Satisfied that she would serve as his instrument, Han-Silnar coaxed Eurice into visiting his grove in the ancient City of Nur. All the while, illusions of a young girl playing with a doll consumed her mind, strange clues left in the passing of each imaginary vision.

Following his clues without caution as she always had thus far, Eurice completed the pattern and broke the code, a gauntlet of magnificent craftsmanship and immense power manifesting within the abandoned atelier. The Aldar stroked her ego and fed her hubris, urging her to claim what he described as hers- to put it on, to take her turn, and while the young human woman attempted to ignore its beckoning urges, she found the temptation beyond her to resist.

Having donned the gauntlet and proceeded to her own version of a grove - the subterranean greenhouses in the Dicondron Academy, Eurice heeded Han-Silnar's plea, turning the gauntlet around her wrist in an effort to invoke its power. Four times she did this, each attempt at the weave silently drawing her across the area, until she found herself atop the Obelisk of Darkness, aglow in power that was not hers, caught in a plan not of her making, wielding a weapon that was not of her weaving.

The Mace of Dawn resonated with the Aldar gauntlet, itself a Well of power borrowed from Saar-elan. As Eurice's hands closed involuntarily about its handle, pillars of light soared into the heavens, while Eurice's heart and stomach utterly sank.

Reduced to an observer in her own mind, the mocking voice of Han-Silnar at last revealed his deceit. The eight-pointed star came forth, called by Dawn's holy weapon, and the Aldar wove Origination through his puppet, wielding the power to create in an act of destruction as the topmost star split free of its celestial brethren and began to fall.

Shouts of doom filled the air from a frenzied cleric while the loosed sun-star descended through the firmament, rapidly becoming supernova. Three worlds felt the passage of the heavenly body across their surface, all life incinerated in a momentary conflagration. Achaea would be the fourth.

Enraged by the premature calling of Mithraea's constellation, the Dark God seized the weapon from the hands of Eurice and rallied His order to action in an attempt to salvage the disaster wrought by a bitter Aldar and his naive pawn. As one, the Darkwalkers convened atop the apex of the Dark Obelisk, divesting all their acquired power into Twilight's twin hounds before expending decades of hoarded essence to raise Farrah Roualt as an Avatar of Darkness.

The Avatar, supported by the Dark Family, turned her eyes on the shadow hounds, Twilight's most ancient servants, bringing them under her control. With a whispered command, the order to hunt was given, and twin shadows eclipsed even the light of the falling star as Daybreak and Nightfall sprinted into the heavens to give chase.

The Jaws of Night closed around the cascading radiance of the sun-star, devouring its light and consuming its fire, scattering its shards across the bleak landcsape of the Shadow Realm with each rapacious bite. Tirelessly the hounds feasted, until mere remnants of what once was the north star in the sun constellation remained. Exhausted, Daybreak and Nightfall retreated, a shower of meteoric shrapnel the herald of their departure to Athuin as the heavens returned to normal.

Shadows then boiled over the Shamtota Hills, the cowled figure of Twilight descending upon Siorraidh in search of Han-Silnar. Lorielan's clarion tones rose to meet His whispered threat: the Aldar was beyond the reach of Darkness, taken to the Crystal Realm. His grand plan of death-by-deity had been thwarted, but so too had Twilight's.

The Sundered Star now sits in Achaea's heavens, irrevocably altered, as the Order of Darkness and the City of Hashan scramble to regather what was lost.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Summary:

Through the machinations of Han-Silnar, Eurice Al'Jafri was deceived into using the star-forges of Creation to visit unimaginable destruction upon the world of Achaea. Tearing free the apex of the Mithraean constellation from its seat in the heavens, despite the efforts of Han-Tolneth and Sycaerunax the sun-turned-supernova began an inevitable descent.

Yet while the devastation was turned elsewhere before reaching the planet through the efforts of Twilight, the renegade Aldar known alternately as the Pawn, or the Condemned, found himself once more exiled to the Crystal Realm of the Jade Empress, Lorielan.

Penned by My hand on the 14th of Chronos, in the year 861 AF.