Luna was carried back to her quarters. In the square, the murmur of the crowd swelled like the tide. An old woman's knitting needles flashed silver in the moonlight. Suddenly, the Stellaron Lily pattern on her spool writhed on its own, weaving the shape of a crescent moon.
"'Twin moons shine, the Aeon floats'— a sign from the Stellar Chronology," she murmured, her trembling hand tracing the cloth.
At a nearby wine stall, a burly man slammed his empty cup onto the stone table. Drops splashed onto Stellaron Lily petals, igniting tiny, eerie blue flames.
"Legends say the Knights of Beauty come with the miracle, cleaving darkness with song—but the books say none live to see dawn."
A group of young women huddled near the altar. The Stellaron Lilies woven into their hair all abruptly turned towards Luna's dwelling.
"Could Sister Luna be the one from the prophecy?"
On the other side, the village chief yanked at Estelle's sleeve.
"Come with me." His voice was low, his bronze staff scraping sparks on the flagstones.
They stopped beneath the ancient cypress at the village entrance. Ash from Stellaron Lilies piled in a hollow suddenly billowed white smoke, coalescing into a starry sky under the moon.
"Over a decade ago, the people of this land lived savagely. They waged war for land and food, slaughtering each other… strangely, the food stores were plentiful, the land ample. Yet the tribes kept fighting, as if reveling in the bloodshed and destruction."
"Countless lives were lost, the earth dyed crimson," the old man recalled with a shudder.
"Until five figures arrived, also clad in silver armor." The chief pulled a yellowed scrap of goatskin from his robe, bearing a painted half of a knight's emblem. "They called themselves the Knights of Beauty. Unable to bear the suffering, they dismantled the old altar and rebuilt it to suppress… something. They left the Stellar Prophecy behind. The emblem on your pack… it's identical to theirs."
Estelle's fingers brushed the worn knightly insignia on his backpack, recalling the words of the old Grandmaster when he joined: "The mission of the Knights of Beauty is to guard all forgotten light."
He noticed the lower right corner was missing from the chief's emblem. His own insignia bore a patch of exactly that shape.
"They left something buried beneath the altar." The old man broke into violent coughs. Blood droplets fell onto Stellaron Lilies and were instantly absorbed by the petals.
"Today, everything happened as foretold. I heard… chains snapping beneath the altar. You're from the Knights. You can…"
"I'll go." Estelle cut him off, his fingers unconsciously tracing the Knightly mark on his sword hilt.
The altar glowed with a cold, metallic sheen in the deep night. The moment Estelle's boot touched the first stone step, a fine tremor vibrated through the sole, as if countless weak energies slithered beneath the slabs.
He drew his Knightly sword. As the blade met the air, the power of Beauty wove a faint golden shield around him.
But destructive energies lurking in the pillar cracks instantly attacked it, climbing frantically like vines, trying to shatter the barrier.
The star-patterned tiles at the altar's base shimmered oddly under the moon.
Estelle crouched, fingertips tracing the worn grooves – it was an enlarged Knights of Beauty insignia, the same piece missing from the lower right corner.
As his palm pressed down, the shield hummed. The power of Beauty flowed through his hand into the tile. The star patterns blazed to life, swirling into a vortex of silver-blue light on the ground.
A soft click echoed. The central altar slab sank slowly, revealing pitch-black stone steps descending into darkness.
Estelle descended, relying on perception to pierce the gloom.
Suddenly, luminescent pearls embedded in the walls lit up one by one, illuminating murals on either side.
The left murals were painted with Stellaron Lily nectar and congealed droplets of deep red blood.
The first showed collapsed stellar rails. Stars fractured. A knight rose from flaming ruins, fragmented armor leaking starlight.
His right hand pulled a broken sword from a comrade's corpse – dark red blood-ice clung to the blade, yet the first Stellaron Lily bloomed upon it.
The second mural depicted an endless night canyon. The knight walked ahead, carrying an infant in a sling.
Behind him followed elders with canes, a limping youth – dozens of hands left black smudges on his silver armor.
His cloak hung in shreds, revealing a back crisscrossed with bone-deep wounds.
Yet from every wound grew Stellaron Lilies, their roots winding along his veins towards his heart. Most striking was the mist of light spilling from the knight's mouth, solidifying into sheet music in the night sky.
Where the notes fell, shadowy creatures crumbled to ash.
The final mural made Estelle grip his sword tighter.
As dawn pierced the clouds, the knight knelt before a newborn village, his armor now thin as cicada wings, revealing a body turning translucent.
He drove his sword into the earth; Stellaron Lily seeds cascaded from its tassel into the soil. His fading hand rested one last time on a child's head.
As the sun fully rose, the knight dissolved into stardust. But the dust didn't scatter – it coalesced into a translucent dome over the village.
At its edge, his shattered helmet remained, gazing eastward, faint light flickering eternally within its eye sockets.
Words tangled in Stellaron Lily roots in the corner translated to: "Dawn is the tombstone of night, and I am the grave keeper."
The right murals, however, were painted with solidified liquid light, humming faintly when touched.
Estelle's breath hitched. Among the five silver-armored figures, the tall one second from the left was unmistakably Third Seat Ryan, who had disappeared.
Beside him, the girl with the red ribbon was Fifth Seat Elara. And the shield-bearing figure on the far right was Second Seat Kay, who had fallen a decade ago.
"Mirror-Holders…" Estelle's fingers brushed the faces of the other two. Their armor bore no knightly emblem, but spiral mirror patterns. "What were they doing here?"
The final murals made his pupils contract: The five stood before an altar strewn with corpses.
Ryan raised his sword to split the earth.
Elara unfurled a star chart to fix the location. Kay shielded them with his buckler against energies erupting from below.
The two Mirror-Holders pushed a chain-covered black box into the fissure.
The deeper he went, the thicker the destructive energy became.
Estelle's shield held firm against the violent onslaught. The walls began to sweat droplets of light like blood, shattering like glass when they hit the floor.
Finally reaching the bottom, he entered a circular stone chamber. The black box hovered in the center, its chains long rusted and broken, revealing pulsating veins of dark red light beneath its surface.
"At last… a guardian of Beauty arrives." A voice as gentle as moonlight echoed in his mind, tinged with a silvery chime. "Open it, Estelle. Let the fragments reunite…"
Estelle's heart hammered against his ribs.
This… was Idrilla's voice?
But the next instant, his shield convulsed violently. He glimpsed spiral patterns twisting within the light seeping from the box's base.
He closed his eyes, sinking the power of Beauty into his perception.
The power probed through the cracks in the chains. The surface was warm white light, like countless stars singing.
Beneath that, cold black mist coiled, every wisp screaming with the fury of battle. And at the very core… curled a pulsating mass of crimson light, seething with destructive energy potent enough to devour an entire star system.
"No…" Estelle's eyes snapped open. His Knightly sword blazed blindingly in his grasp. "You're not Idrilla."
The black box shuddered violently. The sharp crack of snapping chains echoed through the chamber.
Estelle stared at the seething light within the box, his voice heavy with grim realization:
"A Stellaron."