The Dream Has Ended

The next day the poet Tito came to the house by the sea, carrying a bone tablet carved all over with the script of Yinsai. His heart brimmed with joyful anticipation for Star's judgment of his poem.

Sadly, when he pushed the door open, he did not see Star waiting there for his arrival. Instead, he saw the queen lying in eternal sleep amid a sea of flowers.

Tito's whole body went rigid with shock.

Star lay quietly among the flowers, and the Divine Messenger Polo sat at the very center of that sea of blooms with her in his arms. Sun Cup after Sun Cup swayed close around him, as though to comfort him.

"Queen Star."

"Dead?"

Tito spoke the words in a daze, then dropped to his knees in panic and pressed his lips to the ground.

He had witnessed the passing of a monarch, and the last monarch Yinsai would ever have.

Polo sensed the poet's panic. He looked down at Star's face, her eyes closed tight, and spoke to Tito.

"You do not have to be afraid. Everyone passes away in the end. Queen Star is no exception."

There was something otherworldly and hollow in Polo's words, as though the sound echoed directly inside the listener's own mind.

"God said."

"Even the sun in the sky will one day burn out, and the universe itself moves inexorably toward its own end."

"Save for the great divine being, who could ever hope for true eternity!"

These words were nothing new to Tito. They too were set down in the Redlichia Covenant, and every trilobite man raised in the kingdom of Yinsai had heard them at least once, even if he could not recite them by heart.

Polo held Star close and went on speaking, and all at once a piece of his face split open in a crack. Just like porcelain shattering, a fine seam splitting open.

Only then did Tito notice that cracks covered the whole of Polo's neck and face.

He stared at Polo's face in alarm, and hurried to ask.

"Lord Polo, Messenger of God, what... what is this?"

Polo had been lost entirely in the sight of Star's death, and only Tito's words brought him back to himself.

A corner of his robe arched upward and touched his own face.

Sudden understanding showed in his expression.

At last he knew what that small cracking sound the night before had truly been.

Polo's expression softened little by little into something like relief, until at last a trace of sorrow rose at the corners of his mouth.

It was an expression that belonged to no dream spirit, and least of all to Polo.

"So it was my dream."

"It woke."

In this final moment, Polo suddenly uncovered another secret of the dream spirits.

A dream spirit's power came from dreams, and in truth it came from their own hearts.

They possessed hearts of perfect purity, and long lifespans, drifting free between reality and illusion, living out a journey of dreams that was forever joyful and without any end.

But when their hearts were no longer pure, or when they gave up dreaming at all, that was the moment the dream woke.

And when the dream woke, that was the moment their whole lives came to an end.

Polo had meant to go back himself to see the divine, only to find he could not even rise to his feet. His dream was cracking apart piece by piece, and the dream spirit was dissolving into bubbles along with it, fading away together.

He looked over at Tito beside him, and suddenly asked.

"Have you finished your Yinsai Epic?"

Tito fumbled his own bone tablets out and held them up before Polo.

"It is finished. That is exactly why I came today, so Her Majesty Queen Star could look it over."

"But..."

"I never imagined... I truly never imagined."

Polo asked kindly, "May I see it?"

Tito nodded. "Of course, Lord Polo, Messenger of God."

Polo took the thin stack of bone tablets from Tito's hands, and looked over the Yinsai Epic carved upon them.

His eyes swept across them. The story began with King Yesael, opening at the very moment the trilobite men were driven from the paradise God had promised.

At some of the finer passages, he even found himself chanting along.

【King Yesael sought God's forgiveness, and in mercy, God bestowed upon him the Sun Cup.】

【Even after God had driven the line of his firstborn son from the paradise God had promised, God went on watching over Redlichia's descendants.】

【...】

【But this thing named for the sun was also an omen and a warning to the people of the Yinsai Kingdom. Its power was just like the sun in the sky.】

【It could nurture life, and it could also bring disaster.】

【Unfortunately...】

【King Yesael did not understand God's mercy, or what it truly meant.】

As he turned through tablet after tablet, Star gradually began to appear in the story, and so, too, did his own name.

Polo's movements grew gentle and his gaze slowed, reading carefully over every line Tito had written, down to every single character.

Until, at last, he turned over the final bone tablet.

Polo raised his head and smiled.

"It's really well written. And fair."

"No embellishment, no flattery, but no slander either."

"It's honest. This is our story, mine and Star's."

Such praise, and from the Messenger of God, set Tito's heart pounding at once. "I dare not accept such high praise from the Messenger of God."

Polo went on, "Would you like to write a story about King Redlichia?"

"The origin of Yinsai itself, the epic of how the trilobite men were born."

"The myth of the Great God Yinsai and Redlichia, the origin of everything, and the covenant between God and man."

Tito shot to his feet. His pupils were no longer merely wide. They seemed almost to be trembling.

He wanted it desperately. He dreamed of it even in his sleep.

But he did not believe himself capable of such a thing.

He was only a scholar of the Star Luo Kingdom, not one of the legendary heroes, and not one of the noble sons of the first kings.

Once his excitement passed, hesitation rose in Tito's eyes.

"How could I possibly manage it?"

"Everything from those days is already buried in dust. We do not even have any record of what truly happened back then."

"I have never even laid eyes on the paradise God had promised. I do not even know what the God-Given City looks like."

"I..."

He could have thought of ten thousand reasons to prove it was beyond him.

Polo told him, "Then go and see the true God-Given Land with your own eyes!"

"Go and pay homage to the undying ruins the King of Wisdom left behind. Go to the hall Redlichia built for God, and stand before the divine itself."

Tito froze where he stood, trembling from head to foot.

He took a few steps forward, and without meaning to, reached his hand toward the Divine Messenger Polo.

But a moment later it struck him that he was about to violate something forbidden, and he snatched his hand back at once.

He kept waving his hands, his eyes darting away.

"This... this cannot be. I am only a lowly mortal."

But deep within his heart, a flame was burning fiercely, a longing that Polo himself had kindled.

Polo said, certain of it. "You can do this. Don't you believe in fate?"

"You didn't come here for no reason. You said yourself it was fate that arranged for you to meet me and Star."

"Nothing was ever by chance. Everything was already destined."

"Because everything..."

Before Polo could even finish, Tito spoke the rest of the sentence himself. "...is all God's guidance."

In his heart, Tito had ten thousand reasons to believe he could never do it. But Polo had given him one reason.

A reason he could not refuse, no matter what.

A reason worth giving up everything for, worth any cost at all.

Polo smiled. "Good."

"Tito, go and seek out the legendary paradise God had promised. What I leave behind will guide you toward the kingdom of God."

"Go to the Pyramid Temple, and stand in the presence of eternal Yinsai."

"And then, offer up my final gift to the divine."