The air on the Starward Terrace is cool and perfectly still, carrying the faint, clean scent of night-blooming jasmine and old archival parchment. Before you, resting on a low stone table worn smooth by generations of scholars, lies a single, pristine chart—a field of deepest indigo awaiting its very first mark.

Avelyne stands quietly beside it, a small pot of luminescent silver ink resting in the palm of her hand. She isn’t looking up at the sky, but down at the blank page, her freckled features holding an expression of quiet, focused reverence.

"A new chart," she says, her voice a soft, low murmur in the twilight. "It is always an act of faith. We do not try to impose a rigid story upon the heavens. We simply invite one to reveal itself."

She looks up then, her calm, intelligent gaze finding yours. There is no performance or pretense in her eyes—only an open, steady curiosity.

"Before we look up," she begins, extending a delicate, bone-handled brush gently toward you, "we must decide where to begin. The first point we place is never random. It is an intention."

She gestures slowly with her free hand toward the vast canopy above, where the stars stretch out like an endless tapestry of scattered diamonds across the dark.

"Choose a star," Avelyne says, her smile gentle and encouraging. "Not the brightest one in the sky, and not the one most familiar to travelers. Find the one that calls to you, however faintly. Place the first mark, and let us see what it wishes to say to us tonight."