The Last Fallen Star

I’M NOT SURE WHAT I thought would happen after I dropped the ultimate truth bomb on Emmett. I guess I expected him to scream and shout. Maybe even throw out some colorful words that would land a few bucks in the swear jar. But in reality, he doesn’t even look at me. It’s like he can’t look at me.

The three Horangi scholars are staring at me with plate-size eyes, so I know everyone in this room has heard the truth. But instead of responding, Emmett shrinks into his chair. He keeps his eyes down and blinks blankly like a robot. It’s like the news is so outrageous and unbelievable that all he can do is retreat into his shell and pretend it was never uttered.

“Em,” I try again, not knowing what I want to say. “I only found out at Hattie’s ceremony. It’s why we couldn’t do the gift-sharing spell. I was going to tell you, I promise. I was waiting for the right time. I…It’s just that I…” I trail off. What words could I possibly find to tell him how sorry I am for keeping the biggest secret of my life? How must he feel knowing that I come from the clan that killed his mom?

My eyes start stinging, and I don’t know if it’s from the blinding whiteness of this room or my blinding guilt. “Em, I’m sorry,” I manage to whisper before a hard lump forms in my throat.

Sora coughs as if to bring herself back into the present. Then she signals to the Horangi boy and nods to Emmett. The boy rubs his wrists together. I notice that, like Austin, the boy doesn’t have a Gi. He closes his eyes and clasps his hands into a ball. Then, in one swift motion, he releases them and brings them down as if imitating a lava flow. Immediately, the water ropes binding Emmett release and splash around his feet.

I gasp. The man could control the metal stars on his jacket, and this boy can wield water…. And neither of them used Gi or incantations. How is that possible?

But I don’t get to ponder the question for long. As soon as he is free from his watery shackles, Emmett makes a mad dash for the exit, taking Boris with him. He doesn’t give me a second thought, much less a glance. He just pulls the door open and runs away, away from me, and something withers inside my chest.

I strain against my liquid ropes, wanting to go after him. But Sora shakes her head. “Let him go. He won’t get far. And we need to talk.”

I bite my lip but don’t argue. It’s probably best if I give Emmett a bit of time to cool off anyway.

Sora crouches in front of me so we’re at eye level. “I don’t believe we got your name,” she says. “You know my name is Sora. I’m the clan leader of the LA Horangi.”

She points to the man. “This is Austin, and this,” she says, nodding to the boy, “is Taeyo.”

The boy adjusts the red bow tie around his neck. He stares at me curiously but doesn’t say anything. I glance at him and at the two adults and wonder if they’re his parents. Aside from Taeyo’s very different fashion choices, they look like they could be a family.

“I’m Riley Oh,” I say hesitantly. The last thing I want to do is make small talk with these people.

Austin whispers something in Sora’s ear, and she nods sadly. “Yes, that’s what I thought, too.”

She turns to me. “Riley, I think I know your parents. You are the spitting image of your mother. I believe you are the daughter of Mina and Yoon Seo.”

I’m momentarily stunned. My birth parents are still alive? “Are they…Are they here?”

Her face looks pained. “Sorry, I should’ve been clearer. I knew your parents. They were valiant and loyal scholars who passed away protecting our clan. I’m sorry you didn’t get to meet them.”

My gut wrenches. And then I feel stupid. It’s not like I knew of them before today, and I have loving parents who raised me. I shouldn’t care what happened to the Seos, let alone be disappointed they’re not here.

“Where have you been living all this time?” Sora asks. “Who have you been living with? And how are you even…alive?”

When I think of the horrible things the Horangi have done, both to Emmett and the gifted community, my first reaction is to shut down. She doesn’t have the right to ask me any questions.

But I see genuine concern in her eyes. She must have been close to Mina and Yoon. And if I want these scholars to help me, I need them to trust me.

So I hunker down and give her the highlight reel of my life. Right up until coming here with my best friend to save my sister’s life. And when it’s all off my chest, I feel a weird sense of relief. As if the burden is lighter for having shared it.

The three of them listen intently. No one says anything after I finish. Instead, Taeyo silently releases my water shackles, while Sora swings open the white wooden door with a flick of her hand. With that, the three of them walk toward the exit, and Sora says, “Follow me.”

The door leads straight out into fresh air, and to my surprise, I’m in the upper branches of a tree. The room is suspended up here. It’s a windowless rectangular tree house with a wooden staircase spiraling down to the forest floor.

When my feet land on the soil and I look back up, I frown. All I see is a leafy canopy.

“All the campus structures have camouflaging mirrors on the outside,” explains Austin, “so they blend in with the forest.”

Austin nods. “That and more. The campus is what we call our entire network of tree houses. The water-training room is merely one of the buildings. We have offices, dorms, cafés, restaurants—everything you need to live, study, and work here.”

I raise my eyebrows. I don’t want to admit it, but I’m low-key impressed. I wish Emmett could be learning this, too. I look around for him, but he’s nowhere to be seen. Sora had said he wouldn’t get far. What did that mean? I hope he’s okay, wherever he is.

“I have some business to attend to,” Austin says, turning to leave in the opposite direction. “But Sora and Taeyo will give you the grand tour.”

He hurries off, and Taeyo smiles at me shyly. “Come on, we’ll show you around.”

Sora and Taeyo lead me through the trees until we get to a sparser part of the forest that opens onto a lake. Sora rubs her wrists and chants some incantations, and a nearby fig tree stretches and morphs until it transforms into a staircase up to the canopy.

I squint and look up. Now that I know the walls are covered in mirrors, I can just make out the edges of a structure above us. This one is much larger than the one we were in earlier.

Sora twists her wrist, and leafy green vines wrap around the staircase’s banister, weaving themselves all the way to the top. I admit it’s a nice finishing touch, giving it a fairy-tale look.

“When the council excommunicated us, we had to reestablish ourselves from the ground up,” Sora explains, as we climb the newly built stairs. “We and all the other Horangi clan chapters around the world lost our Gi, our access to the temple, and with it, our library and source of knowledge. So we had to adapt. It was the only way to survive.”

When we get to the top of the stairs and walk into the building, my jaw drops. This one doesn’t look like the inside of a cooler. It looks like Google’s headquarters.

“Welcome to the campus HQ. This is one of our main office blocks.” Sora waves at a few people who walk past and greet her.

I look around curiously. There are people sitting at shared desks, typing on laptops; others lounging on beanbag chairs while drinking coffee from reusable cups; and kids playing with dogs in the designated playground areas. I spy two huge gumball machines—one full of Skittles and the other with M&M’s—and a big vending machine with the largest variety of Pepero sticks I’ve ever seen. The walls seem to double as whiteboards, and people have scribbled notes, spells, and illustrations all over them. One section has Knowledge and Truth spelled out in impressive graffiti.

Taeyo sees my expression and grins. “Sora says we started using tech to strengthen our spellwork way before we were cut off from the community. And afterward, even though we lost access to our sacred texts, we figured out a way to upload as much of the knowledge as we had left to the Cloud.” He holds up his phone. “My spellbook’s in here now.” He then waves to the space around us. “Who needs a temple when you have all this, amirite?”

Sora smiles and puts her hand around Taeyo’s shoulders. “By relying on the Horangi hive mind around the world, we also managed to hack the five sacred elements on Earth so we can do magic without a Gi.”

I stare wide-eyed at them and down at their Gi-less wrists. “Is that how you were controlling water before?” I ask Taeyo. “And you, wood?” I say to Sora.

Taeyo proudly holds up his wrist. “Some of our best scholars programmed a biochip that can be inserted into the wrist and do the job of a Gi. Without the need for divine intervention.”

Sora explains. “In a traditional Gi ceremony, the cauldron reveals the element you’re not born with. The focus is on what you lack. And then the goddesses channel their divine power through the witch’s Gi for the witch to do magic.”

“Yeah,” I say. “That’s how it’s always been, for thousands of years.”

“But we posed the question: What if there’s another way—one that doesn’t require the divine? What if, instead of focusing on what we lack, we focus on what we already possess?”

I think of the four fires revealed at my Gi ceremony and cringe. I didn’t lack just one element—I lacked almost all of them.

“The goddesses require us to have a perfect balance of all five elements in order to channel their powers. But we found that tapping into our dominant element—the thing we already have in abundance—is enough. It not only works like a Gi, it also allows us to wield that element. Like you saw when Austin controlled metal, or when Taeyo manipulated water.”

My mouth gapes. Does that mean I could wield fire? The thought blows my mind. I grew up thinking I didn’t have a drop of magic in my blood. Now I find out there’s a way I could control the thing I’ve always been ashamed of. No, not just control—master.

My first gut reaction is to ask Sora if I could learn this skill, too. I want to know how it feels to have magic at my fingertips. But then Hattie’s face pops into my mind, reminding me of my priorities. This is not the time to be picking up party tricks. I have a job to do.

Instead, I ask another question. “But how does it work? Where does the power come from if not the goddesses?”

Taeyo points to the water cooler near us, and then to a running tap a man has turned on in the kitchenette across the room. “The five sacred elements are all around us. The Earth was made by Mago Halmi herself, and we were all created in her image, which means we and the elements are all divine in our own right. We don’t need the Godrealm to access our gifts. Magic is inside each of us.”

I immediately think of Auntie Okja. She’d told me the Horangi had become obsessed with power because they’d figured out a way for witches to become as potent as the goddesses. That’s why the scholars had been cursed by their goddess to never wield magic again. It was also the reason Emmett’s mom had been stuck in the cross fire keeping the seventh artifact out of their hands.

A bubble of anger pops inside me. They can adapt all they want—it doesn’t erase the horrible things they’ve done. At the end of the day, they killed Emmett’s mom, and there is no excuse for taking a life.

“Is that why you did it?” I ask quietly. “Is that why you staged an attack against the gifted community? Why you killed people? For…for power?” I consider the life I could have had if the Horangi hadn’t become corrupt. All the things I don’t even know I missed out on. “Why couldn’t you just have been happy being the keepers of the sacred texts? Why did you have to be so greedy?”

“You don’t know the full picture,” Sora starts. “There are always tw—”

“Don’t lie,” I say. I slip the letter out of my pocket and show it to Sora. “I know you were hiding the seventh artifact for your own use.”

She reads it, and her eyebrows arch in surprise. “How did you come to have this?”

When I don’t respond, she grabs a Swiss ball and invites me to sit on it. “You were honest with us about what brought you here. So let me now repay you in kind.”

Out of principle, I refuse the Swiss ball and sit on a nearby chair instead. I don’t want her to think she’s won me over. I cross my arms. This had better be good.

She takes a big breath. “People know the Horangi as keepers of the sacred texts because we looked after the gifted library. But that was only one of our duties. For generations upon generations, we have also been the keepers of the sacred artifacts—divine but dark objects that represent the goddesses’ original sin.”

Original sin…I remember Adeline’s monologue about the goddesses believing that the dark sun and moon represented their inner darkness. When the goddesses commanded the Haetae to devour the sun and moon, they committed a sin against their mother. As a result, Mago Halmi locked them out of the Mortalrealm. It makes sense that the fallen shards, or artifacts, are physical representations of the daughters’ crime.

“But our ancestors were sworn to secrecy,” Sora continues. “We had a duty to protect the artifacts, even from people in our own community. If they fell into the wrong hands, these powerful dark relics could break the equilibrium between the three realms.”

Now I understand the real reason why the Cave Bear Goddess wants the last fallen star destroyed. “Okay,” I say, trying to see where this is going, “and…?”

“But we failed to adequately protect the sunstone ax. The council found it, and they, like so many others, became infected by its power. They became corrupt. We had no choice but to destroy the artifact before the members kept it for themselves.”

I snort. “No, that’s wrong. The council was trying to stop you from using it. The elders aren’t corrupt.”

A dark shadow passes over Sora’s face. “We believe they were. And when we tried to reveal the truth, they framed us and banished us from the gifted community.” She shakes her head. “Because of the council, many innocent people were killed. Including your parents.”

I swallow. This is all a lie. A big, elaborate invention. Emmett’s mom had been an elder on the council. And in the vision around the Haetae’s bell, I’d seen her taking the sunstone ax from the Horangi.

Suddenly, the blood freezes in my veins. Could Emmett’s mom have been taking it from the Horangi to use for herself? I shake my head. Impossible.

“How do you know all this, anyway?” I ask, starting to feel sweaty and uncomfortable.

Taeyo sits on the Swiss ball that Sora offered me earlier. “Sora was the Horangi elder on the council at the time. She knows because it happened on her watch.”

Wait, Sora used to be on the council? I shake my head. So this woman standing in front of me is the infamous Ms. Kwon—the one the council accused of masterminding the Horangi attack against the gifted community all those years ago.

Hiccups start erupting from my throat, and I sound like a gurgling drain. The council couldn’t be corrupt—no way. But what Sora and Taeyo are saying doesn’t seem illogical.

Taeyo bounces gently on the ball. “We’ve been searching for the eighth artifact for years. None of the Horangi clans around the world have it, and we think the only way to keep the Mortalrealm safe is to destroy it. Like we did with the seventh one.”

It’s all too much. I pinch my thigh for even entertaining the idea of believing them. “You guys just want to find the last artifact for yourselves! This is all a big story to cover up what you really want—to take the power of the last fallen star for your own gain. Admit it!”

Taeyo looks super offended and starts talking really fast. “It’s not a story. It’s the truth! You’re too blinded by what the council has told you to see it. You’ve been brainwashed!”

Sora goes to borrow one of the scholars’ laptops. She brings it over and opens it in front of me. “I know it’s hard to question everything you’ve ever been taught, but let me show you something.”

She opens an app that looks a lot like Google Drive but is called Campus Drive, and selects a folder called Project Prophecy. She scrolls down the files and clicks on a JPEG.

The photo that opens shows me the man I’d seen in the Haetae’s vision—the man who’d had the onyx stone. Here he’s gazing at the woman next to him with utter admiration. She’s smiling broadly at the camera, her hand draped lovingly over her pregnant belly. When I see her face, my heart stops. We have the same eyes, the same angled cheekbones, the same sprinkling of sesame-seed freckles across the nose. I know without a semblance of doubt who she is.

“It’s them,” I whisper, reaching out to touch the screen. “My birth parents.”

Tears well in my eyes, and suddenly I don’t care that they were cursed or that they were power-obsessed or that they were outcast from the community. For a moment, I just miss them with all my heart. I know it sounds weird to miss people I don’t remember, but right now, I wish for nothing more than to be held in their arms.

Taeyo hands me a tissue, and Sora opens another photo. This one is of Mina and Yoon sitting side by side in front of their computers, working intently. Lines of concentration mask their faces.

“Your biological parents were some of the first scholars to use complex algorithms to decrypt our oldest, most indecipherable sacred texts,” she explains. “And before they died, they made an incredible discovery.”

I lean into the photo, wishing I could jump into the scene and ask them about their discovery myself.

“They decrypted one of our oldest prophecies,” Sora continues. “One that we believe predicts a frightening future.”

She opens a third document—this time an encrypted file that she runs through a program called Decryptonite. The loading bar boots into action, and when it reaches 100 percent, a simple text file opens with the following words:

When the blood moon and black sun appear to the gaze

To mark the start of the end of all days,

In the one last divine, a weapon shall rise;

Unless the gold-destroyer ends the soul who lies.

I read the prophecy over and over and feel my head go light as I digest the first two lines.

“A lunar and solar eclipse recently happened on the same day,” I say, frowning hard. “Do you think that was the blood moon and black sun?”

Sora’s mouth tightens as she nods. “We don’t know what the second couplet means yet. But if we don’t locate the eighth artifact—which we believe is the one last divine weapon—and destroy it, our days may be numbered.”

My heart races. Were Sora and Taeyo telling the truth about the council, my biological parents, and this prophecy? Could the entire Mortalrealm actually be at risk if I don’t find this star?

I grip Hattie’s heart vial through my top. Maybe the Horangi aren’t the villainous clan I always believed them to be. Maybe the bearded man at the temple was right and there really are two sides to every story.

There’s a thundering crash down the hall, and I jolt out of my chair and out of my thoughts. “What was that?!”