The Starscript Archive
Talent studied religiously and prayed just as hard.
She could recite the thirteen gratitudes in her sleep.
She tried to take up as little space as possible, to anticipate what others wanted before they asked.
When she got this right, her grandmother’s hand would rest on her shoulder, and she’d murmur “my steady light.” Talent lived for that praise.
She arrived at the Lyceum bright eyed and eager to impress. Her roommate, Marina Devais, called her “the governess” within a week. One night at dinner, Marina held court, drawing all eyes to herself. When talk turned to scandals, her attention found Talent.
“You were engaged once, Salaren. Cordon Sennett, right?” Marina’s voice turned syrup-sweet. “So sad. Imagine being so dull a man would rather drown than marry you.”
Laughter bloomed. A boy choked on his wine.
Talent’s fingers tightened around her fork. The memory was there—the balcony, the river, a mother’s scream—but she pushed it down. She pressed her lips together in a pleasant-enough smile.
“Imagine being so desperate for attention you’d mock a dead boy to get it,” Talent said through her teeth.
The laughter faltered. She stood, pushed back her chair, and walked out.
She didn’t have a destination in mind, but it started raining as she walked past the library, so she went in.
It was almost empty inside. No one whispered her family name as she passed deeper into the shelves.
No one looked at her at all. She was just a girl with a book, the same as anyone.
Slowly, she unfurled her shoulders to her full height.
The next day she returned, and the next, until the library became a habit, then a refuge. One day, she found a slim book half hidden behind the ledgers. Its title, nearly rubbed away, read Tales of the First Age. She hesitated, wary of childish things, but curiosity got the best of her.
The stories smelled like happy memories, parchment paper and dust and old ink.
The warrior who loved a sparrow. The dragon who couldn’t fly.
They weren’t gentle stories, but they were real—not in fact but in feeling.
She fell asleep at the table that night and woke with pages imprinted on her cheek.
She started searching for older texts—following footnotes, chasing references. One evening, following a draft of cold air through the north stacks, she found a door that shouldn’t have been there.
The latch was stiff, and the books behind it were older than the Lyceum itself. Cobwebs draped the shelves. These weren’t bound in leather. These were older—wood boards tied with cord, pages thick as fabric. When she opened one, the spine cracked.
The script inside meant nothing at first. Swirls and dots, lines that curved like water. Dried ink raised under her fingertip. Someone had written this. Someone had meant for it to be read.
The text became her obsession. She copied symbols on spare parchment, teaching herself their rhythm. Curves became familiar. Patterns emerged. Slowly, meaning glimmered through.
A name: Vael. A place: Valrotala.
These weren’t fantasies. They were chronicles. Real people, real histories, recorded in a language no one alive could read. No one except her.
Her reality cracked in half. On one side, the faith she’d grown up with. In that version, Vael was a god who led their people to salvation across the sea. Thyss was his trusted right hand, the arbiter of truth and justice.
On the other side of the rupture, these books.
The characters had the same names as the gods, but they were people with lives and families and flaws.
She was especially drawn to the story of Thyss and his brother Althen, fierce guardians who spent their lives protecting the people they loved.
When the Lost Continent sunk into the sea, Thyss held a place on the boats for his brother, but he didn’t make it out.
That story pulled tight in her chest, the particular grief of doing everything right and still losing. It was just a myth, but it rang true. She thought she’d outgrown faith and wonder, but they found her again in that dusty corner of the library. The stories took her hand, and they led her home.
The rest of the world couldn’t hurt her there.