LGHTNOVELBOOK Chapter 18: The Slow Burn of Stars
The Slow Burn of Stars**
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### **I: The Weight of a Single Spin**
Tom Peters sat on the edge of the Sky Spires' fractured balcony, legs dangling over a 3,000-foot drop. The Golden Roulette Wheel hovered beside him, its symbols dimmed to a faint hum. Below, the ruins of the Council's last attack smoldered—a scarred valley where luck had run dry.
**[Golden Roulette Wheel – Idle Mode]**
▸ *Charge: 62%*
▸ *Soul Integrity: 84%*
Xina found him there, her boots crunching on debris. She tossed him a dried fruit from her ration pack. "You've been staring at that drop for an hour."
"Calculating," Tom said, catching it without looking.
"Calculating what?"
"The odds of surviving if I jumped."
The Wheel flickered. *[Symbol: Terminal Velocity – Survival Chance: 0.7%]*.
Xina sat beside him. "And?"
Tom bit into the fruit. "I'd land in a pile of Voidweaver silk. Break both legs. You'd carry me back, complaining the whole time."
She snorted. "Accurate."
**[Passive Luck Activation – Subconscious]**
▸ *Outcome: Non-Lethal Fall (Probability Adjusted)*
They sat in silence, watching ash fall like gray snow.
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### **II: Flashback – The First Erasure**
*Six months earlier.*
Diane's hands trembled as she adjusted the neural harness binding Tom to the Wheel. "This will hurt," she warned.
"You said that last time," Tom muttered.
The lab's walls flickered with holograms of distant galaxies—Kaltara Prime, Vexar-9, the Twin Helix Nebula. All test subjects.
"This isn't a game," Diane snapped, her voice fraying. "The Wheel isn't a toy. It's a *responsibility*."
Tom rolled his eyes. "Spin, win, repeat. Got it."
She activated the harness.
Pain.
*Galaxies dissolving. Trillions of lives snuffed out in a blink. Their luck—their *essence*—poured into him, sweet and electric.*
Tom screamed. Diane wept.
**[System Log – First Activation]**
▸ *Galaxies Erased: 3*
▸ *Mortality Acknowledged: No*
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### **III: The Mundanity of Cosmic Power**
Rebuilding the Spires was tedious.
Tom's luck ensured stones aligned perfectly, but it couldn't speed up the work. He hauled debris alongside Xina, Lira, and a crew of surviving Voidweaver acolytes—teenagers with ink-stained hands and too much grief.
"Why don't you just… *will* the Spires back?" asked Kiri, the youngest acolyte, her braids singed from the last battle.
Tom hefted a cracked pillar. "Because luck's a lazy god. It gives shortcuts, not miracles."
"Prove it," she challenged.
He spun the Wheel. *[Symbol: Reconstruction]*.
A single brick repaired itself.
Kiri groaned. "That's it?"
"Told you," Tom said, tossing her a trowel. "Now earn your keep."
**[Golden Roulette – Minor Utility]**
▸ *Morale Boost: +5% (Temporary)*
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### **IV: Stacy's Pilgrimage**
The *Worldstrider* docked at dusk, its hull barnacled with void lichen. Stacy emerged, her mutations subdued to a faint scales-and-starlight shimmer. She carried a First Weaver relic—a music box that played the sound of dying stars.
"For the kid," she said, tossing it to Kiri. "Don't open it at night."
Tom eyed her. "Since when do you do gifts?"
"Since the Sanctum told me to." Stacy's void-touched gaze lingered on the Spires. "You're rebuilding it wrong."
"Oh?"
"The original Spires weren't stone. They were *bone*. First Weaver skeletons." She pressed a claw to the nearest wall. "Their marrow held timelines. You're stacking rocks."
**[Celestial Architecture – Correction Logged]**
▸ *Rebuild Progress Reset to 12%*
Tom sighed. "Thanks."
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### **V: The Council's Ghost**
A hologram flickered to life in the mess hall—an old Council propaganda reel.
*Diane, younger and sharper, stood beside the original Golden Roulette. "With this, we'll unshackle fate,"* she declared to a crowd of Celestial dignitaries.
Xina froze. "That's her? Before…?"
"Before she stole the Wheel," Tom said, pausing the feed. "Before she chose me."
**[Encrypted File Detected – Playback: Y/N]**
He selected *Yes*.
*Diane's private log: "The Council wants a weapon. I'll give them a *child*. Let them rage when their key becomes a *person*."*
The hologram dissolved.
"Well," Xina said, "that explains the genocide attempts."
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### **VI: The Luck Thief**
A new enemy arrived—a rogue Arbiter named Veyl, her armor grafted with stolen Loom shards. She ambushed Tom in the Spires' undercroft, her blade thirsty for his luck.
"Give me the Wheel," she demanded, "or I'll carve it out."
Tom spun. *[Symbol: Disarm]*.
Veyl's blade vanished… and reappeared in Kiri's hand. The girl stared, wide-eyed.
"Oops," Tom said. "New rule—don't threaten me near apprentices."
**[Golden Roulette – Combat Efficiency: 89%]**
▸ *Morale Boost: +10% (Kiri)*
Veyl fled. Kiri grinned.
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### **VII: Flashback – Diane's Last Lie**
*Two weeks before her death.*
Diane tucked Tom into a nest of Voidweaver silk, her fingers brushing his forehead. "When I'm gone, you'll hate me."
"Why?"
"Because I made you a villain to save you from worse." She kissed his temple. "But you'll forgive me. You're good at that."
Tom woke days later to her prison's coordinates burning in his mind—and the first galaxy erased.
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### **VIII: The Slow War**
Lira returned with intel—the Council was farming luck from orphaned timelines, growing fat on borrowed futures.
"They're patient," she warned. "They'll bleed you slow."
Tom spun the Wheel idly. "Then we bleed slower."
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### **IX: Threads Unspooled**
**Tom's Journal:**
Rebuilding a spire isn't like rebuilding a life. Stones fit where they're told. People don't.
**Kiri's Sketchbook:**
*Drawing of Tom mid-spin, the Wheel a blur. Caption: "He laughs, but his eyes are counting the cost."*
**Stacy's Sanctum Report:**
*"The bones remember. They whisper: *You cannot outrun what you are.* Tell Tom."*
**Xina's Blade (New Engraving):**
*"For the galaxies lost. For the ones left."*
**Diane's Hologram (Looping):**
*"You'll hate me. You'll forgive me. Repeat."*
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