Chapter 1548 — The Stars Take Their Seats

Lady Night mused for a few seconds, then gently shook her head. "No—though I'll grant that what the old Zongzi has promoted since clawing his way out of his coffin has indeed brought enormous change to this world, and will certainly influence the trajectory of the entire world far into the future, those changes can only affect the future. But the many traits of the gods... can only be determined by 'the past.' They are the joint result of all the factors that came into play during their birth."

"Determined by the past..." Wild said thoughtfully. "Then what was at work? What made the gods of this season of civilization so different from all others?"

Lady Night did not speak for a time. She was silent for who knew how long before She suddenly raised Her head and looked at the pale, boundless sky of the Shadow Realm—She still remembered that over 1.8 million years ago, beyond that pale sky had drifted countless horrifying, indescribable things: the remains of ancient gods and the projections of ancient civilizations left behind in ages even more distant than Her own. But not even the shadows of gods could endure so long in the chaotic void beyond the divine realms, and now those phantoms that had once tormented Her had been gone for many years.

As the most peculiar of all the divine realms, the Shadow Realm had drifted quietly in the deepest depths of the Abyss for a million years, and the era Lady Night knew and was familiar with had long since been wiped clean in the flow of time. Yet She knew that beyond this realm of Hers, forgotten by the world, the wheel of the ages had never stopped turning. Everything She knew was still repeating itself: beside those young gods, beyond the barriers of their divine realms, the shattered remains left after generation upon generation of gods fell, and the projections of the civilizations behind them, orbited the realms like an eternal river of stars. The wails of ancient dying civilizations echoed endlessly through the whole of the Abyss.

Those layered ruins left by fallen ancient civilizations were a curse—a thing of terror and dread that every newborn god had no choice but to face upon opening its eyes in ignorance. Even an ancient god like Lady Night had once suffered greatly from them. But in this moment, She suddenly understood: the tombs of the defeated might not be only a curse, but also a blessing.

After season upon season of civilization met its end in bitter hatred, after generation upon generation of gods walked slowly and passively into death, their projections lingering in the Abyss might finally have had some effect.

"Perhaps... quantitative change gave rise to qualitative change," Lady Night said softly, as if speaking to herself. "The Pathfinders told me to wait here for the turning of the cycles because they foresaw that this day would come sooner or later..."

"What did you say?" Wild had caught Lady Night's murmur but could not grasp Her meaning. "Does this have something to do with the Pathfinders?"

Lady Night did not answer. She simply rose abruptly from the throne, then turned to look at Her "post" of a million years. Her gaze fell upon the ancient stone seat, and beneath Her eyes the back of the throne suddenly kindled with motes of radiance. Then a brilliant star chart emerged within it: star upon star running their courses through the vast universe, and around no small number of them were striking markers and lines connecting one to another.

At the edge of the star chart, a shipping lane could be seen gradually fading away—the direction from which the Pathfinders had last sent back a signal. Within the chart, many stars were labeled with words like "Flourishing," "Declining," "Sprouting," and "Barren." Across the chart ran a very distinct band of dimness, and in the region it covered, nearly every star was marked "Declining" or "Barren," as though an unseen abyss that devoured all things were sweeping slowly across the cosmos, crushing the civilizations upon the stars.

And at this very moment, the edge of that dim band had drawn gradually near the chart's central region. Two stars close to each other, both marked "Flourishing," bore the brunt of it, and seemed about to fall into that invisible abyss that devoured all things.

But Lady Night's gaze did not rest on those two stars. Her eyes went elsewhere—to the lower edge of the dim band, where a celestial body marked "Flourishing" had already touched the boundary of that darkness. Once changes on an astronomical scale were compressed into so small an image, even Lady Night could not tell with the naked eye whether that dark boundary was truly advancing. Yet She seemed to sense something, and stared fixedly at that single point of faint light.

It flickered twice. "Flourishing" was marked "Declining," and in almost the very next instant it was marked "Barren."

It dimmed, steeped in shadow, waiting for the next turn of the cycle.

"'Tomel-III' has gone dark," Lady Night said softly. Then She slowly turned, and sat back down upon Her throne, as She had on most days for the past million years.

Wild fell silent. The most breathtaking tremor among the stars had drawn back its veil a little for this great adventurer, leaving him speechless for a time. It was not until who knew how long had passed that he suddenly spoke: "What exactly did the Pathfinders tell you to wait here for? Just to watch and see which civilization could survive the tide of demons and the calamity of gods? But by your account, the Pathfinders were perfectly capable of leaving far stronger defense systems on every star. If a civilization on a planet grew to the 'Flourishing' level, then even if the Pathfinder fleet never returned, the automata they left behind could protect the newly grown civilization, or lead them away from their home world..."

"But even such automata cannot run forever—and a civilization carried away by the Pathfinder fleet will never itself become 'Pathfinders,'" Lady Night said faintly.

...

In the seas southwest of the Loren Continent, a vast fleet was sailing through the depths of the boundless ocean. The exceptionally calm surface mirrored the endlessly high and bright sky above, and at the center of this mirror-like sea, that towering spire which seemed to hold up the entire firmament looked especially majestic, its immense shadow stretching from one end of the horizon clear to the other.

On the bow deck of the *Wintercold*, flagship of the Imperial Navy, Byron stood facing the sea breeze and gazing into the distance. The wind stirred up by the ship's passage set the captain's uniform draped behind him flapping like the cloak of some knight of the old era. Beside him, his adjutant cautiously reminded his superior: "Sir, your clothes are about to be blown away..."

Byron threw his head back and laughed. "Ha! It's fine—I lashed it to my arm with a rope..."

The aide-de-camp: "..."

Byron, however, seemed not to notice the look the aide-de-camp had flashed him in that instant—a look that plainly said, 'Are you out of your mind?' His gaze was fixed only on the sea dead ahead, where the towering pillar that linked Sky Station to the planet's surface had grown ever more conspicuous, and on the water between that great tower and the Winterhold, a vast expanse of white foam was steadily spreading as a huge vessel crowned with a streamlined dome rose from its submerged voyage.

It was the sirens' massive submersible transport—the 'Great General Who Calms the Seas and Pacifies the Borders.'

That ship carried thousands of deepwater engineers and deep-sea witches bound for space to undertake engineering tasks, while the Winterhold beneath Byron's feet, together with the dozen or so transport and engineering vessels behind it, was loaded full with ironborn engineers from the Tarash Plains, dragonseed and draconic technicians from the two dragon nations, and an immense quantity of engineering components.