The door to the crystalline dome shimmered faintly as Claud and Lily approached it in silence. It seemed harmless from every angle, and in a sense, it was indeed a benign object. However, upon pushing it opon, every single record stated that a grand vision of an alien world would rise upon them, a vision of visions. The building would vanish, replaced with a panorama of the three beings that had struck down a world.

To flee was to die. As long as one knew that, the way forward was simple — simply watch the grand spectacle to gain access to the treasure trove beyond. One, however, couldn’t be too greedy either; although there were many, many sets of the Second Shadow, only so many could be taken out by a single person. The rest would vanish.

That, to Claud, was quite the terrifying show of power as well.

“Ready?” Lily asked.

“Yeah.” Claud held her left hand, before reaching out with his own. Resting his palm on the door, he pushed once, and the world fell apart.

The absolute darkness weakened as speckles of light appeared all around him, gathered together in a brilliant, glittering river. With a single glance, he immediately pinpointed those speckles as stars, the stars he sometimes saw when the world was darkened to a point.

All around him, in the distant reaches of the absolute dark, sat thousands upon thousands of little speckles. However, what caught his attention the most was the gigantic sun in the middle. It had to be a sun; there was no other ball of fire that could be this huge. What was most terrifying about the sun, however, was a huge, silvery ring that ran around it. On the inside of the ring, he could see blue waters and green grass, but Claud knew that this gigantic ring was far bigger than his senses told him.

“Claud.” Lily’s fingers tightened. “What is this? Why was this never mentioned?”

“I don’t know,” Claud whispered back. “But…”

Tens of thousands of fish-like structures crossed past the sun in the middle, revealing a metallic sheen. Like that enormous ring, Claud understood that these fish were actually made by people, and the feeling that a single one of those fish would be enough to annihilate Grandis filled his mind.

And yet, those metallic fish…or whales, which seemed like a more appropriate comparison, were taking up formation. Like unmoving sentinels, they drifted to a spot. Hundreds of cylinders surged out of those whales, and these cylinders surged forward to take up their own formation too.

Before long, a silver sphere had been formed, surrounding a particular point in this black, deep sea.

“They’re waiting for something,” Claud muttered. “Someone. Like guards, waiting with crossbows primed at a door.”

“To ambush that something?” Lily asked.

“Yes.”

He took a deep breath, and his mind cleared slightly. At the same time, he could see a small red dot blinking at the top right of his vision, along with the words ‘Live Broadcast’. Claud didn’t quite understand what those words meant, however, and he didn’t want to agitate Lily by asking her such a question. After all, if Lily were to ask him something he hadn’t noticed…he would probably freak out in fear too.

A visible ripple ran through the absolute dark — somehow — and Claud felt his heart seized up. His fingers closed on Lily’s own and the two of them squeezed together.

Just in time, too.

A moment later, the small gaps between the silver sphere turned into a blinding white. In that instant before his eyes closed on their own, Claud saw those cylinders fire out piercing lances of prismatic might, lances aimed at destroying the source of that odd ripple earlier on.

His eyelids flew open of their own accord as another formless quake shook his heart, just in time to see grey light lash out once. The piercing lances of white vanished, along with the cylinders that had fired them, in a manner that reminded him of a child wiping away a drawing in the mud.

The grey light winked out, revealing three shimmering figures. Their figures were indistinct, the colours they gave off changed with every passing instant, and yet, Claud could feel his hackles rise. The abrupt appearance of these three beings drew his eyes in a way that nothing else could, as if they were the centre of this world.

“World…” Claud trembled. “No. Celestia isn’t that molten world. It’s not any world.”

“Claud? Are you alright?” Lily looked at him, somehow tearing her gaze away from the captivating sight. Her voice was tinged with worry, and Claud squeezed her hand once.

“I’m fine. But…I know what Celestia is now,” Claud muttered. “It refers to this place. This sea of black. The innumerable stars that inhabit it. The countless worlds that float within. And these three beings—”

His words cut off as the silvery whales launched a multi-coloured display of light beams. A solid wall of green, red and blue surged towards the three beings, and yet, despite the overwhelming visual difference, Claud knew that the ending was already set in stone. These whales, whatever they were, were trying to take out the three beings, to stop them from destroying Celestia.

Claud felt his heart skip a beat as one of the three figures moved. Another mysterious ripple swept through the sea of black, and the incoming beams of light vanished. The silvery whales belched out what looked like flame and smoke, but before they fell apart entirely, thousands of silhouettes burst out of the heaving hulks of metal. Charging towards the three beings, all sorts of weird lights burst out of them, and yet…

Like smoke, they vanished.

The three prismatic gods — Claud could think of no other word to describe them — turned to the giant ring around the sun. Amidst the drifting ash of the destroyed army that had mounted one last desperate charge, the one that had stepped out earlier raised a hand and pointed it at the sun.

Rings of fire lashed outwards madly, like an octopus flailing, and the sun began to shrink. At the same time, the ring that had surrounded the sun cracked. Explosions tore through its majestic exterior, and it started to break apart.

One last golden light shot out of the crumbling ring, in a trajectory that would take it far, far away, and the three shadows glanced at it once. Without warning, the one that had moved earlier reappeared right in the golden light’s path.

As that moving god struck out at the golden light, blinding pain shot through Claud’s head, a pain that was swiftly accompanied by an incredible chill.

Without warning, nine different memories played in front of him, overlapping like pictures placed over each other. Each of them showed a different place, but the story was the same. The prismatic god in the middle of the trio had captured someone. Each of the captured people differed in terms of the light they gave off, be it intensity or colour, but the outcome was the same.

That particular god would plunge a hand into that person’s chest, before withdrawing a small orb. A fist would clench a moment later, a brilliant shockwave would erupt outwards, and an utter darkness would tear through the place.

The overlapping images returned to one a moment later, and once more, Claud and Lily were floating in a sea of black. However, like the dying sun, Claud could tell that the entire…sea was dying. The three beings had disappeared, and enormous cracks were running through the sea.

Cracks blacker than black.

The stars began to wink out a moment later. At the same time, a howling wind picked up — Claud had never heard any sound in this memory prior to this — and a true blanket of darkness covered the world.

Only the blinking red dot and the words ‘Live Broadcast’ remained.

Claud closed his eyes, and colour returned to his face. They were back in the crystalline dome now, and the warmth of Lily’s hands were registering on his nerves once more.

“We’re back,” Claud whispered.

Lily looked at him, and then looked at the room. “That was…a scary…vision. Memory.”

“Yeah.” Lily trembled once, and Claud pulled her close.

After holding her close for ten or so minutes, Claud felt himself calm down. Lily’s heartbeat had returned to normal too, prompting Claud to escort Lily into the inwards of the crystalline room. There, in the middle, was a posh brown table, shaped in a solid disk. Golden words, which were partially tarnished, embellished the front of the desk.

“Secretary-General of the Misul Star Domain,” Lily read out loud, her voice filled with an artificial cheer. “In smaller print…the Continuum of Beauty pledges eternal adherence to the Inwards Star Council.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? What’s a Star Domain? What’s the Inwards Star Council?” Claud asked.

Lily shrugged. “Maybe it’s an organisation’s name. I’m going to look for those Second Shadows. I’m sure there’s a few here…Claud, you poke around the place a bit more and find some answers.”

“Why me?”

“Because you’re more cautious than me?” Lily smiled. “Go on! And I can tell that you’re dying of curiosity.”

“True.”

He looked around the place, and then saw an odd, translucent board. The board itself was larger than the dinner table in Moon Mansion, and to add to its oddness, it was literally floating in air.

Of course, since it was made of light, Claud figured that it being a floating object didn’t quite matter. Besides, if it hadn’t been made of light, Claud knew that someone would probably try to take this thing home.

Upon closer examination, he noted that the black screen was subdivided into hundreds of small grids. These grids, in turn, had different colours, forming areas of solid gold, white, red and blue. The golden area labelled in the north was called the Mortal Light Ascendancy, the white one to the south the Penitent Assembly, the red one to the east—

“Oh, hey,” Claud called out. “I found what seems to be a map with the Inwards Star Council written on it.”

Lily, who was prodding around the desk with a few black boxes in hand, glanced at him and walked over. “Coming!”