Halster

Halster — from Hal (hall, sanctuary, dwelling) + ster (star) — means Star Hall: a dwelling that is also a star, and a place beyond, seared into memory.. Mythos: In the elder dark—before breath, before root, before symmetry—there was the Halster. Not merely a star, not merely a hall, it was the first to know what was, to see what is, and the last to remember it. Forged of silence and fire, the Halster did not shimmer like the younger stars. Its light was deeper: a bruise of gold memory pressed into the fabric of night. Some once tried to name its shape, but every invocation collapsed into longing. Some saw a sphere. Others, a spiral. And some, nothing at all. All who gazed upon it remembered only the feeling of once having belonged—somewhere… or nowhere. For many, the harder they tried to define it, the more their minds refused. The Halster was beyond thought, beneath concept, yet present in sight, or what one's mind would allow them to see. It was called a hall because it held something: welcoming yet forbidden, rejected yet embraced. It was called a star because it lay beyond foot, thought, or orbit. It could be seen with the eyes—but not with any instrument fashioned by mortal hands. Feared and loved. Clear and confounding. To some, it had many doors like a palace. To others, no doors at all. To some, only inside. To others, only outside. And to a few, both—and neither. Those rare few who sat in deep meditation upon Halster sometimes received a single whispered thought—not heard, but felt: "Once born, always to be in the eternal now. Yet never to be again. Once ever was is the cruel joke of the mortal state."