Fairy Tail: Beneath a Falling Star

Chapter 15 – The Name Time Forgot

Year X782

The ruins welcomed him with silence.

Caelion stepped through the stone gate, boots pressing gently against the moss-laced path. Time had peeled this place into fragments—sun-bleached bones of a temple long buried by fog and ivy. Columns, broken like teeth, jutted at crooked angles, and ancient carvings clung stubbornly to fading walls.

Each breath he took stirred the dust of centuries.

Magic lingered here. Not the wild hum of life or the sharp chill of cursecraft—but a deeper presence. Subdued. Watching.

He moved carefully, reverently, fingers brushing stone etched with glyphs half-swallowed by vines. Some symbols pulsed faintly, reacting to his proximity. Not in hostility—more like recognition.

Or memory.

He reached a wide stone circle at the temple's heart. Its centerpiece was an altar, cracked but intact, ringed by seven smooth pillars, each carved with differing constellations.

Star shapes.

One of them—the central one—was unmistakable. It wasn't just stars. It was Celestial alignment. A map of a convergence that had not yet come. Or had already passed.

He felt something stir within him. Not from this life, but the other one. The one before this body.

A memory—not his, and yet…

"This ruin… why does it feel so familiar…?"

He shut his eyes.

Images—hazy, disjointed—flashed behind his eyelids.

A boy in red, laughing through a war-torn sky.

A girl with keys and gold hair, crying at the edge of space.

A black-robed man standing before a crumbling altar, eyes burdened with eternity.

Zeref.

The name surfaced like breath after drowning.

He gasped aloud.

It didn't come as revelation, but as confirmation. Something in this ruin was tied to him.

Not recent. Not direct. But old—older than the Alvarez Empire. Older than most of history. A time when Zeref walked the world alone, seeking answers in silence.

Caelion stepped closer to the altar. The air thickened, almost sacred.

Something had been sealed here. Or studied. Or abandoned.

He touched the edge of the stone—

—and the ground shimmered.

A flicker. Not a trap. A memory embedded in the ruin.

A vision.

He stood no longer in fog, but in light.

The temple, whole again, glowed under a pale moon. Wind caught glowing banners overhead. And a figure—robed in blue-black silk, hair shadow-dark, eyes unreadable—stood before the altar, speaking to no one.

Or perhaps, to the stars.

"Even eternity loses meaning when love and death dance as one."

His voice was calm. Young. Yet tired beyond reckoning.

Caelion couldn't move. Could only watch.

The man—Zeref—held a book, closed tightly in his grasp.

"They'll call me monster. Perhaps I am. But if knowledge can unmake death… if time can be rewritten…"

He placed the book on the altar. It pulsed once—then vanished in a flash of light.

The vision dimmed. The image collapsed like sand in wind.

Caelion dropped to one knee.

His chest heaved.

The altar was now cracked again. The fog returned. But the feeling remained.

Zeref had stood here.

And left something behind.

He didn't know if it had been a fragment of E.N.D., a copy of his forbidden texts, or simply a lingering echo. But it wasn't random. Zeref had wandered these ruins. Had spoken to this sky. The temple must have once been a place of study. Or mourning.

Caelion wiped his brow, skin clammy. Magic still hummed beneath the stone, quiet but ancient.

It was a whisper to him now.

And in it, he heard a thread of fate.

"You were reborn with reason," he murmured aloud. "This isn't chance."

He stepped back from the altar, eyes narrowing at the star-engraved pillars.

Maybe this wasn't just Zeref's legacy.

Maybe this was a place where time's threads twisted. Where certain souls returned.

A forgotten shrine for forgotten purposes.

He lingered until evening, sketching the pillar glyphs in a notebook. He dared not take anything—only record.

The fog began to lift, slowly revealing more of the structure. At the far edge, where vines grew thickest, he noticed a collapsed stairwell—leading down. Beneath the ruin.

But it was sealed. Heavy stone blocked it entirely.

For now.

He left the ruins with starlight painting the sky behind him.

Downhill lay the village he was promised.

He walked in silence, but his thoughts churned. He didn't know what all this meant yet. But one truth was clear:

He had stepped through something ancient.

Not just a ruin.

But a door.

One that led toward history—toward Zeref.

And eventually, toward the others.

Toward Fairy Tail.