Mori Starweaver's Arc

Chapter 3 of 5

The sky was shut, but the crater was not healed. Where the seam had sealed, a wound of raw power throbbed in the crater floor. It glowed like coals under a wind. Mori knelt beside it and felt its pull tug at his hollow chest. The power wanted out. It scratched at the sealed sky, trying to tear the seam open again. If it did, the beast would return. Mori could not leave it here. Enzo crouched across from the wound, his star-painted robe dragging in the ash. The scholar had bound the beast once and looked older for it now. He held out a slender iron rod crowned with an open star. "This draws loose power," he said. "Point the hollow at the wound. Pull it into yourself. But you are empty, boy. Empty things burst." Cassian stood behind them, small and veiled, his blind eyes fixed on nothing. He had shared the calming rites no cult would speak. Now his flat voice cut the air. "He has no living vessel. Pull that in and it will kill him." He turned his white eyes toward Mori. "Unless he becomes the vessel himself." Mori looked at his own hands, still marked from the first burn. He had spent two nights running from what his fire made. He was tired of running. "Then I hold it," he said. "In me." "You are not stone," Enzo said. "Stone cracked. You will crack faster." "Stone has no will," Cassian said. "He does. A living vessel bends. It does not break the same way." He knelt and set a worn spellbook in the ash before Mori. Its clasp held a blue stone. "Keep your hand on this. It remembers who you are. When the power fills you, it will try to make you into something else. Hold the book. Hold your name." Mori pressed one palm flat on the old cover. With the other he gripped the rod and aimed the hollow star at the wound. He pulled. The power came in a flood. It poured up the rod and into his arm, then his chest, filling the cold hollow Cassian had warned him of. It burned. It pushed against his ribs, searching for a way out. His vision went white. He gripped the spellbook until the clasp bit his skin. He said his name aloud. "Mori Starweaver." Again. Again. The crater floor dimmed. The wound closed. The pull against the sky stopped. Mori knelt there, shaking, full of light that had no home but him. He did not burst. He held. Enzo stared. "You are the vessel now." Mori felt the star-fire settle inside him, warm and awake, waiting. It obeyed him for now. But it strained against his skin, testing every seam. He had stopped the tear. He had become what he needed. And now he had to learn to hold a living star before it learned to hold him. The power cosmic that existed with in him now shown thru his eyes fully bloomed changing him into a greater and more controlled power that belonged to him