The Stellar Courtyard is a wondrous world, a sky painted with miracles and stormlight. Gods walk the streets like lanterns at dusk, and demons climb out of the Abyss like shadows breaking ice. Carriages clatter beside lev-trains, brass and neon braided into a single night.

Humanoid peoples can call beings from other dimensions, like fishermen casting nets across stars. Under the tide and collision of many civilizations, this world grew a broad, all-swallowing vision.

Some preach atheism on the science side, lab coats bright as noon; then sit with mystic gods, tea steaming like clouds. One moment they hymn the holiness of Order; the next they clink goblets with demons from the wicked wing, candles guttering like fallen moons.

Here, mortals with railguns shear through dragons perched atop the food chain, sparks flying like meteors. Sprites from the scientific side don human faces and become idols, smiles polished like jade.

In Ouyang’s words, it’s a beautiful mess, a kaleidoscope blown apart by wind.

Aidiluasha is the human-held realm in the Stellar Courtyard, a patch of earth lit by stubborn fireflies. Our story begins in a nameless village, a speck of dust under a low, bruised sky.

The village sits in the worst place, a den under a dragon’s shadow. Once the dragon learned people had dared build in its turf, it swooped in like thunder every few days to demand protection. Paying a dragon became a custom, a ritual carved with fear.

Lately the fee turned to human sacrifice, offerings dropped into the dragon’s sleeping cave like tears into a well. This year, the chosen was Glorious Moon. The villagers, faces numb as stone, tied her up and threw her into the darkness without a flicker of pity.

Fear first, then breath—at that brink, Glorious Moon felt a distant pulse, like a star tapping on glass. She reached across worlds and summoned her Contractor. He seemed useless at first, a guttering candle—then, for no reason she could name, his small cosmos flared, and the dragon died like ash in rain.

She ran from the lair, wind slicing like knives. By the time she stumbled into daylight, Glorious Moon’s trust in the village had cracked like old porcelain. She chose to leave forever, a lone reed in a cold river.

Wandering alone in the Stellar Courtyard is hard, like walking into snow barefoot. This is a world where humans are thin grass in a storm. The proud winged folk live on the Sky City with gods for neighbors, looking down like hawks over fields.

Elves call beings from the elemental worlds, and any Elemental Lord could shatter a human city like a clay bowl. Orcs bond tightly with beasts from the outer spaces; prehistoric terrors sweep the land like burning tides and set the orcs on a throne.

Dragons themselves are strength carved into bone; both the great-dragon line and the god-dragon line can sit as equals with gods once grown, scales bright as suns.

Titans can punch a mountain into gravel, a thunderclap made flesh. The insectoid swarms flood like monsoons and drown armies. Dwarves lead alchemy by millennia, their forges breathing like volcanoes.

In short, humans stand awkward here, a flickering lamp in a wide wind.

Other humanoid races summon fixed kinds of otherworldly beings: elves only call elementals, and orcs only call war-beasts. Humans are different. That lack of chains is the one ember that lets humans stand in the Stellar Courtyard.

By mixing beings from many worlds and weaving tactics like tight nets, humans carved out Aidiluasha and held it with grit.

Glorious Moon’s village sits at Aidiluasha’s edge, a fence at a forest’s teeth. Beyond lies orc territory. And trouble found her fast: a Minotaur blocked her path, riding a Blaze Tiger whose paws painted fire across the dirt.

Panic first, then thought—she didn’t even consider running. Orc bodies are iron springs, stronger than humans by miles. And with that Blaze Tiger breathing fire like a furnace, escape was a dream made of smoke.

She pulled a card, fingers shaking like leaves. She tried to summon the girl she’d bound by contract from the outer space. Nothing answered. The card flashed a cold line: Not within service area.

Her mind scattered like paper in wind. Refusal she’d understand. But “out of service area”? What kind of joke was that?

“Haha, human, go on—summon!” The Minotaur’s horns gleamed like crescent moons. “You’re from the bottom rung in this Courtyard. Think you can hop in front of me?”

Orcs rank near the top among the Courtyard’s races, while humans hang off the tail like driftwood. Still, humans make miracles. If the girl called a god-type, the end could flip like a coin in air.

He watched and thought—cold as stone, he called it “analysis.” He decided her Contractor had refused to fight. Surely the Contractor knew the opponent was him, the great orc, Grus. So the Contractor refused, tail tucked.

Grus pictured the story and grinned. He didn’t rush the kill. He wanted to toy with the human girl, a cat watching a firefly.

Glorious Moon rubbed the card again and again, knuckles white as frost. She had no way out. She could summon the Contractor, or she could die. Death itself didn’t scare her as much as the muddy path before it. Orc aesthetics aren’t human; her looks among orcs were a coin tossed in rain. But the old folk in her village had whispered ugly truths: orcs don’t hesitate, don’t care about race, and won’t look away from the blood.

When orcs raid human villages, they force women down before the men like breaking branches underfoot. If the Minotaur’s heat surged and he dragged her off, the end would be worse than a sword.

She kept rubbing the card, skin aching, as every summoner does. One contract, one card; two contracts, two cards—each line tied to mental strength like threads in a loom.

On Glorious Moon’s card, a woman looked back at her, hair like dusk: Xi. While Glorious Moon scrubbed and prayed for a miracle, the card changed like a moon turning. One girl became two, back-to-back. One face was familiar; the other was a stranger. A man and a woman, black and white, backs touching like twin blades.

Card Name: Chaos Twinborn

Race: Human-kind (God-kind) / (Hidden) Void-kind

Alignment: Order / (Hidden) Chaos

Level: LV1 / (Hidden) ??

She stared, breath held like a trapped bird. Twinborn—did that mean buy one, get one? “Human-kind” meant human; Xi was human, no doubt. But what was “God-kind” in brackets? A second Contractor? If the male was god-kind, then what was “Void-kind” behind the curtain?

She studied it fast, mind sprinting like rain over tiles. She guessed the slash data belonged to the man in black, because every line after his had “Hidden” hanging like a veil. She didn’t know how to summon that void-kind stranger. The condition was hidden, like a lock with no keyhole.

Questions swarmed like bees. No time to think. The status line on the card no longer read: Not within service area. She could summon now; the gate stood open like dawn.

“By the ancient pact of the Star Spirits, by truth’s covenant, cross the star-sea. Partner from the other world, answer my call…”

Light spilled from the card like spilled milk under moon. A familiar silhouette stepped out and stood before Glorious Moon.

And then—those two airheads sprinted for their lives, chased by the Minotaur like autumn leaves chased by storm.

“Xi, can’t you use the power that killed the dragon?” Hope first, then tremble. In Glorious Moon’s eyes, Xi should be blazing; last time she had been heroic, a cut of thunder. The bracketed “God-kind” in the data made sense now. Maybe Xi was god-kind, her divine blood sleeping. That sudden burst had been a sign of awakening.

Xi ran hard, braid whipping like silver grass. “No. Last time was weird. I don’t even know how it happened.”

Miracles don’t copy cleanly. When she looks back, she felt like she’d turned into someone else, a tide rolling through her bones. Now she reaches for that tide and finds dry sand.

Glorious Moon winced, hope collapsing like a paper lantern. From bright to ash in a breath.

She stopped, chest burning, and leaned on a big rock like a tired moon on a mountain ridge. She couldn’t run anymore. But a thread of hope glimmered, a firefly at dusk.

“Xi, check the card. Can we summon that mysterious one?”

Xi knew the card; Glorious Moon had shown it to her when they first met. She took it, eyes widening like stars. “That guy… so that’s what he meant by ‘fiddling with it’…”

She looked at the two backs on the card and reddened, blush blooming like peach petals. She’s easily embarrassed; new friends make her trip over her own shadow.

To summon Ouyang, they had changed his “incantation” last time at Xi’s insistence. Shouting it out was too mortifying for her, like tossing feelings in a crowded street. So she switched to another way.

Xi lifted her right hand, the slender forefinger sketching in the air like ink on silk. A black hexagram bloomed, wrapped by a black ring, a night flower without scent. She finished the glyph, then tapped the hexagram’s center. The diagram tilted toward the sky. A black beam shot up like a spear, and stabbed the clouds.

Around the beam, black clouds spun like a great wheel, thunder growling with iron teeth.

When the earth-shaking omen ended, a man appeared in Glorious Moon’s sight, a drumstick in his fist and grease on his face like glinting lacquer.

“Huh? What’s going on?”

Ouyang blinked, mind lagging like a cart in mud. He’d been eating, seated with Dufei, that damned fat guy. Grabbing food is an art, a war of chopsticks and timing. He outwitted Dufei for a chicken leg—then the world turned, and he landed in this strange place.

He turned. He saw Xi. He saw the other girl. And he understood like a candle catching flame.

“Ouyang, stop eating. That monster’s charging.” Xi tugged Ouyang’s sleeve like a sparrow pulling at a robe, and pointed at the Minotaur.

“Minotaur?” The sight hit Ouyang like a hammer. Horns mean getting cucked; that’s the meme writ in bone. If a Minotaur attacks him, does that mean he’s getting cucked?

Too terrifying.

He raised a hand, ready to swat the brute like a fly. Rules snagged him like fishing lines. By Star Spirit law, his power is tethered to the host—Glorious Moon’s strength is the anchor.

Measured by their system, Glorious Moon is at Star Ring Level, the lowest rung, a first dawn. Above lie Moon Ring, Sun Ring Level, Sky, Demigod—the ladder rising like a silver spine.

Because Glorious Moon sits at Star Ring Level, Ouyang’s usable power caps at Sun Ring Level, a sun behind clouds.

It’s enough to deal with a Minotaur, but Ouyang still has to move clean and fast. He refuses to get hit by horns; that way lies getting cucked, fate twisted like vines.

“Time to unveil the last card,” he said, wind in his grin.

His right-hand glove flowed into a cannon tube, metal blooming like a night flower. As his exclusive weapon, Youwen finally got to glow and be seen.

“Eat my Magneto Beam!”

Blinding light flared like noon over snow. A thundercrack rolled. The Minotaur and the Blaze Tiger blew into dust, drifting like ash in rain.

With the Minotaur gone, Ouyang dodged the fate of the horns—and the end of being cucked flickered out like a candle in wind.