The Last Fallen Star by Graci Kim (ebook reader with highlighter .txt) 📕

council at the time. She knows because it happened on her watch.”

Wait, Sora used to be on the council? I shake my head. So this woman standing in front of me is the infamous Ms. Kwon—the one the council accused of masterminding the Horangi attack against the gifted community all those years ago.

Hiccups start erupting from my throat, and I sound like a gurgling drain. The council couldn’t be corrupt—no way. But what Sora and Taeyo are saying doesn’t seem illogical.

Taeyo bounces gently on the ball. “We’ve been searching for the eighth artifact for years. None of the Horangi clans around the world have it, and we think the only way to keep the Mortalrealm safe is to destroy it. Like we did with the seventh one.”

It’s all too much. I pinch my thigh for even entertaining the idea of believing them. “You guys just want to find the last artifact for yourselves! This is all a big story to cover up what you really want—to take the power of the last fallen star for your own gain. Admit it!”

Taeyo looks super offended and starts talking really fast. “It’s not a story. It’s the truth! You’re too blinded by what the council has told you to see it. You’ve been brainwashed!”

Sora goes to borrow one of the scholars’ laptops. She brings it over and opens it in front of me. “I know it’s hard to question everything you’ve ever been taught, but let me show you something.”

She opens an app that looks a lot like Google Drive but is called Campus Drive, and selects a folder called Project Prophecy. She scrolls down the files and clicks on a JPEG.

The photo that opens shows me the man I’d seen in the Haetae’s vision—the man who’d had the onyx stone. Here he’s gazing at the woman next to him with utter admiration. She’s smiling broadly at the camera, her hand draped lovingly over her pregnant belly. When I see her face, my heart stops. We have the same eyes, the same angled cheekbones, the same sprinkling of sesame-seed freckles across the nose. I know without a semblance of doubt who she is.

“It’s them,” I whisper, reaching out to touch the screen. “My birth parents.”

“Yes,” Sora says softly. “It is.”

Tears well in my eyes, and suddenly I don’t care that they were cursed or that they were power-obsessed or that they were outcast from the community. For a moment, I just miss them with all my heart. I know it sounds weird to miss people I don’t remember, but right now, I wish for nothing more than to be held in their arms.

Taeyo hands me a tissue, and Sora opens another photo. This one is of Mina and Yoon sitting side by side in front of their computers, working intently. Lines of concentration mask their faces.

“Your biological parents were some of the first scholars to use complex algorithms to decrypt our oldest, most indecipherable sacred texts,” she explains. “And before they died, they made an incredible discovery.”

I lean into the photo, wishing I could jump into the scene and ask them about their discovery myself.

“They decrypted one of our oldest prophecies,” Sora continues. “One that we believe predicts a frightening future.”

She opens a third document—this time an encrypted file that she runs through a program called Decryptonite. The loading bar boots into action, and when it reaches 100 percent, a simple text file opens with the following words:

When the blood moon and black sun appear to the gaze

To mark the start of the end of all days,

In the one last divine, a weapon shall rise;

Unless the gold-destroyer ends the soul who lies.

I read the prophecy over and over and feel my head go light as I digest the first two lines.

“A lunar and solar eclipse recently happened on the same day,” I say, frowning hard. “Do you think that was the blood moon and black sun?”

Sora’s mouth tightens as she nods. “We don’t know what the second couplet means yet. But if we don’t locate the eighth artifact—which we believe is the one last divine weapon—and destroy it, our days may be numbered.”

My heart races. Were Sora and Taeyo telling the truth about the council, my biological parents, and this prophecy? Could the entire Mortalrealm actually be at risk if I don’t find this star?

I grip Hattie’s heart vial through my top. Maybe the Horangi aren’t the villainous clan I always believed them to be. Maybe the bearded man at the temple was right and there really are two sides to every story.

There’s a thundering crash down the hall, and I jolt out of my chair and out of my thoughts. “What was that?!”

Taeyo and Sora look at each other with worried expressions.

“Was it you? Did you kill my mom?” I hear someone scream in the distance.

“Emmett,” I explain in a rush. “We need to get to him now.”

WHEN SORA, TAEYO, AND I rush over to where the sound came from, my worst fears are realized. Emmett has cornered a bunch of scholars and is having a one-sided screaming match with them. Broken cups and dismembered laptops litter the floor next to Boris, and Emmett is holding a jar of multicolored jelly beans over his head.

“Why won’t any of you talk?! Tell me, which one of you killed my mom?!”

The scholars are holding out their wrists, ready to attack if provoked. But Emmett’s clearly not scared of them. I see sheer desperation in his eyes, and it’s like something in him has snapped. As if he’s decided he’s got nothing to lose.

“Em, please, stop!” I cry, taking the jar from him before he smashes that on the ground, too. “I know you’re mad, but this is not the way to deal with it.”

He swivels around to face me, and there is venom in his eyes. “And why should I listen to you? You’re just as bad as them. Power-hungry and magic-obsessed, using your loved ones for your