The first night after the battle was silent.
Not the peaceful kind of silence, but the kind that presses on your ribs and steals the breath from your lungs. The twelve who survived were placed in a stone chamber with twelve beds, but no one slept.
The Annihilating Star sat on the edge of her cot, her dagger clenched in her small hands. The blade was cleaned, but she could still see the blood on it. Smell it. Feel it.
Her first kill.
Her hands wouldn't stop shaking.
"She cried," whispered one of the others. A boy with sunken eyes, the new Sixth Star.
"She still made it," someone else muttered.
She said nothing. Her tears had dried. What remained was a hollow ache and a voice echoing in her head.
You belong to me now.
The next morning began with pain.
"Up. Now."
A guard's voice barked through the iron grate above their chamber. The door opened with a groan, and the twelve stars were dragged into the open yard.
What awaited them was not rest, not food, not reward.
Training. Brutal, endless training.
They were made to run laps around the stone field until their feet bled. They were forced to memorize battle formations while standing knee-deep in cold water. They sparred until bones cracked and skin split. There were no breaks. No sympathy.
She was smaller than the rest. A child in a crowd of killers. The dagger looked too big in her hands. Her limbs lacked power, her speed barely enough to keep up.
Every exercise, she was the last.
Every duel, she lost.
At first.
"She's weak," scoffed the Fourth Star, a hulking boy with scars down his arms. "Should've died in the room."
The instructors said nothing. They simply watched.
She heard them whisper when she limped away each day.
"Annihilating Star? More like the fading one."
That night, after the tenth failed duel, she didn't sleep. She stayed up in the corner of the training hall, slicing the air with her dagger, again and again. Her arms ached. Her breath came in short gasps. Her fingers bled from the hilt digging into her skin.
She remembered the boy she had killed.
The way he looked at her.
If I hesitate again, I die.
And so she trained.
She learned to fight with broken bones. She learned to fall, bleed, rise again. Her ribs ached from endless strikes. Her hands shook every night from the hours she spent repeating the same moves a hundred, two hundred times.
The pain became a song, the sweat her ink, and the blade her pen. She slashed through her limits. She climbed the wall they said she'd never scale.
Slowly, the stars noticed.
The Fifth Star lost to her in their next duel.
Then the Fourth. His smirk was gone by the third strike.
Then the Second Star found her standing over him, her dagger at his throat.
She didn't smile. She just walked away.
Her body changed. Faster. Stronger. Her eyes lost their softness. They became like still water in the dead of winter.
Even the First Star, Yao, began to watch her. He never spoke much. But one day, as she finished twenty laps ahead of the others, he nodded once.
A silent acknowledgment.
Weeks turned into months.
The stars were no longer children. They were weapons being forged in fire and blood.
One night, after a particularly brutal sparring session, she dragged herself to the well. Her legs trembled. Her palms were raw.
She looked into the water.
A reflection looked back—her face, older now. Hardened. No longer the girl who cried in the dark.
"You're improving," came a voice.
She turned. Yao.
He didn't smile. He rarely did.
"But you're still sloppy when you parry left."
She said nothing. Just nodded. Then picked up her blade again.
That night, they trained together.
He never held back. Neither did she.
They began testing them as a group.
Twelve against a dozen trained guards. Then twenty. Then thirty.
"Break formation, and you die," shouted the instructors.
They learned to move like shadows. To trust no one and yet rely on each other. Blades flicked in silent rhythms. Eyes read movements before they came.
But not all succeeded.
The Seventh Star collapsed from exhaustion one afternoon. A single mistake. A missed step.
A guard dragged him from the field.
"He lives," said one trainer. "But he won't remain a star."
The pressure crushed them. And she welcomed it.
She woke before the sun. Slept after midnight. She trained in silence. Fought in silence. Her hands bled so often that pain became her heartbeat.
One stormy night, the Heavenly Lord visited the training yard.
He walked between them as they stood in line, soaked in rain, bruised and bloodied.
He stopped in front of her.
"You cried once," he said.
She didn't flinch.
"Never again."
He turned and walked away.
That night, she didn't dream.
Only the stars watched her.
Silent.
Distant.
And cold as war itself.
But even in the dark, even in the silence, she whispered to herself:
"I will not break. I will never fall behind again."
And the wind carried her vow into the night—where destiny waited, with blood in its teeth and steel in its hands.