gravity.

Biographic Note Biographical Note is a broader term that covers not only personal information but also an individual's life history, whereas bio doesn't.

Outside, clouds were gathering dark and trembling with static.

As Lyra sipped her coffee, the lights flickered, and for a heartbeat, the whole cafe seemed to freeze and in the window's reflection, she saw it: not the cafe, not the street, but a fragment of the shattered Vein.

Standing there, amidst the tangles of crimson light him.

Not the man standing before her.

Not this quiet stranger with tired eyes.

But Riven the god, the storm, the one who'd promised her across the end of time.

His lips moved soundlessly.

“Find me.”

The lights flickered on once more.

The man behind the counter frowned. “You okay?”

Lyra stared, heart thumping. “You saw it too?”

“See what?”

She stared out of the window again, at only the city now, calm and gray, as if nothing had taken place.

Her voice was barely a whisper. "Never mind."

Later that night, in her small apartment overlooking the neon skyline, Lyra couldn't sleep. She turned the lights off, sat by the window, and traced invisible patterns on the glass.

The stars were gone not hidden by clouds, but gone.

Every night sky she had seen in this world was empty.

And somewhere deep inside her, she knew why.

Riven had been the last god to touch the heavens.

And with the bursting of the Vein, the stars went with him.

She closed her eyes and for the first time since waking in this new world, she dreamed.

A temple of mirrors.

A voice calling her name.

Two eclipses crossing in the sky.

And then

A hand reaching toward her, bathed in silver light.

She took it without hesitation.

When she awoke, her palm was burning faintly with a glowing mark: two interlocked crescents.

Lyra stared at it incredulously.

And somewhere, far beyond this new world's edge, a faint whisper echoed

"The next eclipse starts in seven days ".

The mark on her palm pulsed faintly through the night.

Lyra sat up in bed, heart pounding, as the silvery glow seeped through her skin like liquid light. It pulsed to a rhythm slow to begin with, then quickening, and perfectly synchronizing with the beat of her heart.

“Seven days…,” she whispered.

The whisper in her mind was back soft and distant, distorted like radio static.

“You shouldn't be here, Lyra.”

She froze. “Who are you?”

"The world you see. it's stitched together from the fragments you saved, but the thread is fraying."

The light on her palm flickered once then dimmed.

She glanced toward the window. Outside, the city shimmered faintly, its skyscrapers bending ever so slightly, their reflections rippling in unnatural waves, as though it were made from one shimmering pane of glass.

In one breath Lyra saw what lay beneath the illusion: an empty void swirling with nebulae, ruins floating upon nothing. The world was a shell a pocket of existence forced into being.

And something in the void was watching her.

Stems:

The next morning, she returned to The Vein & Vessel.

The same man stood behind the counter calm, quiet, an easy smile that never quite reached his eyes.

“Back already?” he said, sliding her usual drink across the counter. “You must really like the coffee here.”

“I didn’t tell you what I drink,” she replied softly.

He paused, his hand shaking slightly as he hastily thrust it into his pocket.

"Guess you just have one of those faces. Easy to read."

But Lyra had seen it: a faint shimmer under his skin.

A pulse of silver.

Her throat tightened. “What’s your name?”

He hesitated. His gaze unfocused for a moment, as if he searched his own mind. “…Rian.”

Lyra's heart skipped. "Rian." It sounded too close. Too deliberate. "And where are you from, Rian?"

He smiled faintly, but in his eyes was something haunted. "I… don't remember. Sometimes, I dream about places that don't exist. Red skies, broken moons. A girl calling my name."

The mug shattered in Lyra's hands before she realized she'd dropped it. Coffee spilled over her fingers, mingling with faint traces of silver light.

Rian's voice softened. "Hey, you okay?"

“I—” She swallowed hard. “I think… I've seen you before.”

He blinked, studying her with a strange calm. “Then maybe you’re part of the dream.”

That night, the rain wouldn't stop.

Lyra walked through the vacant streets, city lights refracting in puddles like fragments of glass. Every reflection she passed showed something a little awry: a building out of place, a sky too deep, her own reflection turning its head a second later than she did.

At the end of the street, the pavement simply stopped not into a road, but into a black void that hummed with power.

She took a trembling step closer.

Once more, a glow emerged on the mark on her hand.

It was in this reflection of the void that she saw them, standing on opposite sides of a fractured world.

Riven. Serath.

But they weren't fighting. They stood still, staring through the dimensional barrier as if time had frozen them mid-decision. Between them floated a fragment of something much larger the shattered core of the Vein itself.

“Lyra.

The whisper came from everywhere and nowhere at once.

“You must decide which to bring back.”

Her breath caught. “What?”

"The world cannot hold both light and shadow. One must fade for the other to awaken."

Her vision blurred. “No. I won’t choose between them!”

“Then reality will choose for you.”

A sound like that of glass breaking underwater split the air, and she was flung backward into the street.

When she opened her eyes again, the void was gone. There was nothing but the deserted street, shining wetly under the neon rain.

Back in her apartment, Lyra tore open her notebook sketching everything she'd seen: the twin figures, the broken world, the Vein's fragments. As she drew, the lines began to move faintly glowing silver and red.

Once more, her reflection in the window changed.

It wasn’t her face anymore.

It was Riven's.

He looked older wearier his eyes burning with cosmic light.

“Lyra,” he said softly. “Don't believe what the world tells you. This reality isn't a rebirth… it's a prison.”

She pressed her hand against the pane of glass. "Then where are you?"

“Beneath it. Trapped in the mirror between gods.”

She felt tears well in her eyes. “How do I find you?”

His voice trembled the faintest trace of emotion she'd ever heard in him.

“Remember my name when the sky splits, that's when the eclipse begins again.”

The reflection flickered and was gone.

Lyra dropped to her knees, trembling, the mark burning brighter than it ever had.

Outside, the first thunder rumbled and the moon began to darken.

The moon was bleeding.

At first, Lyra thought it was the clouds again the strange crimson hue that sometimes brushed the horizon before dawn.

But when she looked closer, the light wasn't spreading across the sky it was leaking from it, dripping like a wound reopening in the heavens.

The eclipse had begun early.

The mark on her hand pulsed violently, light racing up her veins like fire. She clung to the window frame for balance as her reflection shimmered and warped, faces flickering within the glass her own, Riven's, and something else… something vast.

The world outside seemed to stutter. Neon signs flickered between symbols she recognised and runes she didn't. Cars slowed, their drivers unmoving frozen mid-turn, eyes glowing faintly with the same crimson light as the sky.

The city was glitching.

And then her door knocked. Once.

A second time.

“Lyra?”

She turned slowly. Rian stood in the doorway, his silhouette framed by the trembling red light. He looked shaken, his voice tight.

“I don’t know what’s happening the power’s cutting out everywhere, and when I looked in the mirror this morning, I”

He stopped.

Lyra's eyes widened. "You what?

He lifted a shaking hand. His wrist was glowing with a soft light that same half moon scar that Riven bore.

Her breath caught. “Rian…”

He met her gaze, his fear and confusion colliding behind his eyes. “I think I’m remembering things that never happened. Places that don’t exist. And every time I close my eyes, I see you standing in fire, calling my name.”

Lyra's mark flared brighter, answering his.

The air between them rippled, warping the room like heat haze.

“Riven?” she whispered.

He winced at the name as if it struck a chord buried deep within him. “I don’t know. That name feels like lightning in my head.”

The walls started to hum and lines of silver and red energy crawled across the surfaces, like veins under skin. The floor shook.

“Rian—Riven whatever you are this world isn’t real!” Lyra exclaimed. “It’s falling apart because you don’t belong here. Neither of us do!”

He grabbed her shoulders, desperation in his eyes. “Then what am I?”

The question ripped through the air and the room shattered like glass.

They were falling.

Through light, through shadow, by the reflection of all that has ever been.

She saw a thousand versions of the city collapsing inward: towers imploding, skies turning to ash, faces screaming soundlessly before dissolving into static.

She clung to him as they fell through the mirrored abyss, her voice raw. “Hold on don’t let go!”

His hand tightened around hers. “I won’t.” The light exploded. And then, there was silence. She opened her eyes, and she was standing in a place that wasn’t a place: a horizon of cracked mirrors stretching endlessly beneath a violet sky. Fragments of stars hung suspended, frozen mid-collapse. Rian was beside her, but now his eyes shone faintly gold and silver. Behind him, outlines shimmered into view: Serath's armor, Riven's blade. He touched his temple, dazed. "I… remember." Lyra's voice shook. "Who are you?" He turned to her slowly. His voice echoed layered, doubled. “I am what's left of him… and what he feared to become.” The ground beneath them cracked. Writhing, whispering, the hands of shadow began to reach upward from below the mirrors. Lyra stepped closer. "Then we can fix this. We can bring him back bring you back!" Rian's-Riven's expression softened. "If you do, Lyra, this world ends. The gods will return, and everything you saved will burn again." Her eyes welled with tears. “Then I’ll burn with it. I didn’t save the world for it I saved it for you.” For the first time, he smiled not the soft, polite one she'd known from the café, but his smile: wild, raw, real. “Then find me when the stars remember their names.” He reached out, placing his hand over hers-light and shadow merged one last time. The mark between them blazed, filling the mirrored realm with silver fire. And then he vanished. Lyra dropped to one knee, clutching her shining hand as the voice of the void whispered through the mirrors: The god of dusk wakes beneath the eclipse.