Starbound Sect

The first thing I noticed was the smell. Rot and pine sap and something else, something metallic that I'd later learn was old blood, though at the time I just thought *forest* and didn't question it. The second thing was the cold. Not autumn cold. Not the kind you dress for. This was a wet, invasive cold that crawled through my hoodie like it had a personal vendetta against my skin.

I was face-down in mud. That's where I started, cheek pressed to the earth, one arm twisted under my chest at an angle that sent spikes up my shoulder whenever I breathed. Around me, people were screaming.

Not everyone. Some were silent, which was worse. The screaming ones sounded human. The silent ones made me think of animals caught in traps, that specific quiet that comes when the body decides noise won't help.

I pushed myself up. My palm sank two inches into black soil. When I finally got to my knees, I saw the forest.

I'd been camping before. Once, with my dad, when I was twelve and he was still pretending he wanted to be a father. That forest had been tame. Trails and signs and a ranger station with flush toilets. This place didn't have trails. The trees were wrong, too tall, their trunks the width of cars, their canopy so thick that the light filtering down was green instead of gold. The air tasted like iron.

"Hey. Hey, you okay?"

A girl crouched in front of me. Red hair, freckles, a Rutgers sweatshirt that was torn at the collar. She had a cut above her eyebrow that was bleeding into her eye, and she kept blinking like she was trying to clear it.

I nodded. My voice wasn't working yet.

"Good. Stay down. Something's out there."

I followed her gaze. Through the trees, maybe fifty feet away, shapes moved in the undergrowth. Low to the ground. Too fast to be deer. Too big to be dogs.

"How many of us are there?" I asked. My voice came out like gravel.

"I counted thirty-two. Maybe more. Hard to tell with the ones who aren't moving."

She said it flat, like she was reading a grocery list. I decided I liked her. Not because of what she said, but because of how she said it. No panic. Just information.

"I'm Marcus," I said.

"Priya."

Something crashed through the brush to our left. A boy, maybe eighteen, came stumbling into the clearing where most of us had gathered. His shirt was gone. His chest was covered in scratches, some shallow, some not. He was holding his arm against his body like it was broken.

"They're circling," he said. "I don't know what they are, but they're circling."

Panic rippled through the group. People started talking at once. A man in a business suit, complete with tie, was arguing with a woman in scrubs about whether they should run or stay. Neither of them had any idea what they were talking about. You could see it in their hands, the way they kept reaching for things that weren't there. Phones. Keys. The props of a life that had been yanked away.

I stood up. My legs shook, but they held.

"We need to move," I said.

Everyone looked at me. I hadn't meant to speak that loud. But now that I had their attention, I realized I believed what I'd said. Standing still felt like dying.

"Move where?" the businessman asked. "We don't know where we are."

"We know what's behind us," I said, pointing at the shapes in the dark. "That's enough."

Nobody argued. That surprised me. Maybe when you're dropped into a nightmare, any direction that isn't toward the monsters looks like hope.

We moved. Priya stayed close to me. The boy with the broken arm, whose name turned out to be Derek, walked on my other side. He didn't complain, not once, even though I could hear his breath hitching every time he stepped wrong. The businessman, whose name I never learned, kept checking his watch. Like time still mattered. Like we hadn't fallen out of the world.

The forest went on. And on. Trees like cathedral pillars. Roots that grabbed at our ankles. Twice we had to help people climb over fallen logs the size of cars. Once we had to stop because a woman in her sixties couldn't breathe, and her husband sat with her in the mud, holding her hand, telling her it would be okay in a voice that didn't believe itself.

The things in the dark followed us. Never close enough to see clearly. Always close enough to hear. A rustle here. A low sound that might have been a growl or might have been the forest itself, breathing.

"We're being herded," Priya said.

I'd been thinking the same thing. I didn't want to say it out loud.

"Herded where?"

"Somewhere. Anywhere. Doesn't matter, does it? We go where they want or we stop and find out what they are."

We kept going.

By the time we found the clearing, three people had been lost. I don't mean lost as in wandered off. I mean lost as in one minute they were there, and the next there was a scream, and then there wasn't. Nobody talked about it. We just kept walking, and the group got smaller, and the silence got heavier.

The clearing was a circle of dead grass. No trees. No roots. Just flat, gray ground that looked like it had been scorched and then forgotten. In the center stood a stone. Not a boulder. A stone. Perfectly rectangular, waist-high, covered in symbols that made my eyes hurt when I tried to focus on them.

"That's not natural," Derek said.

"Nothing here is natural," Priya said.

We stopped at the edge of the clearing. The things in the dark stopped too. I could feel them, just past the treeline, waiting. Watching. The hair on my arms stood up.

"What do we do?" someone asked.

Nobody answered.

I looked at the stone. The symbols were glowing now, faintly, a blue that reminded me of deep water. And I felt something I couldn't explain. A pull. Not physical. Deeper than that. Like the stone knew my name, and was waiting for me to remember it back.

"Marcus." Priya's hand was on my arm. "Your eyes."

"What about them?"

"They're glowing. Same color as the stone."

I didn't feel surprised. That was the strangest part. I felt like I'd been waiting my whole life for someone to tell me that.

Before I could respond, the air split open.

That's the only way I can describe it. A sound like tearing fabric, but enormous, like the sky itself was being ripped in half. Light poured through the gap. Not sunlight. Something older. Something that made the trees bow and the ground shake and every person in that clearing drop to their knees.

Figures stepped through. Five of them. They walked like they owned the world.

The first was a woman in white robes, her hair silver, her face unlined, her eyes the pale blue of a winter sky. She looked at us the way a farmer looks at livestock. Appraising. Unimpressed.

The second was a man built like a bear, bald, with a beard that reached his chest and arms thick as tree trunks. He wore leather and carried a hammer that hummed with a low, constant sound, like a hive.

The third was young. Younger than me, maybe. A girl with black hair and eyes that weren't quite right, too dark, too still, like looking into a well. She smiled, and it didn't reach her eyes.

The fourth was old. Ancient. Bent. He leaned on a staff that was taller than he was, and his skin was the color of old paper, and when he breathed, the air around him shimmered.

The fifth was a woman in red. Armor, not robes. A sword at her hip. Scars on her face that told stories she'd never share. She looked at us and didn't blink.

"Potential," the silver-haired woman said. Her voice carried without effort. "Some. Not much."

"Enough," the bear-man said. "I'll take the strong one. The boy with the broken arm."

Derek made a sound. Not quite a word. The bear-man waved his hand, and Derek rose into the air, floating, his face white with terror, and then he was standing beside the bear-man, and the bear-man was looking at him like he was a prize.

"The girl with the fire hair," the young one said. "She has spirit."

Priya. She grabbed my arm tighter. But she didn't fight when the young one beckoned. She just looked at me, and I looked at her, and something passed between us that I couldn't name.

"Go," I said. "It's okay."

She went.

The old man took the woman in scrubs. The armored woman took the businessman, who looked like he might cry from relief. One by one, people were chosen. One by one, they left the clearing, standing beside their new masters, their faces a mix of fear and hope and something else. Something like gratitude.

I stayed where I was. The silver-haired woman hadn't moved. She was watching me. Only me.

"You," she said. "What's your name?"

"Marcus."

"Marcus." She said it like she was tasting it. "You have the astral constitution. Do you know what that means?"

"No."

"No," she repeated. "You wouldn't. Not yet." She smiled, and it was the first real expression I'd seen on her face. "You'll come with me. The Falling Star Sect has been waiting a long time for someone like you."

I should have asked questions. I should have demanded to know where we were, what was happening, who she was. But the pull I'd felt from the stone was stronger now, and it was coming from her, and from the path she was offering, and from somewhere deep in my chest that had been empty my whole life and was only now starting to fill.

"What about the others?" I asked. "The ones nobody chose?"

The silver-haired woman glanced at the remaining people. Maybe a dozen. Huddled together. Terrified. Alone.

"They'll survive," she said. "Or they won't. It's not my concern."

She turned and walked toward the tear in the air. I followed. I didn't look back. I couldn't. Because I knew if I did, I'd see their faces, and I'd remember them, and I'd carry them with me into whatever came next.

And I wasn't sure I had room.