Born Under a Dim Star

They say you can feel it, the moment you enter Eldoria. A thrumming in your bones, a crackle in the air, the sheer, unadulterated *oomph* of a world built on brawn and bent magic. I, Elara, felt precisely none of it. My first breath was less a triumphant gasp and more a wheezy little cough, the kind that makes nurses tut and grandmothers pat your head with a sigh. My twin sister, Lyra, apparently had the same dramatic flair for understated entrances.

We were born under a dim star, or so the village gossip went. Not a particularly poetic dim star, mind you, but the kind that’s just a bit too far away, a bit too faint to be noticed. In Eldoria, where babies were expected to emerge with at least a rudimentary grasp of levitation or the ability to punch through oak trees, our arrival was met with something akin to polite condolences.

“Oh, the Vesper twins,” Elder Borin, our village elder, had grumbled, his beard practically vibrating with disapproval. “The ones who barely registered on the Strength Scale?”

The Strength Scale. It was a rather imposing, enchanted obelisk in the center of Oakhaven, where every child, upon reaching their tenth year, would step up and have their raw physical power measured. The higher the number, the brighter their future. And us? We’d likely register somewhere in the negative digits, if such a thing were possible. The midwife, a woman named Agnes whose hands were as gnarled as ancient roots, had held us up, one after the other, our tiny limbs flailing with the ferocity of wilting dandelions.

“Well,” she’d said, her voice remarkably devoid of cheer