Astral Meld

High in a quiet observatory, a luna moth named Vesper keeps a sky made of tiles. Your job is to read it. Astral Meld is a tile puzzle built on mahjong, but it never asks you to clear a layout. It asks you to build one. You place tiles onto a 7 by 7 night sky and watch them climb. HOW IT PLAYS Three matching tiles meld into a single tile one rank higher. That new tile can meld again, and again, so one careful placement can set off a chain that rolls across the whole board. Carry a nine to the top and it ascends into a celestial. Lay three tiles in sequence and they fuse into a nova, a wildcard that stands in for anything exactly once. Gather three celestials or three novas and the sky tears open into a supernova that clears everything around it. Four winds turn every five rounds, and each one rewrites the rules while it blows. East doubles the value of comet melds. South deals you a wider hand but drops a dead shard every single turn. West slides the entire board sideways, which can hand you a free chain or ruin the one you were building. North pays fifty percent more on every meld but seals your powers until it passes. THREE WAYS TO PLAY Lumen is endless. The board never resets and the dark slowly creeps in, so every run becomes a question of how long you can keep the light. Daily Omen gives every player on earth the same board, generated from the date itself. One reading per day, no second chances. Star Chart is a map of 24 hand named sigils, each with its own goal, move limit and three star rating. Reach a score, forge novas, raise a suit to a given rank, or sweep every shard off the glass. POWERS AND CHARMS Melding charges three celestial powers. Solar burns a tile off the board. Lunar lifts a tile one rank. Eclipse throws your hand away and deals a fresh one. The Apothecary stocks six single use charms you can spend in the middle of a run. Starbellows fills every power at once. Comet Quill redraws your hand. Shatterpick breaks any tile, dead shards included. Borrowed Minute buys five more moves. Windvane turns the wind early. Mirror Shard copies a tile off the board into your hand. THE TOWER Light banked across your runs becomes stardust, and stardust furnishes the tower. Brew six permanent draughts in the Alchemy room. Buy nine curios in the Observatory and arrange six of them on your shelf. Climb twelve keeper ranks, from Stray Moth all the way to Keeper of the Dome. Earn 14 badges that unlock on their own as you play. Come back each night for a tribute that grows across a seven day cycle.