Chapter 1: The Star & the Quiet Pull

Lira had spent years beneath the glow of a thousand lights, but none of them ever felt like they belonged to her. The world knew her as a star—a vision of silk and cinema, her name whispered in velvet-lined theaters and gilded ballrooms. Directors spoke of her presence like a rare celestial event, the kind that lingered in the mind long after the credits rolled.

And yet, for all the grand performances and standing ovations, there was a quiet part of Lira that felt untouched, unseen. It stirred in her chest like a forgotten melody, faint and persistent, always calling from somewhere just beyond reach.

She first noticed it one evening after a shoot, when the world was painted in dusk and the air hummed with the last notes of applause.

The camera bulbs had faded, the makeup wiped away, and for the first time that day, she was alone. She sat by the tall windows of her dressing room, watching the sky shift from soft lavender to deep indigo.

Something inside her stirred again.

She pressed a hand to her ribs as if to quiet it, but it only grew louder, not in sound, but in feeling. A pull, weightless and endless, like the breath before a curtain rises. It wasn’t sadness, nor loneliness, but something deeper. A longing.

Lira had spent her life playing roles, stepping into stories that weren’t hers. But what if there was a story waiting for her? A tale not written in scripts or staged under artificial light, but something real—something she had to chase?

A rustle near the window broke her thoughts. A small, knowing presence had slipped into the room, his golden eyes gleaming like the space between constellations.

Nova.

The little creature had been with her for as long as she could remember, though no one quite knew where he came from. A trickster, a collector of lost things—Nova always had a way of appearing when something was about to change.

Tonight, he looked at her differently. As if he could see the shift happening beneath her skin.

“You feel it, don’t you?” he murmured.

Lira turned back to the sky. It was shifting again—darker, deeper, as if something waited beyond the horizon.

“Yes,” she whispered.

And for the first time in her life, she wasn’t afraid to follow it.