Four months before impact, 26th Year of the Palsho Era

Late summer buzzed above dead fish on the docks. Hands worked among slip-silver flashes: sorting and weighing and pouring and tossing. Scales stuck beneath fingernails. Ice spilled over a fisherman’s riches. A horizon of black sea in the pre-dawn light weighed at their backs.

A tabaxi girl, fur dampened by ocean spray, dangled a foreleg over the side of the pier. She felt brave. If there were great beasts lurking in the dark waters, she could prove it. Her head spun with eddies and algae whorls, one paw ready to break the surface. But then her father twisted one tufted ear and with a yowl she was done with daydreams.

A boy ran past them. He ducked under projectiles and wove between bins of iced fish until he reached the second floor of the fishery. A scribe greeted him with heavy brows raised, then moved his quill at the ready. The boy took a breath and began. He rattled off his memorized words. Numbers. Weights. Names. Date. Black ink on a new page. Charted, checked, approved. Then the boy left, mission accomplished.

The scribe, now alone with his books, let his eyes rest on the horizon, at the people below him on the docks and all their life’s work.

He sighed.

The sky was getting lighter, shades of gray tempering into blue. A new day. One day closer to the star’s arrival. Nearly 174 years had passed since the Kilgana Star had blessed their lands and created warriors to live on in legends passed down from generation to generation. But now it was so close the elderly scribe could almost hear the cries of triumph above the cries of fishermen. He could almost see silver swords flashing instead of fish. Soon, it would be a time in which magic would flourish instead of wishes. Where the dark waters would awaken beasts to match new heroes’ valor. So close, yet so long to wait. Four months, at his best guess. He hadn’t thought he’d live long enough to see it.

There was a knock on the door. Another boy. More numbers.

“About time,” grumbled the old scribe as he bent over his ledger once more.