Untitled chapter 1
Written by Rafia
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## Chapter One: The Girl Who Caught Falling Stars
In the kingdom of Velmora, it was said that a star fell every hundred years, and whoever caught it would be granted one wish from the sky itself.
Liora didn’t believe in the old stories. She was the keeper of her village’s lighthouse on the cliffs above the Salt Sea, a quiet, practical girl who trusted lanterns and tide charts more than legends. But on the night the sky split open with silver fire, she ran out onto the rocks anyway, because some part of her — the part that still remembered her mother’s bedtime stories — couldn’t stay inside.
She found him instead of a star.
A man lay broken among the rocks, his clothes scorched, his dark hair full of ash, a strange light still flickering beneath his skin like a candle behind glass. When his eyes opened, they were the color of struck flint, and the first thing he said was not “help me,” but:
“Don’t tell anyone what you saw fall.”
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