Please show the output of

printf "%vX\n", $text;
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I bet your text doesn't actually contain ✶. Did you decode your inputs? You probably have it in its encoded form.

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By the way,

my $sep = decode_entities('✶');
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is a complicated way of writing

my $sep = "\N{U+2736}";
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or

my $sep = "\x{2736}";
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or

use utf8;
my $sep = "✶";