The Last Star Keeper

The stars were disappearing.

Not all at once—not in a brilliant explosion or a catastrophe that sent scientists scrambling for answers. They disappeared quietly, almost politely, as though the night sky itself had begun forgetting pieces of its own story. One evening a constellation would shine exactly as it always had, and a week later a single star would simply... no longer be there.

No one seemed to notice.

No one except Estrelle Dara.

For nearly ten years, she had climbed the same winding trail that snaked through the Evergreen Hills every clear night after sunset. The narrow dirt path had become as familiar to her as the hallways of her own home. Thick roots twisted across the ground like the backs of sleeping dragons, forcing her to watch every step, while towering pines swayed gently overhead, their needles whispering together whenever the wind drifted through the forest. Wild lavender and moonflowers grew along the edge of the trail, filling the cool autumn air with a soft, earthy sweetness.

Above her stretched an endless ocean of midnight blue, scattered with thousands of stars.

Or at least...

It used to be.

Tonight, another piece of the sky was missing.

Estrelle tightened the straps of her backpack as she reached the crest of the hill. Her dark chestnut hair, loosely braided over one shoulder, had already begun escaping its braid, curling around her face in the breeze. She brushed the loose strands behind one ear and smiled despite the familiar ache settling deep within her chest.

The abandoned observatory stood before her.

Even after years of neglect, it possessed a quiet kind of beauty.

Its enormous copper dome had weathered into a rich green, streaked by decades of rain and snow. Ivy climbed the cracked stone walls, weaving through broken windows and wrapping itself around rusted iron railings. Moonflowers bloomed between the vines, their white petals glowing beneath the moonlight like tiny stars rooted in the earth.

Most people in Everglen refused to come here.

Children whispered ghost stories about strange lights appearing beneath the dome.

Teenagers dared each other to spend the night inside.

Adults avoided the hill entirely.

To Estrelle...

It wasn’t haunted.

It was home.

She rested her hand against the heavy wooden door.

The rough grain pressed against her fingertips, worn smooth in places by years of weather and countless memories.

“I’m back,” she whispered.

The hinges groaned as she pushed the door open.

The familiar scent washed over her immediately.

Dust.

Old books.

Rain-soaked stone.

A faint metallic smell lingered from the enormous brass telescope that still occupied the center of the observatory, though its gears had long since rusted into silence.

She closed her eyes.

For one fleeting moment, she could almost hear laughter echoing through the empty room.

Her father’s deep voice.

Her mother’s bright laugh.

The sound was gone almost as soon as it came, leaving only silence behind.

Estrelle Dara had never been the kind of person who blended into a crowd, though she often wished she could.

At seventeen, she stood about five-foot-six with the easy confidence of someone who had spent years hiking forests instead of wandering shopping malls. Loose waves of dark chestnut hair framed a face lightly dusted with freckles, and beneath expressive brows were gray-blue eyes that always seemed to be searching—for patterns, for answers, for things other people overlooked.

Her father had called themstargazer’s eyes.

“They don’t just look,” he used to say. “They wonder.”

He’d been right.

Estrelle noticed everything.

The robin that returned to the same branch every spring.

The tiny crack that had spread another inch across the observatory floor.

The scent of rain arriving long before the clouds.

And lately...

The missing stars.

She wore faded jeans tucked into worn hiking boots and an oversized charcoal sweater beneath her favorite denim jacket. It wasn’t fashionable, but it was warm, and warmth mattered more than appearances when most evenings were spent beneath an open sky.

Inside one jacket pocket rested a tarnished brass compass.

It had been her father’s.

He’d given it to her on her tenth birthday only a week before he disappeared.

It no longer pointed north.

The needle simply drifted aimlessly in slow circles.

Most people would have thrown it away.

Estrelle carried it everywhere.

Hidden beneath her left sleeve rested another mystery—a birthmark unlike any ordinary mark. Tiny silver dots connected by delicate lines formed the shape of an unfamiliar constellation. Doctors had dismissed it as unusual pigmentation.

Her parents never had.

“Some people are born under lucky stars,”her mother had once whispered while tracing the mark with gentle fingertips.

“You were born carrying one.”

At the time, Estrelle had laughed.

Now...

She wasn’t so sure.

She climbed the narrow spiral staircase toward the observation deck.

Each iron step creaked softly beneath her boots.

When she finally emerged beneath the open dome, the sight before her stole her breath away, just as it always did.

The town of Everglen sparkled below like a handful of golden embers scattered across the valley. Beyond it, Silvermere Lake reflected the moon so perfectly that it looked as though another sky had been laid across the water. Wisps of mist drifted lazily above the surface, while dark mountains watched silently from the horizon.

She pulled a worn leather journal from her backpack.

Its pages were yellowed with age.

Pressed between them were dried wildflowers, old ticket stubs from science museums, and tiny handwritten notes in her mother’s elegant script.

Inside the cover were the words she knew by heart.

To our brightest little star.

Keep looking up.

The sky always remembers.

Swallowing the lump in her throat, Estrelle opened to a fresh page and began sketching the constellations exactly as she saw them.

Her pencil moved with practiced precision.

Years of habit.

Years of hope.

Halfway through drawing Lyra, she stopped.

Her heart skipped.

“No...”

She counted.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

Another star was gone.

The twenty-third.

Her fingers tightened around the pencil.

“That’s impossible.”

She flipped back through previous pages.

Each chart confirmed the same terrifying truth.

The sky was changing.

And she was the only one who seemed to remember what it had once looked like.

She stared upward, searching for an answer.

The stars answered with silence.

Then, without warning, the heavens split open.