11th October 1137, Westward Express train

  Late-night rain drummed on the rooftop of the train as it crossed the country. Passing the great stone set by a bridge, they entered Auderheim. Seren came with them, though Acryl didn’t expect it; he understood that Seren wouldn’t just let Kaspar run away. Smells of cigarettes clustered the train coach, painting his mood bluer and bluer, the same way the terror of knowing the Existence took or was going to take something valuable from him.

  “Suiming, there is something I want to tell you,” Acryl said, drawing as he noticed Neon falling asleep. The train rode past a tunnel as the runes painted Seren’s and Suiming’s faces in the sapphire and blues of a sunrise.

  “That you prayed to an Existence and it answered?” Suiming responded, reading his book while Seren looked more interested. The train’s runes gleamed dimly, lightning up the shadow of Suiming’s face.

  “…Yes…” Acryl answered as he scribbled on his sketchpad. Avoiding Suiming’s gaze even though he knew that Suiming would most likely not be angry. He couldn’t say

  “Well, you’re done, mate, pick a scenic graveyard before it’s too late,” Suiming said as he put down his book. He wore a black jacket over his waistcoat, covering all the stars and motifs of the night sky. Acryl froze as his pencil slipped down his fingers. Before the lead drew a thin line on his sketch of Suiming, he caught it. He must be joking, right?

  Suiming and Seren did not talk, only the coughing, whispering, a child crying, and the ticket inspector’s footsteps echoed in the train. All so mundane, all so ordinary, as if the Existences slumbering were only mountains, as if the Realm of Gaps was non-existent, as if Acryl never stepped into the arcane world. What if it were all a dream? What if Acryl woke up in his bed, the day he sold his painting to Seren, but never found out about the invitation?

  Fella, listen, the less regret, the further you walk on the path of Realm-art.s

  “He’s making too big of a deal, you won’t die from this, that’s sure…” Seren broke the silence, her chin resting on her hand, and lay back as her hair was untied and loosened down her shoulders. Acryl noticed something about Seren that was missing, a sense he could only feel the same way he would feel a wave of casting crushing on him, but he used that sense to feel a gentle, waveless shore.

  “But that doesn’t mean it won’t cause hassles, the Existences may ask a small fee from you…just… a small fee in their sense.”

  “Though I’m really interested, Acryl, in what way did the Starseeker bless you?” Seren asked, her violet eyes gazing at Acryl. She held her hand to Acryl as Acryl looked at her palm, a blue, dim flame, warm like a studio lamp, lighted in her hand. The flame reminded him of the colors he created back in that manor. Only not in the blue of toxic blue pigment and other toxic colors.

  “See? This is what the Starseeker had done to me, I can burn what my Realm-arts evocates.”

  “…But the side effect? I can never, ever tell what is real or fake from what my Realm-arts calls. One moment it tells me when to parry, next moment I get stabbed,” Seren said as she put out the flame, closing her hand into a fist. Acryl closed his sketchbook as he grew curious about Seren’s Realm-art, but he found it to be rude to ask her.

  “…well…if you say so, then I guess it made the colors of my Realm-art…different?” Acryl said as he took off a metal binder clip from his bag, then cast his Realm-art. He swallowed, expecting pain and discomfort when casting, but it did not come. The Realm-art cast like usual, a slight tingle around the spine, ebb and flow of power surging in him.

  The binder clip busted out the deep midnight blue and the dim, lifeless purple, with occasional sprinkles of bright cobalt yellow.

  “…Acryl…” Suiming whispered.

  “Are you both silly or what?” he continued as he gestured to Acryl to stop casting by crossing his index fingers. Acryl did as Suiming showed, stopping his casting as the binder clip stayed in a state similar to a blooming flower. “Did nobody tell you that casting in public without a license, excluding self-defense, can be fined in Auderheim?”

  He put the clip back into his bag, his heart racing fast as he looked out at the raindrop-filled window. Acryl could not see what was beyond the window. Only darkness and storm raged. Acryl felt nights like these were the ones that made reading and painting more enjoyable than they already were. The rain created a soothing sound for Acryl as if it was one of the days he stayed in Euth, late at night, staring at his ceiling in his room while the rain poured from the unsealed lid of the dome.

  The drumming and pouring calmed his mind as if the night itself sang a lullaby. Though after the incident in the manor, he wished for the starry night to be as silent as they were before. He slowly closed his eyes and fell asleep.

  From one side to another, from one sun to the other, where will you be when you fill your heart? What will you do when you reach the end?

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  Acryl opened his eyes.

  A dim, gentle golden light, a light similar to the dawn shining through the ribs of the Dome and reflecting into every house, a light that he sometimes saw on the days he stayed up too late. That light stood tall, penetrating into the sky and sowing down on the earth. As Acryl sketched its form into his mind, he heard wolves howling, echoing between the roots of the light and the tall trunk of it.

  “Sir, what are you doing here?” a young girl’s voice called she spoke in a foreign language, but Acryl understood it. It was somewhere heard, like in a store that he walked past by, a person handing out fliers in the square or the preachers near the church.

  “Ah, I see, sir, if you wish to bathe in Sunrise longer, I won’t disturb you,” the voice said as Acryl heard a series of footsteps on the lush, soft ground leaving him.

  My child, why do you feel like the silver and gold splattered upon the sky?

  Acryl gazed upon the tall tree of light, its branches seemed to reach past the clouds, past the light in the sky. A belt of light in the sky, ornamented and decorated as it glistered a similar shine to the tree.

  “I am in…Treisaules?”

  “Wait!” Acryl shouted as he turned in the direction of the footsteps, his foot stepping onto the soft, green ground. That girl was still there, she wore a dark blue cloth over her shoulder, where her almost white, pastel blond hair, a color of oak tree planks, rested.

  “Where else would you be?” she said as she looked around.

  “I thought Treisaules is…isolated from the world, how come I am here?” Acryl asked as he turned his head to the tree again, etching it down deeper in his mind. He planned to sketch it down once he woke up.

  “…Isolated? Oh, I think you misinterpreted the Belt of Fatherland…how do I explain it…” the girl said, looking away.

  “It’s more like…a citadel? …I’ve been told that this was a castle wall,” she continued, tilting her head.

  “And sir, this can be a strange question,”

  “Are you by any chance, Thyme?”

  As her mouth formed the syllables, a chill ran up Acryl’s back as he trembled. The girl stood there, waiting for his answer as she pulled the blue cloth together. Before he could form an answer, his vision fell into blackness.

  …

  Suiming

  “Finally,” he said as he closed his annotated book that he had bought after rescuing Nameless. Suiming felt like every blink might lead him to slumber away like Serpent Father.

  “Wouldn’t you think he’d make a great Letter-Writer? Just from the Realm-art side,” he asked as he kept his collapsing eyelids open.

  Seren smiled in response. Her fingers tapped on the small table in a sequence of four, reminding Suiming of sixteenth notes tapped out with metal dance shoes.

  “If you say so, but I’ve suggested the council take Josh as a candidate, maybe it is not too late for you to propose Acryl as a candidate,” she said, looking out the window.

  “Yeah, but the guy got an Existence to answer his prayer, the Starseeker has about the same amount of attention to humans as a rock. That’s the Existence’s way of caring, eh?”

  “And from what I noticed yesterday, Acryl probably can’t even go stargazing now.”

  “Suiming, I can’t give you a good answer, but I believe it was not the Starseeker himself who answered, but that sealed thing, like how the blood of Starseeker answered the poor girl Seren,” she said as she laid her head on the table, hair falling like the Silver Arm of the sky and its nebula, clusters of stars.

  “In that case, he is somewhat similar to a Letter-Writer, just that he did not take, but was given the power.”

  “Suiming, do you like nights like this? Quiet, peaceful, rainy, and mellow. The night I returned to the Dome…”

  Suiming gazed at Seren again, her purple eyes, so similar to that color Acryl showed, so similar to the flames that burnt that night.

  “You don’t talk about that, Seren. What is it? An exchange of our memories like we used to do by the campfire? If you want it, I can tell you what the stories are of the Crown of the Sinner,” Suiming said, reminiscing about the days at the war camps when Seren was a soldier and Suiming slipped into the troops.

  “Well, then I’d have to disappoint you, I am just…darn it…what’s the word?”

  “Nostalgic?”

  “No…floating, floating in old memories.”

  “That’s being nostalgic,”

  “Nostalgic would be if I am happy with those memories, but no, I am just floating.”

  “Then it’s just reminiscing,”

  “In Starseeker’s name, can you make me feel sophisticated for a second?”

  “If that’s the case…I don’t really like the nights like these, I like the ones where I can gaze at the stars into embarrassment, then the moon so ashamed of my stare that they walk under the horizon,” Suiming said, legs crossed as he folded his arms. Talking to Seren did make him less sleepy. Strange, why do I have a feeling that I don’t want her to know anything about the crown? It happened so long ago that it won’t matter for her to know.

  “Just sayin’, but aren’t you worried to be in Auderheim again? You are walking into the den of Faustus this way.”

  “And? Such a long time has passed that they won’t even care I’m back, it’s not like they are as powerful as the Baichuan association. I don’t have to worry about the morons,” Suiming said as he tucked his jacket tighter. He did not feel cold, however, the part of him that didn’t want to discuss the crown felt like hiding, as if the jacket was some sort of camouflage for him.

  “You do you, I just think that Kaspar’s Realm-art behaved too strangely, and I couldn’t think of anything else that he wore the crown,” Seren said as she let her head lean onto the window, eyes closed.

  The Crown of Sinner, the only crown that is certain someone holds, for Existence’s sake, did he see me in the crown’s recording?

  As Suiming thought about it, exhaustion all steamed away, a hand on his shoulder dragged him out of his thoughts.