Wonderland's First Star

"—And then, the Sentinel of Stars drove his hallowed blade through the Jewel Queen's throat, and with that single strike, her terror was unthroned."

A child shrieked in false valor, his wooden sword carving wild arcs through the air, each swing a prayer to become legend.

Before him, the elder sat on the porch of her timber-worn home, visage a quiet serenity held only by those of geriatric age. A soft chuff slipped from her as the tale came to a conclusion, book shutting with a muted thud. Her wrinkled fingers drifted down to bless the nearest crown of hair, mismatched eyes benevolent as she ruffles the already tousled locks.

"Now, now, settle down. If you want to be heroes like the Sentinel, why don't you little tots scurry homes and help your mothers with dinner? Night comes and I reckon your mums are preparing meals, yes?"

"But— But the Sentinel is big and strong! Can't we protect our ummis with swords instead of stirring pots?" Llyaris protested, round-cheeked, his golden curls aflame with indignance. To children, chores are a divine sentences exile dressed as duty.

"You forget, little one, that the hero himself came to aid the women, children and elderly. Have you forgotten the tale of the Sentinel and the Saccharine Dreamer? Your instructors would be disappointed if you did."

"No... But—!"

"Then away with you, before Sol bids adieu and kisses the sky good night. Unless…" Her voice dropped into a mockery of dread, "you would have Aris come seeking you in the shadows of dawn?"

The world went still.

Even the merchants within the vicinity who were bundling carts and coaxing mules to rest, froze at the utterance.

Silence draped the street. Then the murmurs broke like fever

"The elderly and their penchant for theatrics, brainwashing the children."

"Does the crone not know? The name of the First Star is a curse upon the tongue—"

"Those are just old wives tale. Seriously, you're scaring yourselves."

But the grandmother seems undeterred by the torrent of murmurs surrounding her. The children, however, were less steadfast. They began screaming and running away in an attempt to escape the malevolent entity spoken and allegedly invoked. Their panic drew only a chuckle from the grandmother, and she eased back into her rocking chair, watching dusk melt into twilight.

Sol, the gilded god, relented in its search for its lost child. With a stream of molten light, it yielded the sky to its other half and kissed the world good night as predicted. The moon's ascent came slower—yet tonight its face was not the clean silver of the norm, its light deepened by a flicker of mauve.

Grandmother's lips tightened, digits tapping against the wooden handrest. "Must be chaos in the cathedral."

________________________________________

The air upon the Cathedral's crown hung like a breath, heavy as a blade before the fall. Bishops in their brocade, clerics with their cuffs, nuns with knuckles white on prayer beads, all of them paced the hallowed stone; their litanies spilling in a hundred tongues, each a plea to stay the hand of truth a moment longer.

Astral Cardinal Cleid stood at the edge of the marble balcony, his eyes fixed on the horizon where the sun was surrendering to the encroaching night. It was the final peaceful sunset of an era, though the world below did not yet know it.

"The visionaries have ceased their chanting, Your Eminence," a soft, trembling voice spoke from the shadows of the archway. Deaconess Seiya stepped forward, the fabric of her robes rustling against the stone. "The omens are confirmed. After two millennia of silence, the First Star has returned to Wonderland."

The Cardinal did not turn. He watched as the first sliver of the moon appeared. Not the pearlescent white of a holy night, but the first stains of a sickening, bruised purple that seemed to slowly bleed into the surrounding stars. It was the exact shade of the ancient warnings: the color of a cosmic betrayal reborn.

"Two thousand years," Cleid whispered, his voice raspy. "The cycle begins anew. Aris has taken breath once more."

The deaconess loosed a shuddering exhale. She buried her trembling hands in folds of silk, veiling the terror that had unmade her face. Her eyes stayed cast to the floor, yet her voice splintered. "W—What would you have us do, Your Eminence?"

Silence.

Behind them, the sanctum's oak doors stayed sealed, but fear had no lock. The frantic hush of bishops and clerics bled through the wood— terror braided with a wild, heretical awe.

Far across the plains of Wonderland, beneath the violet glow of the moon, a low, metallic hum began to vibrate through the very earth. The echoes of a sword fueled by divine grief, a warning and a cry at once.

"Summon everyone in court."

Five words.

And with them, the Cathedral broke.

The words heresy and entropy were no longer whispered but hurled. What began as whispers became war, subtleties abandoned for rambunctious fear. Priests, bishops, nuns, and prophets were summoned in one ragged breath of bells.

At the cathedral gates, soldiers stood like iron, guarding the court's sanctity with unsheathed silence.

Last to arrive, as rite demanded, was the Cardinal himself— flanked by two acolytes guiding each of his steps.

Time had laid its siege upon him and his bones were pilgrims on the long road to weakness. Yet time could not wither the authority he holds; his voice could still the voices in the room.

"Enough."

"Careful, Your Eminence," murmured a young acolyte. A ward of the spire, easing the Cardinal into his seat. Cleid bestowed a blessing with the barest brush of fingers, and the child fled knowing the significance of today's impromptu discussion.

Astral Cardinal Cleid sat upon the Precipice of Grace, the highest balcony of the Great Cathedral, watching the sun dip below the jagged silhouette of the Sky-Pillar Mountains. With a resigned breath, he lifted his chin and announced.

"The visionaries have finished their communion. It is as the ancient scrolls dictated," he whispered, hands clutching a silver rosary until his knuckles turned white. "The First Star has returned. After two thousand years of silence, the first child of the Sun and Moon walks Wonderland once more."

The confirmation only allowed the chamber to break. Below, the air thickened with the frantic murmur of bishops and clerics sundered by belief. A union of gasps and sobs resonates through the confined space, further fuelling the flames of fear. Some bayed for public decree, others begged for a grave of secrecy.

"If we announce the rebirth of Aris, panic will burn through the East faster than the Saintess' flame," one bishop hissed in the hall below. "The merchants will flee the ports, and the giants will use the chaos to descend from Gorm's Peak."

"Indeed. If we confirm the rebirth, panic will become absolute. The humans will flee the cities, the Elves will lock their gates, and the Void crawlers may as well begin their cull. Fear is a wildfire we cannot quench!"

"But we cannot hide the sky," Priestess Saphira countered, face etched with a grim solemnity. "The other races have their own seers. The Sirens in the deep and the Gargoyles in their citadels will already be looking upward."

"Sirens no longer exists, you old, senile fool!"

"Ad hominem," Saphira cut, cold as moonlight on steel. "Your logic rots in time with your temper. You allow your rationality to be guided by your emotions. How… unprofessional, Bishop Kaiser."

"Why, you loathsome—"

"ENOUGH." The Cardinal's voice was not loud. It did not need to be, but all the bickering died nonetheless.

"We speak of calamity," Cleid said, each words akin to scriptures carved in stone, "a shroud that would smother generations of Wonderland in suffering. And you choose to gnaw at each other like curs?"

Priestess Saphira closed her eyes, bowing low enough for an apology—but never demeaning herself into groveling. To do so is an injustice to the women before her, who surrendered their lives for the right to be seen and heard.

Kaiser scoffed but held his tongue. That was penance enough for the Cardinal to continue.

"We all know the legend." His rosary creaked in his grip. "The child of Sun and Moon, catalyst of chaos, gate to disorder, was slain by its own citizen after eons of suffering under its reign. Yet in its final breath, Aris cursed the land. It is deity. Undying. Eternal. Its body may be broken, but it is always remade. And with each rebirth, it swore to unmake the world."

A bleak tension swallowed the court, the tales of ancient history resurfacing within their memories.

The Saintess of Flame.

The Cursed Bard.

The Plague King.

The Jewel Queen.

The Saccharine Dreamer.

Each named crossed out in scriptures, portrayed as the devil given form. Each a reincarnation of the First Star. Each a monument to genocide whose names are etched into the bones of the world.

"But, my brothers and sisters," Cleid's voice was no longer the gavel of judgment but the rasp of an old man who had read too many endings, "you forget the other half of the legend. For every dawn the First Star draws into the sky, there is the brilliance of the moon following its trail. With Aris' rise, so too comes the awakening of the one named after the empyrean skies itself."

The words moved through the court like a draft through a catacomb.

Caelum.

A shiver of something other than fear ran through the crowd. To live in the age of the First Star's rebirth is to live through the dark ages of history, but to live in the age of the sentinel was to witness the impossible.

"I— It is no miracle to meet a legend," Vicar Rosen ventured, his voice a thin wire pulled taut across the silence. He was young for a vicar, still soft in the places scripture hadn't hardened. "It is a sign that the world is about to break again, and we mortal citizens of Wonderland are like glass."

"Perhaps," Priestess Saphira conceded. Her eyes closed, and for a moment she weighs epochs in the dark behind her lids. "But inevitability is a poor excuse for idleness. The moon has already spoken, mauve and mourning; a bruise we cannot hide with clouds. What else remains to us, if not to ready our blades, our prayers, our people?"

When she reopened her eyes, they were resigned but absolute. Accepting that the world might be brought to the brink once more, but they are not to wither without defenses.

"It is kinder to die aware than to die blind. We owe Wonderland that much."

A ripple of assent moved through the chamber. Not cheer, never cheer, but the grim nods of people who'd just agreed to carry the same coffin. Hands went up. Rings of office glinted. The court's vote was united: the world would know.

Astral Cardinal Cleid turned from them to glance back to the bruised sky. It was a terrifying time to be alive, to stand at the precipice of a new apocalypse. Yet a part of him hat had studied the scripture of the moon-blessed blade since he was a boy felt a thrill that bordered on sacrilege.

He had been a boy once, tracing the illuminated margins of The Moon Blessed Blade by candlelight until the wax drowned the wick. He'd mouthed the Sentinel's oaths in secret, his treason against death itself.

The Sentinel of Stars, oathbreaker to Death, heretic to fate, the only soul the scriptures admitted could reject the end of the world, and he will be drawing breath somewhere in Wonderland soon.