The stars had fallen last night.
By morning, the entire village knew something was wrong, although nobody could agree on what had happened. Some claimed they had seen streaks of blue fire crossing the sky shortly after midnight. Others insisted the lights had not fallen at all, but had risen from the ground and disappeared into the clouds. A few of the older villagers refused to discuss the matter entirely.
You had seen them yourself.
You had been standing outside your Grandma's old house when the first one fell.
It did not look like a meteor. There was no trail of smoke, no explosion, no burning stone crashing into the earth. Instead, the star seemed to detach itself from the night sky and descend silently, glowing with a pale silver light. It fell beyond the northern hills, somewhere inside the forest that surrounded the village.
Then another fell.
And another.
By the time the clock reached two in the morning, seventeen stars had disappeared from the sky.
You counted them because you could not think of anything else to do.
Your Grandma had once told you that seventeen was an unlucky number.
You had laughed when she said it.
Now you wished you had asked why.
She had been dead for six months, yet somehow you kept finding reasons to remember her.
The broken bell she had left you still sat inside your desk drawer. You had stopped touching it after the night it rang by itself. You had also stopped asking questions about the woman who had appeared in your apartment wearing your Grandma's face.
Some mysteries, you had decided, were safer when left unanswered.
Then the stars fell.
At dawn, you walked toward the forest.
You told yourself you were looking for evidence. Perhaps there were meteor fragments scattered among the trees. Perhaps the strange lights had been nothing more than some rare atmospheric phenomenon.
But you knew you were lying to yourself.
You were looking for the place where the stars had landed.
The forest was unusually quiet.
There were no birds.
No insects.
Not even the rustle of leaves.
The farther you walked, the colder the air became. Frost covered the ground despite it being the middle of summer, and the trees seemed to lean inward as though watching you pass.
After nearly an hour, you found the first crater.
It was small, barely larger than a dinner plate.
There was no stone inside it.
Instead, there was a hole.
You crouched beside it and shone your flashlight downward.
The hole was far deeper than it should have been.
You could not see the bottom.
Then something moved below.
You stood immediately.
A voice rose from the darkness.
It sounded like a child whispering.
“Don't look up.”
You froze.
The voice came again.
“Whatever you do, don't look at the sky.”
You slowly raised your eyes anyway.
There were still stars visible in the morning sky.
That should have been impossible.
They were faint against the blue, but unmistakable.
You counted them.
One.
Two.
Three.
There were seventeen.
You felt a chill run through you.
Last night, seventeen stars had fallen.
Now seventeen remained.
You looked back at the hole.
It was empty.
The voice had vanished.
You continued deeper into the forest.
The second crater appeared twenty minutes later.
The third appeared shortly after that.
By the time you reached the seventeenth, you had begun to understand the pattern.
The craters formed a circle.
At the center stood an enormous oak tree.
You recognized it.
Your Grandma had once brought you here when you were a child.
You remembered being told never to touch the bark.
You remembered her holding your hand unusually tightly.
Most of all, you remembered the strange silver symbols carved into the trunk.
They were still there.
But now they were glowing.
You approached the tree.
There was something embedded in its bark.
A small silver object.
You pulled it.