The Last Lumen of Corvane Dome

Ilse Varga, 23, trims the beacon lamps that guide sledges through the frozen passes of Hollin Reach. She is the mocked daughter of the last Star Wardens, an order disgraced after the Dimming, when the luminous star-beasts called lumens supposedly died out. One night a burning shard falls through the cracked brass dome of the abandoned Corvane Observatory. Inside the shard Ilse finds a glowing egg, and it is humming her late father's lullaby. The creature that hatches is a lumen, and it bonds to her. The bond has rules. Ilse can command its light only by speaking the true name of a star, and each star she names vanishes from her sight forever. The hatchling must reach the comet Hesper's passing in eleven nights to learn its kind's song. If it fails, it fades, and the species ends for good. To guide it there, Ilse must realign the observatory's seized great telescope and decode her father's ruined star charts. Every lesson costs her more of the sky that lets her guide travelers home. Meanwhile Magister Oren Thale of the Lightwrights' Guild, who powers the capital with mined starglass, hunts the lumen to harvest its heart. Ilse must decide how much of her own sight a vanished world is worth.