Fading Starlight

All through the God-Servant City and from the foot of the Sacred Mountain to its summit, people had given themselves over to ritual bathing and abstinence. Thousands upon thousands knelt facing the Sky Temple. Their voices joined as they chanted the Redlichia Covenant, rolling across the sky like waves upon the sea.

Inside the Sky Temple, Star Luo Queen knelt tensely before the divine and prepared the ritual that would open the gate of the Kingdom of God.

Young Stan Tito stood stiffly in attendance behind her, yet he could see the queen's tension and the weight pressing upon her.

"Your Majesty... are you afraid too?"

Stan's words lifted much of the weight from Star Luo Queen at once.

"Of course!"

"Who could stand before the great divine and feel no awe?"

One came from the Royal Bloodline families, a child of King Redlichia's line.

The other descended from the saint who had carried a divine relic out of the Kingdom of God after the God-Given Age ended, the great poet Tito.

At that moment, they alone could stand beneath the image of Yinsai carved by King Yesael's own hands.

Even the Sky Temple's priests could only wait in the long corridor outside the hall.

Once every preparation was complete, Star Luo Queen raised the bone tablet in both hands. Her voice rose in song as she recited the verses left by the great poet.

At the end, she sang the passage that reached into the Spirit Realm and prayed for an answer from the spirit who guarded its gate.

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

"O dream spirit named Hope, in all devotion I beg you, answer my prayer."

"Hila, I pray that you will open the gate of the domain of the divine and welcome home the wanderers so long parted from it."

The moment Her Majesty the Queen spoke the spirit's true name, the sky above the Sacred Mountain began to change.

Dreamlike starlight of every color gathered from some unknowable place, swirling and streaming between the seas of cloud.

The dreamlike starlight emerged from empty air, as though another world had opened a narrow seam and spilled it through.

At the sight, the whole God-Servant City erupted.

"It's coming!" One devout believer after another cried it aloud.

"It's almost here!" The believers of the God-Servant City knocked their heads hard against the floor, as though the louder the sound the greater the devotion.

"The gate of the Kingdom of God is about to open!" Before the temple the priests were wilder, near to madness.

They had not witnessed the miracle descend upon the God-Descended City. This time, they were part of it themselves.

Every face turned upward to await the final moment.

Yet nothing appeared in the sky beyond the welling dreamlike starlight. The gate of the Kingdom of God remained closed.

At last, the dreamlike starlight faded.

It had gone out.

It had gone out?

Excitement, clamor, restless stirring. All vanished from the God-Servant City, leaving a silence without a single sound.

Throughout the God-Servant City, people stared blankly at the sky.

Before the temple, the priests froze with their hands raised, forgetting to lower them.

Star Luo Queen watched the starlight scatter, watched the sky clear once more, and could not accept what she saw.

"Why?"

"Why has this happened?"

Star Luo Queen was not merely lost. Fear had taken hold of her.

"Does the divine reject my faith?"

"Or have I done something wrong?"

The queen backed away again and again, nearly falling to the floor.

Stan Tito caught the queen and held her upright as the priests of the Sky Temple closed around her at once.

"Your Majesty, perhaps something essential is still missing."

"We have only one page from the great poet's Final Chapter. What Saint Tito left behind was an entire volume of verse."

The priest ventured a guess. "Perhaps only the complete volume of the great poet's verse can serve as the token and the proof that opens the way to the divine."

Star Luo Queen raised her eyes to him. "Can that truly be so?"

The priest bowed his head. "It must be."

Star Luo Queen had no choice but to believe him. In an age when God sent down no word of his will, supposition was all they had, and they could only guess what the divine wanted.

Perhaps they knew it too, deep in their hearts.

They might have been wrong from the very beginning. Even so, nothing could stop them from surging forward, wave after wave.

Some great power seemed to move in the unseen dark, driving them onward like moths into a flame.

Perhaps that power was faith?

It could also have been desire.

Or it might have been something else.

Several days later, a Ruhe Beast appeared without warning on the Star Luo Kingdom's border. Though it showed itself only once, the entire frontier remained on edge.

In response, the Volcano Kingdom and the Samo Kingdom massed their armies, one near Sun City and the other near Stone Forest City.

Both kingdoms stirred restlessly, as though preparing for war against the Star Luo Kingdom.

The Volcano Kingdom and the Samo Kingdom did not seem to have reached full agreement. The Samo Kingdom had sent only one Ruhe Beast, and only as a show of force.

The Volcano Kingdom had sent no Ruhe Beast at all, merely massing an army of nearly ten thousand outside Sun City.

Everyone could feel that the situation had changed, and changed greatly.

From that point on, the slightest move by any kingdom might shatter the fragile balance and the peace that had held for hundreds of years.

The Dream Realm

At the edge of a floating island, the dream spirit raised her head toward a spread of unreal starlight.

Within the mirrored vision, she saw the terrible calamity in the God-Descended City. Two Ruhe Beasts wielded their power without restraint, as though a heaven-sent disaster had descended into the mortal world.

She saw trilobite armies marching toward the borders. In town after town and village after village, trilobite men abandoned their homes and fled into the distance.

Everything had happened exactly as God had said. She had unwittingly opened the gate of the Spirit Realm, bringing disaster upon countless trilobite men.

This was only the beginning, not the end.

The dream spirit was terribly afraid and terribly grieved.

"How did it come to this..."

"I... I never wanted any of this."

At the island's edge above the void, the spirit hid in a corner and curled into a ball.

"I'm a horrible villain."

"No. I'm even worse than a villain."

A crowd of little spirits gathered anxiously around Hila.

"Lady Hila, please don't cry!"

"If a spirit cries, they'll die!"

Hila buried her head in a flower cup amid the sea of flowers, refusing to let anyone see her face. She looked exactly like an ostrich hiding its head.

A noisy crowd of flustered little spirits burst into the temple. One hard look from Shelly, the Mother of Life, sent every one of them fleeing again.

One little spirit, however, ran back inside and knelt before the divine.

"Lady Hila's going to die!"

"Great divine being, please save her!"

Light surged through the temple. White radiance spread across the floor and poured beyond the walls.

Grieving at the island's edge, the dream spirit sensed something. She turned and caught sight of a scene of great beauty.

A shaft of light descended from the sky like a star falling into the mortal world.

The divine strolled through the sea of flowers.

He reached the island's edge and stood beside Hila, gazing toward the edge of the Spirit Realm.

Hila the dream spirit was frightened too. "God, am I going to die like Lord Polo?"

The divine let out a soft, quiet laugh. "Don't be afraid. Dream spirits don't die from crying."

"If you can cry, it means your heart is kind. Tears aren't ugly. They're something beautiful too."

"A dream breaks only when the heart dies and falls into corruption."

Hila the dream spirit lifted her head. "But all of this happened because I opened the gate of the Spirit Realm."

God said to the dream spirit Hila, "Hila, if you truly think you were wrong, find a way to make amends."

"Do not sit here crying. Go and be brave."