The Stellar Courtyard was still the Stellar Courtyard—at least in Ouyang’s mind, a familiar constellation that shouldn’t have shifted in a month or two. Yet the garden before him had become a battlefield, its starlit paths buried under ash. He nearly couldn’t recognize it.

War. Endless war, like a wildfire eating the horizon.

Smoke of battle drifted everywhere, a bitter haze curling through pillars and pines. No foreign invasion—just race wars igniting end to end, a spark jumping from kindling to prairie. It began with something absurd: a human child of three killed a dragon.

Yes, a three-year-old. The boy could summon a Godspawn. Under normal rules, a Godspawn contracted to a child was an ocean forced into a teacup—ten parts of divine power, and you’d be lucky to spill one. Even Ouyang and Glorious Moon were like that; she was a prodigy, but he could only draw from her a millionth of a drop.

That Godspawn shattered the rules, or simply didn’t see them, and struck like thunder. A dragon fell, and that single split became the first crack between humans and dragons, the keystone of a war.

Then the dragon clan sent a Dragon King to the human city of Ediluwasha, a storm heading for a quiet shore. In a careless sweep, the Dragon King swatted an elven princess who was playing inside the city, a snowflake crushed under a palm. The elves raged; she was the Elven Queen’s most beloved daughter, and also a deity beyond the White Clouds, the voice of nature’s wind.

Furious elves sent druids to demand justice, hawks cutting across beastkin plains. Passing a minotaur tribe, the druids clashed horn to bow. Before the high-born pressure of the elves, the minotaur tribe was slaughtered, a pasture left without hoofprints. A dwarf witnessed it, a lone ember flickering at dusk. To keep the beastkin from knowing, the druids hunted that ember—chased him to snuff him out. He died, but not by their hands; he fell when Seafolk and elves broke into battle, caught by an unknown AOE, a wave that crushed driftwood. Before he drowned, he told the Seafolk everything he’d seen.

In short, for a hundred bizarre reasons, every race took up arms, dominoes tipping under a wind.

Had the wingedfolk and the gods beyond the White Clouds stepped in, this storm could have fallen to a light rain. But absurdity piled higher: the wingedfolk sent mediators, white feathers gliding toward beastkin lands. A minotaur lifted his hands and pulled down a Godspawn—the same kind as the child’s—untouched by limits, a star tugged from a torn sky.

The wingedfolk’s peace mission was wiped out, wings littering the ground like fallen petals. Not entirely—one wingedwoman lived. But her husband was cuckolded by that minotaur, a banner ripped and stained. Rage rose, and the wingedfolk mustered armies, clouds rolling into a stormwall, only to find a new truth on the wind.

Godspawn had become cheap—everywhere, creatures called them, and those Godspawn were unbound. In this era where gods swarmed the sky like lanterns at a festival, even wingedfolk and gods were overwhelmed. Every few days, bands of fools would summon Godspawn to farm Whitecloud Castle and the Divine Hall, two places once known as hell-tier dungeons, waves hammering old cliffs. Wingedfolk and gods were run ragged. Once, they would have lit the world with divine wrath; now, with every hand able to raise a Godspawn, even thunder had no place to strike.

War smoke spread like moss. In that haze, Glorious Moon was drawn into battle, not against another race, but against humans—more precisely, against Tila Fei’s family, ivy coiling back on the tree that birthed it.

Back when she first met Sade, their conflict had already seeded, a thorn under silk. Tila Fei hadn’t cared then—she was royal, bathed in spotlight since childhood, a noon glare that blinded. When she saw someone more beautiful, more poised, or simply stronger, jealousy sprouted like brambles.

Last time, Sky King Unoia almost killed her, a blade descending from the blue, but a nameless force dragged her away, a fish slipping the net. This time, she came with an army for revenge, steel cresting like waves.

“Hahaha… Glorious Moon, you didn’t see this coming, did you? In an era where Godspawn are everywhere, your pride is dust on the wind!” Behind Tila Fei floated a seraph. Three pairs of pristine wings unfurled, hovering as if untouched by any speck of earth, a lily above mud.

For Glorious Moon, it was a dead end. Soldiers ringed her like a tightening noose, and her vaunted Godspawn offered no edge. Tila Fei’s Godspawn was unbound, able to unleash its full power, lightning without a rod. Glorious Moon held three cards. Hymner of Wind—Sky King Unoia—still suffered rules as chains. Star’s Blessing was a palm-sized sprite who had once burst past limits to fight, a firefly flaring against night, but she’d been gravely hurt and hadn’t healed.

Glorious Moon squeezed Ou Xinxue’s hand, seeking calm like a deep breath before a plunge. The last hope was the final card, also the first she had ever received: Chaos Twinborn.

Since Ou Xinxue appeared, Glorious Moon had been avoiding, stepping around Ouyang’s shadow like puddles after rain. She didn’t want to break Xi’s happiness, didn’t want to be the third person at a table meant for two. So, for a time, Ouyang rarely came to the Stellar Courtyard, footsteps fading down a long corridor.

Now it was different. She ran, but fate pressed at her back like a tide.

“Xiao Xue,” her voice trembled like a string before it settles, “I’ve been avoiding this. If it were only me, I’d rather die than do it. But it isn’t just me anymore. I can die. You can’t…” Glorious Moon stroked Ou Xinxue’s hair, fingers like a soft rain.

Ou Xinxue nodded obediently, a little sapling bending with the wind. “I know. Mom isn’t calling Dad because she misses him. Mom is doing it for Xiao Xue. Mom is the greatest mom in the world!”

Glorious Moon had corrected her many times—no Dad, no Mom—but Ou Xinxue never changed, her words firm as a favorite charm. Over time, Glorious Moon accepted the name, warmth settling like dusk light.

“Then…” Glorious Moon drew the card, moonlight caught in lacquer. She placed it into Ou Xinxue’s hand; they held it left and right, a bridge of fingers. “Your irresponsible father is hard to reach. Use that bond and call him. Only a cry that reaches the heart can make him feel our peril.”

Seeing Glorious Moon put away Sky King Unoia and the little sprite, Tila Fei thought she’d surrendered, a banner finally lowered. She hadn’t expected Glorious Moon to still have fight; was that third card their last dawn?

“Stop struggling. You don’t know who you’re against. This princess isn’t backed by mortals. Behind me stands—God!” To heighten her vantage, Tila Fei had her servants build a platform, a cliff raised in an instant. She stood above, eyes cold as winter, wanting to watch hope turn to despair, a candle gutter to smoke. She didn’t realize she’d hoisted a flag; villains fall to their own monologues.

Glorious Moon ignored her. She and Ou Xinxue raised the card, their hands a prayer.

“You must… hear our call!”

Clouds massed, iron-gray and heavy, a herd running under the sun. Lightning flashed. The card split into two pillars of light and shot skyward, spears cleaving the firmament. Black and white entwined like yin twining around yang. Where the pillars kissed the cloudbank, a vast vortex opened, a storm eye yawning into depth.

At that earthshaking omen, even Tila Fei knew something was wrong, a floor dropping under her feet. “Hurry—kill her! Don’t let her summon—” Her scream broke like a drumskin. She’d gone too far, and the tide was ripping her stage apart.

Her retainers knew what to do the moment the omen rose, instincts sharp as knives. Yet they couldn’t reach Glorious Moon. Between them stretched an invisible, endless road, a mirage that separated fingertip from touch. Close enough to see breath, distant as the horizon.

Neither charge nor arrows could approach her. Everything fell short, rain breaking on an unseen wall.

This had spun out of control. Tila Fei clutched her hair, fingers raking like claws. She looked at the seraph and begged, voice cracking: “Angel, please—act…”

The Godspawn shook its head, solemn as granite. “It’s useless. Between us lies not only endless space, but time itself. She stands before our eyes, yet she isn’t in our time. From the instant those black and white pillars rose, the space around them was cut away. They left the main timeline.”

Tila Fei didn’t understand the words, a book written in frost. She understood one thing—their blades couldn’t touch Glorious Moon, not now.

Meanwhile, a voice drifted through the air, mist over water.

“Other Shore blossom, bloom for a thousand years. Fall for a thousand years. Petals and leaves forever out of step, never meeting through all lives.”