Verna

It had been five long years since Verna was sent to the Sage's Academy to study the magic of the stars. Five years without a single trip back to the Star Realm. Sometimes, it almost felt like the world had forgotten her—the daughter of the king, the Violet Princess herself. Well... perhaps that wasn't entirely fair. Life at the Academy was nothing if not overwhelming. The professors were brilliant and brutally demanding, their assignments designed to push every student to the brink. Verna barely had time to breathe, let alone feel homesick.

“Remarkable talent! Then again... what else would you expect from a Syngid?”

Her mentor, the Grand Mage Cindrilla, never missed a chance to offer praise with just a touch of pride. The Syngids were the royal family of the Star Realm, and Verna had always taken quiet pride in carrying that name.

It was said that long ago, an ancestor of the Syngid family once saved a fallen star and became a friend to the night sky. In gratitude, the star bestowed a rare gift upon the Syngid bloodline—the power to speak with the stars, to share in their ancient wisdom, and to glimpse the tides of fate.

Verna, for her part, had never been sure how much of that was true. She certainly hadn't held any heart-to-heart chats with the cosmos. The closest she'd come was being exceptionally gifted in stellar magic, and even that felt more like talent than destiny.

To her, the tale was just another myth, stretched and embroidered by time.

That is, until that night. She stood, as always, on the highest floor of the Academy's observatory, gazing into the endless sprawl of stars above.

Then—

“Please... help me... help us...”

Who's there?

Verna froze.

Verna had heard the stars calling. It wasn't a voice, not exactly—but a surge of feeling, vast and urgent, wrapped in a pulse of raw energy. The feeling rushed in all at once—wild and overwhelming—stirring the magic in her blood until it nearly slipped loose from her grip.

Perhaps the ancient pact her ancestors made with the stars had long begun to fade. Even as she pushed her magic to its very limits, Verna could only catch fragments—scattered whispers slipping through the ether.

“Star Realm... night... dragon... king...” And then—“Void.”

Only pieces came through—and none of them quite made sense. But that one—“Void”—sent a chill crawling through her veins, a cold dread that gripped her spine. She wasted no time.

Verna sought out her mentor, requested leave, and began her journey home—for the first time in five years. All along the way, she tried to reach out to the stars again, to find some lingering thread of connection. But silence was all that answered.

Just to be safe, Verna told no one of her return to the realm. Wrapped in a deep violet cloak that hid her beauty, she slipped into the royal city like a shadow. She didn't seek out the king. Instead, she found a quiet inn and watched. Waited. Searched for change.

There was none.

Days passed in stillness. And on a windless night, as starlight rained down across the rooftops, it came. A roar—high and mournful—ripped through the silence. The cry of a dragon.

If fate hadn't put Verna in the royal city that night, the entire city—perhaps the entire kingdom—might have been lost.

The Void, a force born from the cosmic stars themselves, had always shared a mysterious kinship with the stars. Yet after arriving in this world, it was stunned to discover that this bond had nearly vanished. The reason? Star Realm. The kingdom's very existence disrupted the Void's natural influence.

What began as a mission to wipe out the Star Realm soon twisted into something darker: a scheme to use the kingdom to siphon power from the stars themselves.

Slowly, the Void crept into the kingdom that revered the stars, poisoning it from within. Corruption and whispers took root, subtle but relentless. Things began to change—quietly, insidiously.

The first to notice was the King himself. But by then, it was already too late. When he tried to awaken the Starborn Dragon, the ancient guardian slumbering beneath the palace, he found it had already been tainted. The cry it released was not one of fury—but grief.

The Void made its move. Possessing the dragon, it rose into the night sky and began its ritual: a dance that drew power from the constellations above. Only one thing could stop it—the royal starmagic array, a relic that responded solely to the blood of the royal line. But the Void had accounted for it. The King was already in the dragon's grasp.

And his only daughter, Verna the Violet Princess, was far away at the Sage's Academy...

No. I'm here.

In the end, it was Verna who activated the starmagic array. Her power halted the corrupted dragon, forcing the Void to retreat—especially as human reinforcements raced to the royal city.

The city roared with cheers. But Verna did not smile. Her father had been taken by the Void.

Worse still, although she had studied the Void at the Academy, memorized the profiles of Void Lord, Blade of the Void, and others, this new foe matched none of those records. A new threat.

And so, Verna realized: her homecoming was far from over.