The Last Fallen Star

The first book in the Gifted Clans trilogy is set in modern-day Los Angeles, where a secret society of Korean witches lives hidden among the non-magical population. The witches belong to six clans, each descended from a patron goddess: the Gom are healers, the Samjogo are seers, the Miru are protectors, the Gumiho are illusionists, the Tokki are infusers, and the Horangi are scholars. Witches channel their powers through a Gi, an elemental charm worn on the wrist. The clans are governed by a council of elders.

Riley Oh is a 12-year-old girl adopted into a Gom family: her father, James; her mother, Eunha; and her older sister, Hattie. Riley carries a teardrop-shaped onyx stone left by her biological parents and believes she is a saram, someone without magic. Her infant Gi ceremony produced four fires instead of four different elements, and the council dismissed her as defective. As Hattie's initiation approaches, Riley's longing to belong intensifies when the council denies her own. Riley jokes about sharing Hattie's magic, and Eunha's reaction reveals such a spell exists in the family spellbook, locked in an enchanted safe.

With help from Emmett Harrison, Riley's best friend and a half-Gom boy whose mother, the former Gom elder, was killed by the Horangi, they open the safe and find the Temporary Gift-Sharing Spell. Both participants must drink a potion and pour the remainder into the Gi cauldron, used in initiations, before a council elder. The spell warns against being cast between two gifted people. Hattie plans to perform it at her initiation.

Hattie passes her initiation tests and receives her Gi blessing, but when she and Riley begin the gift-sharing spell, Auntie Okja, Eunha's older sister and the Gom elder, screams for them to stop. Riley is not a saram but a Horangi, a member of the cursed, excommunicated scholar clan. Auntie Okja rescued Riley from her dying Horangi mother 13 years earlier and brought her to Eunha and James to raise in secret. Mr. Pyo, the Samjogo elder, gives them seven days to publicly disown Riley or lose their powers.

Devastated, Riley plans to run away, but Hattie and Emmett intervene. They resolve to summon Mago Halmi, the mother of all creation, to transform Riley into a Gom. Noah Noh, a Miru protector, teaches them the incantations. At Santa Monica Pier under a blood-red moon, Hattie performs a prohibited ritual but is knocked unconscious and stops breathing. A woman materializes: not Mago Halmi but the Cave Bear Goddess, the Gom's patron deity. She offers a quest: Find the Godrealm's last fallen star, a divine fragment that fell to Earth, and in exchange she will restore Hattie and make Riley a Gom. The goddess takes Hattie's body to the Godrealm, leaving Riley a vial with Hattie's beating heart. Riley accepts.

At the Griffith Observatory, Cosette Chung, a Gumiho illusionist, helps Riley and Emmett. An ancient legend describes how the six goddesses commanded the Haetae, Mago Halmi's guardian lion-beast, to devour the dark sun and dark moon, embodiments of their inner darkness. Fragments fell to Earth, and Riley deduces the last fallen star is one of them. In the gifted library, sealed since the Horangi's banishment, Riley's Horangi blood activates the collection. A book called The Loyal Tales of the Haetae contains a letter from Sora, a Horangi leader, speculating about an eighth artifact described as "a celestial object." A mysterious man advises Riley to return to the beginning. The Haetae shows Riley visions of Emmett's mother taking a glowing ax from Horangi scholars and a man resembling Riley standing over Mrs. Harrison's body with Riley's onyx stone. Hattie's heart begins to blacken.

Following the clues, Riley and Emmett drink a potion at a boba-tea truck that teleports them to a hidden Horangi mountain campus. Sora, the clan leader and the notorious Ms. Kwon, captures them alongside Austin and Taeyo, fellow Horangi. To gain trust, Riley reveals her Horangi identity, exposing her secret to Emmett, who runs away in shock. Sora tells a counter-narrative: The Horangi were sworn keepers of sacred artifacts, but the council became corrupted by the sunstone ax and framed the scholars. The Horangi developed biochips that replace the Gi. Sora conditions her help on Riley's formal initiation. Riley refuses.

Taeyo follows Riley and Emmett, offering Ghostr, an app connecting the living with gwisin, hungry ghosts with unfinished business. The app connects them to the deceased grandmother of Jennie Byun, a Samjogo witch who bullies Riley. After channeling the grandmother's message of love, Riley uses a favor to learn about Emmett's mother, Sookhee Harrison. Sookhee was possessed, did not want the artifact, and was betrayed by someone she trusted.

Convinced the Horangi were framed and determined to save Hattie, Riley returns to initiate into the clan. She receives a biochip and activates her gifted mark for the first time. Her dominant element is fire, and her four elemental fires now represent formidable power. Her initiation task: Tame an inmyeonjo, a wild bird-woman cursed to hate mirrors. Drawing on her Gom upbringing, Riley heals the creature's wound, names her Areum, and earns her trust. Taeyo gives Riley a gold compass.

Riley's parents and Auntie Okja track her to the campus. Auntie Okja reveals that Mr. Pyo masterminded the framing of the Horangi. They confront him, and he admits the Cave Bear Goddess possessed Sookhee's body to orchestrate the original conflict, wanting all artifacts destroyed to end the goddesses' confinement to the Godrealm. Areum explains that a threading spell can expose the goddess's link to Gom witches as threads cuttable only by a divine weapon. A dokkaebi, a goblin able to summon any object in the Mortalrealm, the human world, demands Riley's elemental magic and both clans' memories of her. Riley accepts. The dokkaebi reveals Riley already possesses the fallen star and departs. Riley awakens to find no one remembers her.

The Cave Bear Goddess materializes to claim the star and returns Hattie's body, but it is lifeless, possessed by Sookhee Harrison's vengeful spirit. Sookhee, speaking through Hattie, accuses the goddess of possessing her. Emmett reunites with his mother before Sookhee passes into the Spiritrealm, the realm of the dead. Riley tries to sever the divine threads using the gold compass, but it fails. The goddess possesses Auntie Okja and attacks. Jennie, David Kim, a Tokki ally, Noah Noh, and Cosette arrive, and all six clans fight to contain the deity. During the battle, Riley is thrown against the sanctuary's gold statue of the Cave Bear Goddess.

A voice in Riley's mind, the Haetae, guides her to understand: She herself is the weapon. Riley embraces her four elemental fires and channels everything into a burst of power that shatters the statue. The goddess is destroyed.

The Haetae reveals he once split a fallen star into two halves, hiding the dark-sun piece inside Riley's biological mother. Riley is that piece of the dark sun. He offers to restore one thing, and Riley chooses Hattie's decayed heart over her families' lost memories. Hattie awakens, alive and remembering Riley, the only person who does. Jennie foresees a mission to recover Riley's memories. Riley reflects that she belongs not because of magic or heritage but because of the people who chose her. An epilogue reveals the dark-moon piece is hidden in the Spiritrealm. When the two halves reunite, a new era will begin: the Age of the Final Eclipse.