Skyra crouched at the lip of a frozen pit and listened for hooves. The patrols swept the hills every night now, hunting anyone who still looked up. She needed a place to map the empty sky, somewhere the tyrant's riders could not see her. Her mother had taught her every constellation before dawn. Now the sky was bare, and Skyra meant to bring it back. She slid down the sloped ice walls into the sunken crater. Rocky outcroppings threw long shadows across the floor, hiding her from anything above. Here the wind died. Here she could work. She pulled the crystal spyglass from her coat and raised it to her eye. Purple runes warmed against her cheek. Through the lens, the dark sky sharpened, and she began sketching the empty places where stars used to burn. A soft hoof struck ice behind her. She turned. A white stag stood at the crater's edge, a slow galaxy turning inside its antlers. Skyra lowered the spyglass. The stag watched her, calm and waiting. The sky above was still empty, but something of it had walked down to meet her. She closed her notebook and stepped toward the animal. Her hiding place had become a meeting place, and she was no longer working alone.

Skyra stepped toward the stag with slow hands. She did not reach for him. Instead she lifted her crystal spyglass and held it out, letting the purple runes catch what little light remained. A friend of the stars, she hoped he could see. The stag lowered his great antlers. The galaxy inside them turned once, slowly, and he stepped closer. He breathed out a cloud of pale mist. From the snow at her feet, a shape began to rise. A bow lifted into her hands, carved from purple wood, its string glowing like a thin beam of light. She closed her fingers around it. It fit her grip as if it had been measured for her in some other room, long ago. The stag walked past her and nudged her leather journal with his nose. She knelt and opened it. Page after page of empty circles, each one marked where a constellation used to burn. "My mother drew the first one," Skyra said. "She named every star before the sun came up. I'm trying to finish what she started." The stag pressed his warm cheek to her shoulder. She did not cry. She just breathed. They set out together across the snow. The bow rode light on her back. The stag moved beside her like a quiet second heartbeat. For the first time since the sky went dark, she was not walking alone toward an empty horizon. Then the stag stopped. Skyra followed his gaze. A black helmet lay half-buried in the snow ahead, a thin arrow snapped through its crest. The print of a boot was fresh beside it. Someone had been here moments ago. Someone was still close.