The Changing of Eras

In an azure-blue lake, ancestral fish leapt from the water's surface.

At the mountain's foot, villagers from the towns and those who dwelled in cave-houses came out one after another, looking toward the dust rising in the distance.

Once they could make out the newcomers, and the Ruhe Beast that marked the Xilong family, everyone stirred with excitement.

"The queen has come back!"

"It's the queen, she's come back!"

"Queen Star, and God's messenger!"

The crowd pressed together at the lake's edge, waving and cheering toward the distance.

Along the mountain stairway leading up to the God-Servant City, rank after rank of soldiers knelt on the ground, waiting. The rules King Yesael had once laid down were, by now, followed by no one at all.

No few priests and nobles, too, were held under guard before the gates of the God-Servant City, their bodies bound fast and tight.

Side by side, Star and Polo climbed the stairway step by step.

Looking at everything so familiar around her, she could not help but speak.

"I never imagined I'd come all the way round in a circle and end up right back here."

Without breaking stride, they passed the tall, imposing statue of King Redlichia kneeling on one knee beside them, his head bowed low toward the ground in humility.

And his gaze happened to fall directly upon Star and Polo.

"Polo, do you think King Redlichia ever imagined, back then, that we, his descendants, would end up like this?"

Polo thought for a moment. "He must have hoped his children would turn out better than he was. He was a great king, and a merciful one."

"But in the end he wasn't a god, and he had no way of seeing the future."

Suddenly Star thought again of that line, the divine admonition. Everyone believed it had been God's own warning to King Redlichia.

That, too, was the beginning of the trilobite men's original sin.

"The chasm of desire is never filled, however much you pour into it. The mountain of resentment never wears away, however much kindness you show it."

God had seen it all long before. It was only that King Redlichia had stubbornly gone on believing in his own children regardless.

Star sometimes wondered what it would have been like if King Redlichia had heeded God's admonition back then, and they had never been driven out of the paradise God had promised.

Perhaps they would still be dwelling in the paradise God had promised, enjoying God's protection, but they would never have had a future.

"God, when You drove us out of the paradise God had promised, was that too a way of giving us a future, and freedom?"

Star took back the Sky Temple, and at the same time sent people to recover the God-Descended City, along with a great stretch of territory.

She sat upon the throne in the God-Servant City's palace, while below her no few voices proposed going to war at once, to see the three Royal Bloodline families punished for their betrayal of Queen Star.

But Star shook her head. "Let it all end here!"

"End the war. End this endless slaughter that began among the houses of the Royal Bloodline over a crown."

"Let time alone prove who was right."

She had no intention of fighting on any further.

The other three great houses had already pulled their territories in tight and dug in to hold them. The domains they had built up over generation after generation stood as solid as a slab of iron, and for anyone else without the Crown of Wisdom, forcing their submission would mean living through one bloody battle after another all over again.

Polo looked at Star. "Then there'll be no more Yinsai."

But Star said, "What is gone is only the King of Yinsai. Yinsai itself lives on forever, in the hearts of everyone."

"We ourselves are Yinsai. Yinsai is every trilobite man, and not any one person who happens to wear the crown."

"Perhaps."

"From the moment the Crown of Wisdom was lost, this moment was already destined."

The Yinsai Kingdom split apart into four realms, each founded by one of the four Royal Bloodline families.

The Yinsai Kingdom that King Redlichia had founded, the dynasty that King Yesael had carried to greatness after finding the Origin Site.

Fell, after four generations.

Deep in the sea lay an abandoned ancient city, and at its very center rose a great tower, its spire piercing the surface, carved with Yesael's name.

Group after group of the sinful people swam back from the shallow seas into the deep sea, arriving here.

The sinful people, having regained their wisdom, were plainly no longer what they had been. King Eli, who had granted them back their bloodline and their wisdom, was dead, and they too had shaken off their bonds.

Though leaders who possessed wisdom were still few, so long as the blood of wisdom kept passing on, more and more of the sinful people would come to possess it.

The very first of the sinful people to have their wisdom restored stood atop the ancient city's spire and proclaimed to them all.

"From this day forward, we bear another name. People of the Abyss."

"We come from beneath the demon abyss, and here we will found a nation of our own!"

Thousands upon thousands gathered here. They took for their own the undersea city that King Yesael and his sons of the second generation had once built, they learned to herd and raise ancestral fish as the trilobite men did, and they inherited the trilobite men's own writing as well.

And there, in the vast ocean, a new nation rose.

Star Luo Kingdom

More than a decade later, with the King of Yinsai gone, the houses of the Royal Bloodline had ceased their infighting and their mutual attrition. With no King of Yinsai left to suppress and restrain the Royal Bloodline, the great houses no longer feared that expansion would bring down retribution upon them.

They no longer turned their eyes only inward, but began instead to gaze toward the distance.

They poured their thought and their strength into governing their lands, and set their sights on expanding their territory.

They threw off their bonds and shackles, and ventured boldly into the distance, raising city after city, town after town, village after village.

Each nation held its own laws and its own systems. Some inherited the institutions of Yinsai wholesale, while others were ruled chiefly by a newly risen power of merchants and workshop masters.

Others were wholly religious nations, drawing devout believers to them in droves, slave and commoner alike.

Everything seemed to grow better, and more full of life.

A hundred flowers bloomed together, and the old stagnation was gone.

On this day, after Queen Star finished hearing the petitions of her ministers and priests, she suddenly summoned everyone together.

"After all these years, all of you have done better than I ever imagined."

"It is all of you who have given the Star Luo Kingdom the prosperity it has today."

"As your king, I thank you all here for your efforts."

Everyone in the hall returned the gesture.

Star had everyone return to their places, and then went on.

"Today, I have something very important to announce."

Star had the young trilobite woman seated at her side rise to her feet. This was the Sky Temple's current divine servant priest.

In front of everyone, she handed the scepter passed down from King Redlichia to this divine servant priest.

"From this day forward, you are the high priest of the Sky Temple, and the king of the Star Luo Kingdom as well."

The young divine servant priest, at a loss for what to do, dropped to her knees, clutching the scepter.

"Your Majesty, I... I..."

The ministers, meanwhile, fell into utter confusion, unable to understand why Queen Star would hand over the throne.

"My queen, what is this you are doing?"

The queen had long since been preparing for this day, and had long since arranged for her own successor.

She had only been waiting for everything to settle, waiting for the moment when the Star Luo Kingdom and the Sky Temple no longer needed her.

"The Star Luo Kingdom no longer needs me. And it is time I went and did what I want to do."

Her gaze swept over those gathered below, and she spoke in a tone that brooked no argument.

"In the name of Queen Star, I bid you all pay homage to your new queen, and the Sky Temple's new high priest."

The new king took her seat upon the throne, and received the bowed homage of everyone present.

Star stood behind the newly appointed queen, and together with the statue of the divine, bore witness to the new king's rise.

By the time everyone lifted their heads again, she had already slipped out through a side corridor and left the palace, vanishing from the sight of them all.