The throne of Xyra has never stood on a foundation of stone and gold alone. High above, twelve constellations shine with an intensity that seems to watch every inch of the land below. But there is a secret only the high officials and clandestine scholars know. Out of the twelve available astral thrones, only eleven envoys actually show themselves to the public.
Those eleven stars live in unimaginable luxury within the central palace. They are celebrities and gods to the people, worshipped at every festival. The government provides them with the best facilities just to keep their zodiac powers stable. However, the twelfth seat, the Aquarius, has been empty for centuries. Mythology calls it the Lost Star, a legend that most citizens think is just an urban myth.
The logic behind this power is actually mechanical. Zodiac strength comes from the synchronization between the envoy's heartbeat and the position of their home constellation in the sky. While the other eleven envoys flaunt their energy with shimmering robes, I chose the opposite path. My name is Nathael, and I decided long ago to never surface.
I stood silently behind a cracked pillar while the capital celebrated the parade of the eleven envoys. I pulled my hood lower to hide my face from the over-excited crowd. My clothes were tattered, making me indistinguishable from a street beggar. Nobody suspected that beneath this rough fabric, a birthmark pulsed with a frequency far more massive than the combined strength of the other eleven stars.
"Move! Make way for the majesty!" a royal guard shouted with a booming baritone voice as the parade passed.
I took a long breath and turned away from the noise. I walked toward the narrow, dark alleys of the slums. For me, palace comfort is just a golden cage that would only dull my instincts. As the strongest star, my responsibility isn't to be worshipped. It is to guard a secret far heavier than all the gold in the king's treasury.
The old door at the end of the alley creaked as I pushed it open. Before I could fully step inside, six shadows jumped down from the surrounding rooftops. They were members of the Silent Faction, rebels with a notorious reputation for efficient killing.
"Hold it right there, kid," the biggest man intercepted while resting a long machete on his shoulder. "You're carrying something that doesn't belong to you, aren't you?"
I didn't move. I let them surround me in a tight circular formation. The birthmark on my wrist pulsed rapidly now, reacting to the Aquarius constellation which was exactly at its nadir point. This was a power anomaly that no one in this world had ever witnessed before.
"I don't know what you're talking about," I replied with a completely flat tone.
The man in front of me spat to the side with a look of disdain. "Don't act stupid. We saw you take that scroll from the old palace library. Hand it over voluntarily, or we'll take it from your cold corpse."
This situation left me with no choice. I synchronized my breathing with an astral frequency only accessible to the highest caste of envoys. I didn't use common water magic. This was a precise atomic manipulation of fluid molecules.
"You made a big mistake hunting the wrong person," I muttered almost inaudibly.
One of the rebels lunged forward with a drawn dagger. Before the tip of the blade touched my clothes, an explosion of high-pressure fluid appeared instantly. Clear water with the mass of lead slammed into the attacker's chest. He flew back and smashed into the brick wall behind him.
Seeing their comrade go down, the rest of the rebels charged at once. I only moved one finger, tracing a circular pattern in the air. Immediately, the water molecules around me solidified and formed transparent boomerangs moving at ultrasonic speeds. My movements were efficient. No energy went to waste. This was absolute superiority that far surpassed the eleven stars in the palace.
"Die!" the rebel leader screamed while swinging his machete.
The movement ended in a split second. My water blade sliced through the iron weapon as if it were just a piece of paper. Within seconds, the alley fell silent again. The six men who had surrounded me lay helpless. They were unconscious from fatal internal blunt trauma without a single drop of blood spilled on the floor.
I took a deep breath and stopped the flow of astral energy I had borrowed from the sky. The mark on my hand dimmed, leaving my skin looking normal again. I made sure there were no witnesses watching from the nearby windows. If the world knew the Lost Star was actually here, Xyra's political balance would collapse overnight.
I stepped into the old shack that had been my hiding place. Inside the dark room, I pulled out an ancient scroll. But just as I was about to place it on the fragile wooden table, a strange presence emerged from the shadows in the corner of the room.
"You are always hard to find, Informant," a soft but authoritative voice greeted me.
I wasn't surprised. I had felt a very stable fluctuation of astral energy since I stepped over the threshold. A woman in a white silk robe decorated with gold scales stepped into the moonlight. She was Alexis, the Libra envoy known as the balancer of justice in the central palace.
"Security in this district is a mess, Alexis. You shouldn't be here without an escort," I replied while hiding my hand behind my tattered cloak.
Alexis ignored my comment. Her usually calm face now showed deep lines of anxiety. She placed a silver badge on the table, an object emitting a very thick aura of darkness.
"The Ten Sky Demons have awakened, Nathael," Alexis revealed with a trembling voice. "The seal in the Abyss valley was completely destroyed last night. They are planning a grand convergence to resurrect the Demon King from his eternal sleep."
I kept my face expressionless, even though internally I understood how dire the situation was. The Ten Sky Demons weren't just ordinary monsters. In the ancient power hierarchy, each of them was a match for one star envoy. With the Aquarius envoy missing, the remaining eleven stars would be at a massive disadvantage if they had to face them all at once.
"Xyra will be destroyed if the Demon King rises before we find the twelfth star," Alexis concluded while looking at me with hope. She didn't realize that the person she had been looking for was standing right in front of her.
I just stared at the silver badge in silence. I knew my peaceful days were over. The old scroll in my hand was the only key to facing the escalation of destruction right before my eyes.