Sigmund adjusted his grip on the musket. Something had gotten into his boot, and his foot itched something fierce, yet he was afraid of making too much noise while fixing it. It was nighttime, and he was watching the gate. Can't stomp around like a drunkard while watching the gate at night, it just won't do.

So he just ignored it as best he could, gritting his teeth and wiggling his toes.

The night sky was beautiful. Sigmund often heard the others gripe and grumble about being sent up to watch the gate at night, but he never minded it. In fact, he quite enjoyed it. The air was cool, and there was a thick, comfortable silence that just never appeared during the day. And of course, Lord Sól's deep blue cloak that stretched across the sky, studded with a million diamonds, was a sight to behold. Sigmund sometimes wondered how people could simply sleep the night away, when it was such a wondrous time to be awake.

But then again, maybe it's for the best. If everyone was awake at night, the silence would probably not last.

His foot still itched.

The moon was beautiful too. The ghostly silvered crown of God himself bathed everything in a soft, white light that made the dew droplets on the city rooftops sparkle. The silver crown of Night was a much calmer, gentler presence than the golden crown of Day. You could at least look at this one without going blind. Sigmund leaned against the railing of the gate tower and sighed.

He knew some preachers who wouldn't appreciate his fascination with the night, but Sigmund never understood it. Sól was the sky, right? The sky is still the sky, even at night. It's like treating someone differently because they got a new hat. Nonsensical.

The itch refused to yield, and Sigmund felt a single, unreasonably annoying drop of sweat creep from under his tricorne, past his brow and directly into his eye. He sighed and surrendered to the fiend in his boot, and sat down on the guard tower floor, unbuckling his boot as fast as he could. His thick, woolen socks were a bit too warm for this time of year, and they were the most likely culprit in the case of the itchy foot, but Sigmund liked them too much. His daughter had taken up knitting when she was stuck in bed, sick with fever, and her casual foray into the world of threads and needles stuck with her when she, thankfully, got better. The socks were her first successful project, and Sigmund treasured them, perhaps a tad more than he should. But what the hell, he could treasure a pair of socks as much as he wanted, because at night there was nobody there to question it.

He soon found a small stone, almost imperceptible in the torchlit gloom. Sigmund looked at it like he had just caught it in the act.

"Get you gone", he said quietly and flicked the stone from the guard tower and into the night. He then put the boot back on and stood up straight, hoping that nobody had seen him disappear behind the railing. He looked up at the sky again, thoughts already beginning to drift. It was a bright night, his favorite kind, when the moon was full and the clouds were sleeping.

However.

It was certainly very bright tonight. Nothing incredibly out of the ordinary, but Sigmund noticed that something was at least a little bit off, like when someone slightly moves a piece of furniture without telling you.

Then he saw it. The moon, round and ghostly silver, with it's million stars in tow.

And one really big one. He rubbed his eyes with the base of his thumb. Looked again.

No, it was real. A big, silver thing, so similar to the other shapes in the sky, and yet so different. Maybe Lord Sól had a daughter, just like Sigmund did, and she had just been fitted for her own silver crown, he thought.

And then he noticed that it was getting bigger. Or, and the thought filled his head faster than he was comfortable with, it was getting closer.

Sigmund knew the rules. He was to watch the gate from the gate tower. If people approach, you demand identification. If they're not important, you beg them wait until daybreak. If they are important, you open the gate.

If it's worse than that, you ring the bell. If the city is attacked, or if some danger looms, you ring the bell. If you ring the bell for nothing, you'll make an enemy of everyone within a considerable distance, and you'll be given an even worse position as soon as the captain could be bothered.

Sigmund wasn't clear on the rules of bell ringing in response to a very concerning star, and he was willing to bet that the captain wasn't either. He reached his hand out towards the bell, silvered in the moonlight, and rang it as loud as he could. "On your feet, friends!", he shouted towards the sleeping city, "the sky is falling and I can't hold it by myself!"

***

Captain Larson had a gaze that could make a good-sized boulder shrink up, and Sigmund felt a twinge of regret. Maybe this had been a bad idea. The captain stifled a yawn.

"You rang the bell, guardsman", he stated, his voice gravelly from sleep.

"I did, sir," said Sigmund.

"Did you also say something about the sky falling, or was that just a very silly night terror of mine?"

"I said that too, sir." Sigmund pointed up at the sky, past the railing of the tower, and he could feel Larson's granite gaze follow his finger and ascend into the night. His face changed, and he took a small step back. The others stirred. The captain doesn't step back. It was known. He was always unyielding, like steel, able to shoulder whatever fell upon him like he had been preparing for the moment his whole life.

But not this time.

"God in heaven...", muttered Larson. The falling star was very big now, as big as the moon. Sigmund could see a faint, spectral trail following behind it like a bridal shroud.

Silence followed, uncomfortable and stifling, until one of the guards spoke up.

"Orders, sir?" She was young, and Sigmund didn't recognize her. "What do you want us to do?" The captain turned to face her, his flint-like eyes looking right through her.

"The sky is falling, guardsman, and I'm open to suggestions." He followed that with a dry chuckle, and seemed to regain some of his composure.

"Wake the people up", he boomed. "I want as many people as possible awake and aware of what is going on." He turned to Sigmund.

"You, wake the peasantry. Tell them to hide within the walls, and tell them to do it quickly."

Sigmund nodded and bolted down the stairs. There was a stretch of good farmland outside the walls, and many peasants had their houses there. They were only marched inside the walls when something bad was about to happen, and Sigmund swallowed hard. This was one of those bad times. The gate creaked open as two of his comrades wrangled the winch as fast as they could, and Sigmund plucked a torch from a sconce before he slipped out of the city. It would have been black as pitch in the peasant town, but the falling star made it slightly more bearable. He saw nobody awake in the town, and the torches were meekly smoldering in their sconces. No guards, nothing. He pointed his musket skyward, and in a flash of smoke and flame a shot roared loudly in the night. People almost immediately stumbled out of their humble homes, voices raised in shock and anger.

"You are all to get inside the city walls!", shouted Sigmund, trying his hardest to put some of that captain-like heft into his voice. "Something is coming!" People had already noticed, and he saw children raise their heads and point at the big shiny thing that wasn't the moon, the light reflecting off of their saucer eyes before they were pulled into the arms of their parents running towards the city gates. An old man, limping despite his homemade crutch, paused to put his hand on Sigmund's shoulder. "What is this devilry?", he said, voice trembling.

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"We don't know, sir, but the city walls will protect you." Sigmund looked around and met the eyes of some other people who had stopped running.

"Protect us all", he continued. "So get moving!"

*** 

He felt the impact in his feet first. As if every single barrel of gunpowder in the city had exploded at once. No, more than that. This was far beyond Carlean might, and comparing this to anything human immediately made Sigmund feel foolish. The star, a black mass swirling with red and silver, struck the edge of the forest, far away. The Endwood, they called it. A place that was not for humans. Never had been.

Sigmund saw columns of dust and smoke shoot skyward, devouring the stars closest to the ground.

And then came the sound. A sound of breaking and sundering, and Sigmund could feel the world itself scream out in pain and shock as it was torn apart and burned. He saw some of his comrades fall to their knees, hands desperately covering their ears, and Sigmund slowly thought about doing the same. All his thoughts were slow. Hazy. Like he had all the time in the world to make his decisions, but with every awareness that it wouldn't matter. No human thought, no human action could ever matter at a time like this. He didn't even really feel it when something in his left ear broke, and he was only mostly aware of the warm trickle of blood running down his neck, seeping into his blue coat. He sluggishly put his fingers to his ear, observing the blood like it wasn't even his.

And then it passed. The world became painfully silent in an instant, and Sigmund only barely heard the voices of people in the city screaming and crying, and the thousands upon thousands of panicked bird calls as they flocked from the forest, away from the terror that had struck their home.

Captain Larson didn't move a muscle. His hands were on the railing of the tower, knuckles white and veins like ropes. Sigmund wasn't sure if it was reassuring that the captain was standing tall like always, or terrifying. Something else flared up in the forest, wriggling free from the enormous clouds of dust and smoke. Sigmund saw the burnished orange of fire licking the defenseless forest. The Endwood had never burned, never ever. He heard other guardsmen breathlessly mutter prayers, and Sigmund couldn't help but wonder if praying even mattered. This thing came from the sky, so what good would praying do? If Lord Sól had sent this, then the feeble prayers of ants would hardly sway him in any way. He could hear the fire now, roaring as it feasted on the forest. He turned his right ear towards it, both eager and afraid to hear more. He didn't notice the captain's hand on his shoulder until Larson shook him violently. Sigmund looked into the captain's eyes, and he was afraid of what he saw. The stony gaze was cracked, like the invincible captain had finally met his match.

"You have a family, guardsman?" His voice was steady, but his eyes were hauntingly weak.

"Yes, sir."

"Go to them." Captain Larson let go of his shoulder and turned towards the other guardsmen.

"All of you, go to your families, your loved ones. Hell, go hold your favorite tankard as close as possible. This is a night of devilry, and I begrudge none their chosen comforts." The guardsmen saluted and bolted as fast as they could down the stairs and out of the tower. Sigmund followed, slower than he had liked. He still wasn't out of the haze that had struck him, and his left ear was beginning to hurt. He stumbled across the cobblestone streets, past moonlit buildings he knew well but couldn't quite remember. Luckily his feet had more sense than his head, as he soon found himself outside the familiar wooden door, and the familiar door handle that his uncle had carved for him for his wedding day. As soon as he grasped it, he could feel it turning, and the door swung open. Linnea's face was twisted with fear, her hair a messy birds nest. He saw past her; his son August was curled up into a ball on the floor, face tucked against his knees, and he could hear him crying. He hated that sound more than anything, it made him grit his teeth and tense his hands, and it was the last sound he heard before everything went black.

*** 

The fire was still smoldering in places, like a great beast that had gorged itself so full that it had to rest before continuing. Sigmund struggled to believe what he was seeing.

Every Carlean child grows up learning about the Endwood. How it's an enormous, endless forest full of devilry and darkness. A playground for forces beyond human ken, who would snatch you up and eat you in a heartbeat if you let them. How the Endwood itself hated humans so much that it had erected a wall long ago, a massive wall made of wicked briars that would lash out at intruders. Axes could not bite them, and fire could not burn them.

Not human fire anyway.

Sigmund had only been this close to the Endwood once before, when his father had taken him there to, as he had put it back then, "put the fear of God into you, my son". It had worked, and Sigmund had never returned. Until now. On the ride there he hadn't even been able to imagine what he would see, but it was what he wouldn't see that struck the hardest.

The briar wall was gone, reduced to piles of ash and dust that reached to Sigmund's knees. The ground was charred black, and Sigmund imagined that nothing would ever grow here again. Not in a hundred years, not ever. He saw skeletonized birds and other creatures, victims of sleep and circumstance.

This stretch of ashen devastation stretched its black fingers deeper into the forest, and Sigmund only now realized how massive and powerful the Endwood truly must be if even a little bit of it was still standing after all that. No birds were singing, there were no sounds here on the edge of civilization, except for the breathing of guards and their horses. One guardsman spoke up. Sigmund recognized the woman from that night, the one he didn't know.

"The briars are gone", she said. The words sounded bizarre when spoken out loud, but they were true.

"So they are", said Captain Larson. His horse was old and grey and just as stern and still as the man himself. There was a silence, the kind of silence that occurs when everybody present begins swallowing their questions, no matter how burning.

"What now?", said Sigmund finally, cringing at how loud his voice sounded. Larson turned to him, to all of them. He looked very old all of a sudden, as if part of the captain's vigor had burned away with the briars.

"I don't know", he said. "I don't think anyone knows. I don't think the priests know, but they'd hate to hear me say that. I don't think any scientist, nor any noble knows, even though they both love to pretend otherwise." He paused, took a deep breath that made the faint wood smoke around him swirl.

"So I believe we need to think. All of us need to think, long and hard, about all of this. This might turn out to be a blessing, or a terrible curse. It might not even matter, and we might not even be thinking about it in a month's time. But things are different now, and it's only proper to stop and gather ones thoughts before stepping foot into the unknown." And with that, he turned his horse around and began riding back to the relative safety of the city. Sigmund and the others followed, and Sigmund wondered how long the stench of this smoke would cling to his clothes. How long it would continue to give him nightmares.