The Gates of the Divine Realm

The Spirit Realm

In the high temple of the God-Given Land, Yinsai, the supreme god of the trilobite men, merged into his idol and sank into a deep slumber. Unless someone woke him, or something unforeseen occurred, this was how Yin Shen passed through time.

Just as he had once said, he waited through eternity for the moment of his true descent.

Dream Spirit Hila and Shelly, King of the Fusion Monsters, stood guard to left and right beneath the hall of the gods. Upon a lavish stone couch on the right, the dream spirit lay lost in a beautiful dream, and all at once she sensed something.

The Dream Sun flickered faintly in the sky above, and a voice from outside the Spirit Realm came winding about her ears.

"Guardian of God's Garden, Divine Messenger of the Dream Kingdom."

"O dream spirit named Hope!"

"I beg you, in all devotion, to answer my prayer."

The dream spirit's eyes stirred faintly, and a murmur of sleep-talk escaped her.

"Hm?"

It was the first time anyone had ever called her true name, and the dream spirit answered the call before she could stop herself.

It was as if someone had called out to her and she had turned around, the way one does on pure reflex.

Inside the dream she traced the sound back to its source, and every fragment of it turned along with her power.

Dreamlike starlight rose up out of the sea of Sun Cup flowers, unfurling into a glittering ribbon.

A gate opened within the Spirit Realm, casting its image down into the mortal world.

And she saw, at last, just who it was that had called her.

Along the coastline, a trilobite man commanding a Ruhe Beast had struck another trilobite man dead on the spot, and all of it over nothing more than a Bone Book.

The dream spirit, pillowed upon her own Dream Egg, furrowed her brow faintly in her sleep.

She opened her eyes, and the languor of having only just woken hung about her.

"One trilobite man killed another trilobite man."

"So their world really is full of killing after all. And sin, and greed."

"Why is that, I wonder?"

With all her naive notions, the dream spirit puzzled over the world of the trilobite men.

"Is it because they don't have enough supplies, or enough food? Or is it something else?"

She laughed. "If they had everything they needed, the way we do here in the domain of the divine, then maybe they'd never commit those sins again!"

"Couldn't everyone just hold hands together and smile and be happy, the way we do?"

But she did not know that even as she peered through the gate of dreams at the world beyond, she had let that world see the domain of the divine in turn.

Still less did she know what an act like this of hers might bring upon that outside world.

Dawn over the God-Descended City had changed little from what it had been centuries before, save for the extra weathering the years had left behind.

The same walls, the same buildings, the same merchants and nobles wringing their wealth from workshops and fishing grounds, and then those village and town commoners who rose early day after day to line up before the city gates.

It was as if, through all these years, time had simply gone on looping in place here.

The trilobite men of the city were up early and standing outside the gates. A weary gate guard opened them with a yawn, and the commoners drew up in neat rows, waiting to go in.

"Don't push!"

"Anyone going into the market, pay the toll..."

Amid the clamor, someone noticed that a glow of rainbow-colored light had appeared in the whitening sky.

It was beautiful.

It also drew no small number of trilobite men to twist around and gaze up at the sky.

Townsfolk who had only just stepped out of their homes lifted their heads too. None of them had ever seen such a glow before, and in the blink of an eye it had spread to fill the whole sky above the God-Descended City.

"What is that?"

The glow spread wide and took the shape of a vast door, or a passage leading to another world.

The clouds turned as one with the dreamlike starlight, laying bare the scene behind the glow.

At last, everyone saw clearly what it was.

The dazzling, dreamlike Dream Sun hung upon the horizon like an oil painting. An endless sea of Sun Cup flowers swayed in the wind, their open cups turned to the sky as though singing some sacred melody.

The shattered, ancient God-Given City, its colossi still standing, its palaces fallen, bore witness to a glory and splendor once known.

There stood a grand and magnificent pyramid, with exquisite white statues of trilobite men along either side of its steps, holding their light aloft.

Last of all was the temple that towered above everything else, the very place where the divine stood.

In an instant, all the clamor and noise of the morning went silent, as if it had been pressed mute.

Everything stopped short, and every face froze somewhere between shock and disbelief.

Even the illiterate trilobite commoners at the very bottom of the city knew exactly what they were looking at the moment they saw that sea of Sun Cup flowers.

It was the God-Given Land sung of by wandering bards in the Hymn of the King of Wisdom, the sacred hall spoken of in the Redlichia Covenant.

"Hey!"

"Hey!"

"Do you see it?"

Inside the God-Descended City, in a tall and ancient castle, a noble stood at a window and, dazed, nudged the servant beside him.

The servant stared at the sky dumbstruck, having entirely forgotten to answer. In truth, they had not even sensed that someone at their side was asking them anything at all.

It was a great cry from the crowd at the city gates that finally broke the silence.

"It's the Divine Kingdom!"

"That is the domain of the divine!"

A sound like a great wave overturned the whole of the God-Given City.

Thousands upon thousands poured out of their homes in a wild clamor, gathering together in the streets.

Some dropped to their knees and reached their hands up toward the sky, as if to embrace the Kingdom of God, as if to lift the eternal throne of the divine high in their hands.

"O Great Yinsai, have You returned once more to the Kingdom of Yinsai?"

"A miracle. This is a miracle."

"The gaze of the divine has fallen once more upon the God-Descended City. Once again, God has taken notice of us."

"This is the one truly sacred place, the origin site where God and King Redlichia descended, the very beginning of creation, the start of myth and epic."

Some chanted the Redlichia Covenant at the top of their voices, walking down the street and crying out as they went.

"God said..."

"The king said, only the divine being is eternal..."

They walked on, dancing as they went.

Madness.

And yet within it lay some indescribable devotion.

Some rushed up into the lighthouse, as if that alone might bring them a little closer to the divine.

The sky above the God-Descended City had opened a gate into the Spirit Realm, and the domain of the divine now hung projected before the eyes of every trilobite man.

Across generation after generation, age after age.

Ever since the trilobite men had been driven out of the paradise God had promised them, Redlichia's descendants had known the Kingdom of God only in epic and myth. Now, once again, they beheld it with their own eyes.

That kingdom stood in another world entire, one reachable and visible only by passing through a sea of clouds and an illusory gate hung in the sky.

It was so beautiful, and so sacred.

It matched perfectly everything they had ever imagined or hoped the world of the divine would be. Its power and strength lay beyond anything they could conceive, past their understanding altogether, and that only made them more certain of Yinsai's greatness and omnipotence.

Inside the God-Descended City and beyond it alike, the trilobite men fell utterly into a frenzy.

Though the Kingdom of God had appeared only for the briefest moment, it soon faded away, following the dreamlike starlight into nothing.

But countless people gave chase along the streets and across the land beyond the city walls, as if by following that fading starlight they might run all the way to the halls of the divine.