Finally, He lifted the oath of starlight, a gaze of near-parental tenderness appearing in His eyes.

"And this portion... is left for all the children who dare to ignite a glimmer of light in the darkness."

In the image, the Lord of the Sky was not looking in any specific direction, but rather... at time itself.

His gaze pierced through the present, seeing this very moment two thousand years later, seeing Bai Cheng standing atop the bell tower.

Their eyes met.

A gaze across two thousand years.

"You have come," the Lord of the Sky's voice rang directly within Bai Cheng's consciousness—not a memory playback, but a real conversation. "Seven hundred years earlier... than I anticipated."

Bai Cheng's silver eyes narrowed slightly. "You foresaw today?"

"I foresaw the possibilities," the phantom of the Lord of the Sky smiled within the memory.

"Among the billions of future branches I have seen, in 73% of the lines, the oath of starlight is never awakened;"

"In 26% of the lines, it is hastily activated at the final moment before civilization is completely destroyed; in less than 1% of the lines..."

His gaze swept over everyone beside Bai Cheng.

"It happens like this: a group of children, scarred but still choosing to believe in one another, lighting it before the battle has even ended."

Zi Yuan gripped her hilt. "So all of this... was within your calculations?"

"No," the Lord of the Sky shook His head. "I never calculated. I simply... believed."

His figure began to turn transparent.

"The Key of Reason was twisted by Norton and the others into a cage of absolute rationality; the Source of Creation waits deep within the Star Abyss for the moment it is truly needed... and the oath of starlight is now in your hands."

"What you do with it is for you to decide."

"I will say only one last thing—"

Before the phantom of the Lord of the Sky completely dissipated, He left behind not a teaching, but a question:

"Children, if one day you discover that the so-called Observer Council, the so-called cradle, the so-called absolute rationality... are all just the prelude to an even greater tragedy—"

"Will you still choose... to continue lighting the starlight?"

The memory image vanished.

The top of the Golden Bell Tower fell into a brief silence.

There was only the continuous faint glow from the oath of starlight earring and a certain... pulsation coming from the far end of the sea of stars.

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

Like a heartbeat, yet a hundred times heavier.

Norton's expression suddenly changed. He snapped his head up toward a certain direction in the sky above Shandora.

Where the end of the Rainbow Bridge should have been, an unnatural gray darkness now appeared.

That gray darkness was spreading.

It wasn't clouds, nor mist, but a kind of... absence of existence. It was as if the existence of that area itself was being erased by some force.

"It's the cradle," Norton's voice was dry. "But not the cradle I'm familiar with... this is..."

Before he could finish, a crack split open in the center of the gray area.

It wasn't a spatial rift, but a tear in reality itself.

From the crack, an object slowly rolled out—

It was a wheelchair.

An ordinary wooden wheelchair, with stardust debris clinging to the hubs and the paint on the armrests peeling off in patches.

An old man sat in the wheelchair.

He was truly old, so old his skin was wrinkled like withered bark, so old his back was hunched until he almost merged with the wheelchair, so old that the knuckles of the hands resting on his knees were white from excessive exertion.

But when he looked up.

All of Shandora—no, every living being within the entire Sky Island connection network—felt a chill.

It wasn't killing intent, nor hostility, but something more fundamental.

Like suddenly seeing the bottomless darkness of an undersea rift in the deep ocean.

The old man's eyes were gray.

A pure gray without any impurities, as if it could absorb all light and swallow all hope.

He pushed the wheelchair, slowly exiting the crack to hover above Shandora, facing the group atop the Golden Bell Tower from a distance.

He didn't look at Norton, nor the other Sages, nor even Bai Cheng.

His gaze fell upon the golden bell itself.

He watched it for a long time.

So long that Garel could almost no longer restrain himself from attacking, when the old man finally spoke.

His voice was very soft, like a whisper, yet it reached everyone's ears clearly:

"Before Elvia dissipated, did she say... that she never held a grudge?"

Bai Cheng took a step forward, her silver eyes staring at the old man. "Who are you?"

The old man did not answer, merely continuing to look at the golden bell, as if reminiscing about something from a very distant past.

"Two thousand three hundred years ago, the 107th Plenary Session of the Sky Federation Supreme Council."

"The agenda was whether to approve the Cradle Project."

"I cast the dissenting vote."

He raised a withered hand and pointed at the bell tower. "Because back then, I knew that once rationality broke free from the constraints of emotion, it would ultimately lead not to evolution... but to..."

His hand slowly lowered.

"Complete nothingness."

Norton's voice began to tremble. "You... you are the only one in the Council who opposed the Cradle Project... the Ash Sage, Abraham?"

The old man finally turned his gaze toward Norton.

In those gray eyes, something resembling emotion appeared for the first time—pity.

"Norton, my old friend," Abraham's voice carried a sigh.

"Back then you asked me why I opposed it. I said it was because I saw a future line that you all did not see."

"Now, I can tell you."

He pushed the wheelchair, slowly approaching the Golden Bell Tower. 𝘧𝓇ℯ𝑒𝓌𝑒𝑏𝓃𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭.𝒸ℴ𝓂

With every meter he drew closer, the surrounding light dimmed a fraction—not absorbed, but... its very meaning of existence denied by some power.

"In that future line, the Cradle Project succeeded."

"Absolute rationality ruled the Sky Islands, all emotional variables were deleted, and civilization evolved with maximum efficiency, reaching the peak we once dreamed of within a hundred years."

Abraham stopped a hundred meters from the bell tower.

He looked up, his gray eyes reflecting the runes flowing across the bell's body.

"Then, in the first second of the 101st year, the entire civilization..."

He paused, then uttered a word:

"Self-extinguished."

"Not through war, not through disaster, but by autonomously choosing to 'cease existing'."

"Because when everything is calculable and everything has an optimal solution, the meaning of living itself... becomes an unanswerable paradox."

Dead silence.

Even the resonance of the golden bell briefly ceased.

Abraham's gaze swept over everyone, finally resting on the scar mark on Bai Cheng's forehead and the starlight earring at her ear.

"The oath of starlight is beautiful," he said. "The dying wish of the Lord of the Sky is warm."

"But do you know?"

He slowly stood up from the wheelchair.

This movement was extremely slow, as if every inch of bone was mourning, but he eventually stood straight.

And the moment he stood straight, the aura around him completely changed.

He was no longer a dying old man, but a... monarch.

The Monarch of Ashes.

"The Observer Council has never been the enemy."

He raised his right hand, palm upward.

Within his palm, a strange, slowly rotating symbol emerged, composed entirely of a gray halo.

The group had never seen that symbol before, yet they felt instinctively... familiar with it.

Familiar as if seeing their own reflection in a mirror.

"We," Abraham's voice resounded through heaven and earth, "including Norton and the others, including Mirror Pupil, including all Observers..."

"Are all just experimental subjects in a much larger experiment."

The symbol exploded.

It turned into /N_o_v_e_l_i_g_h_t/ billions of gray light particles, drifting down upon Shandora like snowflakes.

Every light particle that touched an object—be it a building, a plant, or a living being—caused no damage.

It merely left a faint, gray... on the surface of that object.

Serial number.

Bai Cheng looked down and saw a small line of text appearing on the back of her hand:

【Subject ST-774321-Ω】

She snapped her head up.

Abraham stood in the void, the entire marked city reflected in his gray eyes, as he spoke softly:

"Welcome to—"

"The true chapter... of the Sky Island Epic."