Overview:

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Topher happily plays frisbee with his German Shepherd, Hunter, in a wide open field. As they head home, a swarm of moths begins to follow them, growing increasingly aggressive. In a moment of instinct, Topher summons a radiant crucifix, its beams of light incinerating the creatures and saving both him and Hunter. The event awakens the truth within him—the Star of Vis, a magical artifact embedded in his being, restoring memories of the cave incident. Behind the attack is Echidna, the Mother of Monsters, testing to uncover the true bearer of the Star. Accepting his fate, Topher steps willingly into a pentagon portal leading to an unknown realm, entrusting his family’s safety to his loyal companion, Hunter.

Field_day_with_the_good_boy.sav

The park has a field that most people would call a “spacious outdoor area.” I call it what it is: about two acres of Bermuda grass so green and well-maintained it looks like someone color-corrected it in post-production.

It’s mid-afternoon. The sun sits at that specific angle where everything turns golden and soft, the kind of light that makes ordinary moments look like movie scenes. A breeze moves through the open space, carrying that clean outdoor smell — cut grass, warm earth, the faint sweetness of flowering weeds in the far corner.

Topher stands in the center of all that open space like he owns it.

He’s twelve, Filipino-American, with his dad’s sharp jawline and his mom’s expressive eyes — hazel-green that catch the sunlight differently depending on which way he turns. He’s wearing a plain white shirt and navy shorts, looking exactly like a normal kid on a normal afternoon. His dark hair’s slightly mussed from the breeze.

He cocks his arm back, and with one fluid motion — the kind that suggests hours of practice — the orange frisbee launches from his fingers. A Wham-O. Classic airfoil design. It cuts through the air in a clean, spinning arc, catching the light like a low-orbit satellite.

Hunter explodes off the grass before the disc even peaks.

The German Shepherd is tan and black, all muscle and momentum, legs churning with that specific joy that only dogs and children at recess seem to access. He tracks the frisbee’s trajectory with the precision of a heat-seeking missile wearing fur, launches himself into the air —

— and snatches it clean.

Perfect catch. Ten out of ten. No notes.

Hunter trots back, tail sweeping back and forth like a metronome set to maximum enthusiasm. He drops the frisbee at Topher’s feet and looks up, eyes bright, tongue out, entire body radiating one very clear message: again.

“Great job, buddy.” Topher crouches down and ruffles the fur behind Hunter’s ears.

Hunter barks three times — loud, sharp, delighted — and spins in place.

Same energy as rolling a natural twenty.

Moth_swarm_ambush_triggered.sav

Night has properly settled over the neighborhood — not that dramatic cinematic darkness where everything’s conveniently blue-tinted, but actual nighttime dark, the kind that swallows color whole and replaces it with shadows and sodium-orange streetlight glow.

Topher and Hunter move down an empty road at that unhurried pace people adopt when the destination doesn’t matter as much as the walking itself. The street is deserted. No cars, no pedestrians, no ambient noise beyond the soft rhythm of sneakers on pavement and Hunter’s nails clicking a half-beat behind.

Topher’s in a navy hoodie, jeans, and worn sneakers, hands tucked into his front pocket. His dark hair catches the orange light every time they pass a lamppost. He glances down at Hunter with the relaxed expression of someone whose brain has fully clocked out for the evening.

Hunter walks exactly one step behind his left heel. Textbook loyal companion positioning. The German Shepherd’s ears are up, head sweeping slowly from side to side — that alert but not alarmed setting that means I’m watching everything so you don’t have to.

Good dog.

“The wind’s getting colder, bud,” Topher says, watching his breath mist faintly in the air. “It’s still autumn, but winter’s coming fast.”

Hunter’s ears flick toward him. Acknowledgment registered.

ROBO4000 and CleanBot are tracking them from the screens aboard the Peregrine Lightyear, and everything about this scene reads deceptively peaceful. Two companions on an evening walk. Quiet street. Cool breeze. Very opening-montage-of-a-Studio-Ghibli-film energy.

Which means something is absolutely about to go wrong.

The streetlights flicker.

Not all at once — that would be too obvious, too horror-movie. Instead it’s subtle. One light stutters, recovers. Then the next one, thirty meters ahead. Then the one after that. Like something moving through the dark is interfering with the current, sending ripples outward.

Hunter stops walking.

I check the screen. His body language has shifted — the relaxed alertness replaced by something tighter, more focused. His nostrils work rapidly, parsing information from the air.

He smells it before Topher sees it.

A large dark moth clings to the nearest lamppost, wings spread wide. In the dim glow it looks almost decorative, like someone pinned it there. Then I notice another one on the post beyond it. And another on the chain-link fence running alongside the field.

Topher sees them now.

“Do you hear that, buddy?” His voice drops, losing the casual warmth. He turns slowly, scanning the treeline at the field’s edge. “That sound — it’s like a swarm of insects.”

Oh, it’s definitely a swarm.

They pour from the trees in a mass that blots out the lower sky — dozens, then hundreds of moths, wings churning the air into something almost audible, a low rushing hiss like static turned physical. The swarm streams toward them with the kind of deliberate, coordinated movement that moths absolutely should not be capable of.

Not wildlife behavior. Something else is driving this.

“Run, buddy!”

They sprint. Topher moves fast for a twelve-year-old — those years of soccer and scouting earning their dividend right now — with Hunter matching him stride for stride. But running from a swarm is a fundamentally different problem from running from a single pursuer, and I can already see the geometry closing around them.

From the opposite direction, another swarm rises.

They skid to a stop. The two masses converge, merging into a single churning curtain of wings and bodies that encircles them completely. The sound is deafening now — that hissing static amplified to something that vibrates in your chest cavity. Hunter presses against Topher’s leg, a hundred pounds of German Shepherd making himself as small as possible.

Cornered. Surrounded. No exits.

I’ve seen enough RPG boss encounters to recognize what this is. It’s not random. It’s targeted. Something sent these moths here, to this road, tonight.

Topher’s hands come out of his pockets.

His palms are glowing.

The light starts soft — warm ivory, barely distinguishable from the streetlamp orange at first. Then it brightens, clarifying into something cleaner, purer. White with a faint gold undertone, the color of candlelight through cathedral glass. It pulses with his heartbeat, steady and certain.

There it is.

He stares at his own hands with an expression that’s about sixty percent terrified and forty percent something else entirely — recognition, maybe. Like seeing a word he’s known his whole life but never had a name for until this exact moment.

Four distinct shapes materialize above his palms, rising from the light like holograms resolving into focus. They arrange themselves slowly, deliberately, each piece settling into place with the quiet inevitability of something that was always going to happen. North, south, east, west.

A crucifix. Ivory and cream and pure white, threaded through with gold so fine it looks like it was drawn there by a steady hand.

On my main screen aboard the Peregrine, Topher’s profile pulses once, ivory.

The label at the bottom changes.

AWAKENED.

About time.

Back on that surrounded road, Topher doesn’t hesitate. He raises the crucifix high, and something in his posture changes in that exact moment — the twelve-year-old shoulders squaring into something older, something decided. His green-hazel eyes catch the ivory light and hold it.

The crucifix flares.

Radiant beams blast outward in every direction, white-gold and blazing, cutting through the swarm like the world’s most dramatic flashlight. Moths hit the light and don’t just scatter — they incinerate, breaking apart into glowing embers that drift upward and dissolve before they reach the lamppost height.

In thirty seconds, the swarm is ash.

The road is empty again. Silent. The cold autumn air carries a faint warmth now, like incense.

Topher exhales slowly, lowers his hands. He crouches, wraps one arm around Hunter, pulls him close.

“We’re safe now, buddy.”

Hunter licks his cheek once. The tail resumes its metronome sweep.

Seventh Acolyte online.

Star_of_Vis_memory_restoration_complete.sav

Something shifts in Topher’s posture.

It’s subtle — the kind of micro-change that most people wouldn’t catch, but I’ve been observing this kid long enough to know his default settings. The usual alert-but-relaxed body language that carries him through soccer practice and mass and scout meetings has gone very, very still. Not the stillness of someone waiting. The stillness of someone being held.

His feet stop moving. His arms drop to his sides. His eyes slide closed.

Hunter sits immediately, pressing against Topher’s leg, reading the room with that canine sixth sense that no amount of human emotional intelligence has ever managed to replicate. The German Shepherd’s ears go flat, not in fear — in attention. Like he knows something enormous is about to happen and he wants a front-row seat.

I lean forward in my chair aboard my spacecraft, simulation screens casting blue light across my face.

Here we go.

The glow starts at his sternum. Blue-white, soft as starlight filtered through atmosphere, pulsing with a rhythm that matches neither his heartbeat nor his breathing but some third thing entirely — something older. It bleeds through the fabric of his hoodie like he’s swallowed a miniature sun.

Then it exits.

A shard emerges from his chest with the quiet inevitability of something returning home. Marquise-cut, maybe three centimeters long, its edges sharp and clean. The gem catches the available light and fractures it into a dozen directions, throwing tiny blue-white constellations across the road, the trees, Hunter’s fur.

Around the shard, thick gray metal rings materialize from nothing — some complete circles, some broken arcs, rotating at different angles and speeds in that beautiful mechanical complexity of a deconstructed astrolabe. The rings overlap and separate in perfect orbital choreography, each inscribed with markings too small to read at this distance but ancient-looking even from here.

Topher stares at it with his mouth slightly open.

Yeah, buddy. I’d stare too.

I can practically hear the thought forming behind those wide hazel-green eyes: Did that just come out of my chest? Have I been carrying a magical artifact inside me for three years?

The astrolabe doesn’t wait for him to finish processing.

It sends the beams directly into his head.

Topher’s hands fly to his temples, fingers pressing hard, knees dipping slightly as the impact hits him. His face contorts — not panic, not quite pain, something closer to a system trying to absorb too much data too fast. His jaw clenches. His eyes squeeze shut, then blow open, irises blazing blue-white like someone swapped his original hardware for something significantly more powerful.

The memories arrive in sequence and all at once simultaneously, which shouldn’t be possible but apparently is:

A midnight flight. A blue-white shooting star through a plane window. A beach at night. The wish — I wish we could become heroes from the stories we love and the things we like. A cave. Seven cousins gathered around a board that shouldn’t exist. The Crystal Ball at the center. Roanne’s voice. The Cosmic Cataclysm rising like a storm made of light and geometry. And then — two luminaries descending. Cyan for Benjamin. Ivory for him. The impact. White.

Three years of silence, compressed into thirty seconds.

Topher’s breathing goes ragged, then steadies. The blue-white fades slowly from his eyes, like a screen powering down to standby mode.

“I remember it all now,” he whispers. “The memories I lost for three years.”

The astrolabe drifts toward him — unhurried, patient, the way old friends move when reunion is finally happening and there’s no more reason to rush. Its rings slow their rotation slightly, the blue-white gem at its center pulsing warm.

“You appeared to me again when you crossed the constellation of Andromeda,” Topher says softly. Not a question. A recognition.

He reaches out, and the astrolabe settles above his palm like it was always meant to be there. He looks at it for a long moment — this twelve-year-old kid standing in an empty autumn street with ash and ember still drifting around him, holding a celestial artifact that has apparently been living inside his ribcage since he was nine.

“You were always inside me,” he says, and a small, tired, genuine smile crosses his face. “Never leaving my side. My little friend.”

Three years. The thing was in him the whole time.

I know I shouldn’t feel anything about this — I’m an observer, that’s my role, that’s always been my role — but there’s something about loyalty that gets me every time. The stubborn, quiet kind. The kind that doesn’t announce itself.

I clear my throat. Nobody hears it. The void of space is famously indifferent to that sort of thing.

***

Switching feeds.

The simulation room reconfigures, and suddenly I’m watching a different location entirely — dark, subterranean, the kind of environment that level designers include specifically to make players uncomfortable.

The cave is massive. The walls are layered with sprawling vines that creep across stone like a slow-motion takeover, and the ground is carpeted in moss so thick it absorbs sound. In one corner, a shallow puddle mirrors the only light source in the room: a crack running through the center of the floor, beneath which something enormous and molten churns and shifts. Steam and embers rise from it in lazy spirals, and in that rising haze, images flicker — Topher, the astrolabe, the glowing road, all of it playing back like a projection on smoke.

Someone is watching those images very carefully.

She emerges from the deeper shadows with the particular unhurried confidence of a creature that has never once needed to rush because everything, eventually, comes to her.

Echidna.

Long, dark forest-green hair that moves with a life of its own, loose and trailing like seaweed in still water. Her upper half is humanoid — sharp-featured, angular, with scales that catch the lava-light along her neck and collarbone. Below the waist, the scales multiply, shifting to a yellow underbelly, the rest of her serpentine body disappearing into the dark behind her. Her eyes are the color of old amber, and they’re fixed on the images in the steam with an expression of absolute, cold satisfaction.

Against the far wall, the Oracle of Delphi hangs suspended — an elderly woman, frail and small, her form pinned by thick thorny vines whose dark tendrils coil around her wrists and waist with the casual cruelty of things that are also restraints. She’s conscious. Watching. Silent.

“I was right all along,” Echidna says, and her voice carries that specific rasp of something that has been speaking in the dark for a very long time. “That boy — the seventh and final Acolyte — is the true Keeper of the Star of Vis.”

She studies the steam-image of Topher with the focused interest of a chess player who has just watched their opponent make exactly the move they needed them to make.

“He saw the Star’s arrival in a vision, long before its coming. He was the first to meet the Star. He made the wish.”

She moves toward the far end of the cave, where a tomb sits against the wall — ancient stone, massive, its surface dark with something that isn’t entirely shadow. A slow, steady trickle runs from a crack in its base, spreading across the moss in rivulets. Her fingers trail across the stone surface with deliberate gentleness, the way you’d touch something irreplaceable.

“The moths and monsters, born from the blood of Typhon and my own tears,” she whispers, almost to herself, “have brought forth the awakening of the Seventh. Just as I had hoped.”

So the swarm wasn’t random wildlife behavior.

It was a trigger.

I file that information away in the part of my brain reserved for things that are going to matter later. The Oracle’s eyes meet mine through the simulation — or they seem to, which isn’t physically possible, but unsettling nonetheless.

She knows I’m watching.

***

Back to Topher.

The pentagon materializes on the road in front of him with clean geometric precision — silvery nano-molecules tracing its five sides first, then filling the interior as a portal forms within, cyan and churning, throwing cold blue light across everything it touches. It hums at a frequency I feel more than hear, even through my simulation screens from millions of kilometers away.

Topher looks at it for a long moment.

I don’t know why, I can see him thinking, the expression on his face doing most of the work. But I have a feeling my destiny is on the other side.

He glances down at Hunter.

“Is it okay, buddy? If I leave you here?”

Hunter barks three times. Clear, firm, certain. His tail sweeps once, twice — the full-body endorsement of a very good dog giving his very official approval.

Topher crouches, presses his forehead briefly against the side of Hunter’s face, one hand gripping the fur behind his ear.

“Please look after Mom, Dad, and Carlisle while I’m gone.”

He straightens. His jaw is set. His eyes are steady.

The portal waits.

Topher walks into the cyan light and doesn’t look back.

The pentagon collapses behind him in a single clean implosion, leaving nothing — no residue, no echo, no evidence that any of this happened at all.

Hunter sits in the empty road and watches the space where the portal was. The blue-white light that had been reflecting in his dark eyes fades slowly to nothing, until it’s just a dog, alone, in the quiet autumn dark.

Seven for seven.

The board is finally complete.