From across the small smokeless campfire he had set up earlier Seren’s voice threads through the stillness. “Do you see that one?”

  She points toward a soft cluster dipping low over the treeline. The stars curve like the ribs of a lantern, a faint glittering trail falling away from it.

  Aarav squints. “No.”

  “The Weeping Lantern,” she murmurs. “It shines for those who’ve wandered from their path. It guides them back to a destiny they cannot escape. No matter how much they wish they could.”

  There is a look of sadness on her face as she stares at the stars. He huffs out a humorless laugh. “I don’t believe in destiny. Every choice I make it for me, not for the Stars. Only a fool believes they have no choice.”

  She doesn’t rise to the jab. Her attention stays fixed upward, silver light catching in her eyes. “The stars watch everything. Every life tucks into their pattern. Not fate… destiny. Yes we make choices but those choices are what leads us to our destiny, and that we cannot choose, only how we get there.”

  He studies her profile, the thoughtful pull of her mouth. “And you? What is your destiny?

  She doesn’t answer him. Instead her gaze drifts higher, almost reverent, as if the sky itself is listening. “Destiny belongs to the Stars,” she says softly. “It isn’t for mortal minds to understand.” Her fingers lace together, a subtle, instinctive gesture. “May the heavens keep their pattern steady,” she murmurs, “and guide the gifts they grant. Fire flows from them, returns to them. We only walk the paths they illuminate.”

  Aarav watches her, sensing the deflection even as the words glow with something sacred. Magic almost radiating off her, she looks beautiful.

  “So you’re gifted?” he says, letting it fall out lightly, though he’s watching every twitch of her face.

  Her breath stills. Her answer comes trimmed down, neat and guarded. “I was trained, if that is what you mean. Everyone receives the Stars gifts.”

  He angles his head, a smirk brushing the corner of his mouth. “Gifts, are they? So you’re telling me even the drunk old man who screams at birds in Marrow has a Star-gift? Comforting. Terrifying. Mostly terrifying.”

  For a breath, barely that, she almost smiles. It teeters on the edge of her mouth, fragile as a moth’s wing, though her attention stays glued to that lantern-shaped constellation burning overhead. Aarav leans back, stretching out like he’s without a care in the world, the grin he wears nothing but a flimsy screen for the unease creeping up his spine. Destiny sketched in starlight isn’t a thought he’s eager to tangle with.

  He watches her. Really watches her. “And you believe it? That your path’s already written?”

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  A pause settles between them, soft and heavy. “I do,” she says finally, her voice low enough he almost misses it. “But knowing doesn’t mean I welcome it. Destiny isn’t always kind.” Her gaze drifts to the Lantern’s faint shimmer. “The stars might show the way, yet I’ve often wondered if mine leads to ruin. Reading what is written is simple. Living it… that is where everything gets… complicated.”

  Aarav’s brow knits. “So no matter what you do, the ending’s the same?”

  “That is what the temple taught,” she whispers. “Every choice only edges us closer to what was always meant to be.”

  The idea coils tight in his chest, sharp as a wire. He’s lived by the grind of his own teeth. By stolen bread and narrow escapes and fists thrown because the world offered no gentler lessons. Nothing about his life felt preordained. It was him. Always him forcing his way through doors that weren’t meant to open for someone like him. The thought that some star scribble decided all of it before he even breathed makes his jaw clamp hard.

  “I don’t like it,” he says, the words scraped raw. “If the stars already chose, then everything I’ve done is pointless. No. My choices are mine. Not theirs.”

  She flicks her gaze toward him, unreadable in the half-light. “Perhaps that is what they want you to think.”

  It lands deeper than he expects, leaving a sting that hurts a bit too much. Silence drapes over them after that, thick and cool. The night feels closer, pressing in, while the stars burn with that distant, indifferent light. Their breaths drift between them, heavy with the things neither has risked saying.

  She hasn’t asked much about him. She hasn’t shown much interest in him at all. He needs her to show interest in him as a person. She just sits there, calm and unassuming, her gaze anchored to the sky like she is reading a compelling tale.

  “You know,” he says suddenly, cutting through the quiet, “I once stole a star map.”

  Her head snaps toward him in confusion. “Why?”

  Aarav shrugs, smirk already forming. “To impress a girl, why else? Thought I’d wow her with cosmic wisdom. So I pinched a chart from behind a tavern bar, strutted over like I’d been studying constellations since birth, and told her we were fated to meet. Pointed at a bright star, looked dramatic enough, and said, ‘That one proves you and I are meant to be together.’”

  Seren tilts her head, an amused spark warming her features. “And?”

  “And it turns out,” he goes on, “the star I picked was part of the Candle of Mourning.” His grin tilts, lazy and self-mocking, as he sinks further into the grass. “She laughed so hard she dumped her wine all over me. Told me I’d just promised us a shared tragic end, not a shared future.”

  Seren’s laugh begins as a quiet hitch, almost snagged in her throat, then spills out properly, soft, then richer, rolling through the dark like something alive. Her smile stays after the sound fades. Open. Unshielded. It brightens her face even with only starlight to frame it.

  Aarav stretches out, folding his arms behind his head. The sky is its usual impossible sprawl, an ocean of indifferent light. Yet it doesn’t feel quite so heavy. Not with her hear with him, her laughter still echoing faintly in his mind. The night, for the first time in far too long, doesn’t sit on his chest like a weight.

  The quiet creeps back in, but it’s gentler now. Just the soft hush of the grass, the distant creak of trees, and the steady, measured cadence of her breathing. Seren goes still again, her gaze roaming the constellations like she’s hunting for a line of text hidden from everyone but her.