With his eldest son's courtesy clearing the way, Robin stepped into the prayer room, like slipping into a hush where incense curled like pale fog.

Within dozens of kilometers, only the Meifei Frontier Estate had a church. The Church counted its coin like seeds; it raised a church only when a pioneer estate or small town grew dense enough to bear fruit.

Estates grown within twenty years were saplings, not oaks; they rarely reached that number.

Only Meifei was the exception. It wasn’t even large enough to be a frontier town, yet in its southeast corner stood a church to the Wisdom God, a lantern set in a small garden of stone.

They said the current Meifei head had built it at his own expense, pulling silver from rock like veins from the earth.

After weighing the Meifei lord’s now-vacant manor against his own, Robin abandoned any urge to spar with the rich. He palmed the wall of solid gray limestone—quarried from the southern Endless Sea, famed for swallowing sound—and slipped into the small chapel like a fish into calm water.

“Human wishes are simple,” he breathed, a pebble dropped into a deep well.

The prayer room asked for few rules; the church asked for even fewer. Lavish or spare in shape, since the first dawn of civilization, a church kept one rule—a mountain-shadow you bow beneath—

Reverence. That was a Divine Healer’s demand, not a Divine Being’s.

Only a divine statue, and a plain table and chair, bare as winter branches.

A prayer room no different from Saigbaru Cathedral’s calmed him like rain easing heat. He sat, bowed his head, and, like whispering to a quiet lake, he let his troubles ripple out.

“I hope for elevation of spirit. I hope my stubborn patience wins the world’s nod. I hope the blood and soul the Creator gifted pass like fire from torch to torch.

“Children.

“That is the most crucial ring in the chain of inheritance.

“I hope my children grow safely, inherit my ideals and my strength. Yet I don’t want to bind them—what if they yearn to become something else?

“I’ve been thinking, but I have no answer.

“The manor grows safer by the day; it hardly needs my hand. Our spare coin runs deep enough for my wife and children to grow in peace. Maybe these are luxurious worries: too many paths make choosing hard.

“I… what should I do?”

[This is the wish of the young. True, indeed.]

A radiant voice, beyond human wit, sounded by his ear, like dawn pouring through leaves.

From the statue, great light shifted and flowed. It poured like warm water over his crown, soothed his tired spirit, widened his sight beyond time and era, a horizon waking after long night.

He had heard echoes before, but never like today—never beneath a Divine Being’s direct gaze, like the sun breaking cloud.

He did not panic. Calm pooled inside him like a still pond. The light warmed his soul, cleared his thoughts, smoothed out tremor and fear like a hand across ripples.

Robin saw so much within the light. He could not read every image’s meaning; he did not know what story the Divine Being’s horizon meant to tell. He held onto one word as it flickered through human history, repeated like a bell.

Choice. Human choice.

No matter the branching paths, a human confirms only one future.

[Robin, this is the young one’s wish: let the bloodline endure, let the spark burn on, let civilization not be severed. Carve your sign on objects, on history, on the earth, to prove humanity passed here.]

The Divine Being spoke slowly, words about humanity’s history and future, each syllable polished like river stones, spoken in the common tongue yet trailing a long epic in their wake.

Robin stopped himself from pressing further, like a climber pausing before a cliff he should not grasp. He understood. To skim the surface was enough to speak with the all-knowing.

And enough to find the answer he sought.

“This… that’s right,” he said after thinking, the admission soft as evening wind.

Human nature’s wish isn’t grand. It’s no different from beast or monster. At the root, we want to leave something behind. Gene or book, instinct or thought—each is a treasure fathers hope to pass down.

[Then what of your wish?]

“Mine?”

He kept his head bowed. For a heartbeat he wasn’t sure. No—he was. The truth sat in his chest like a small, heated stone.

Like the tutor’s gentle smile once said:

“What do you truly want?” [What is your wish?]

—you should know.

—No, truth is, you know very well.

—For friends, for nation, for humanity, for wife, for children, for neighbors, for your people, for strangers on a road—you spent so much time, so much strength, half a lifetime poured out like rain.

—Now everything runs on its rails. Everything leans toward peace and good growth. Everything no longer needs your helping hand.

—You are old, and yet you have time to recall your own wish.

—You can finally, for yourself, become a hero…

To become a hero—this was Robin Toscana’s childish wish, clinging from boyhood to youth to old age like a kite string that never snapped.

[That is not shameful.]

The voice of light broke the clouds and speared his small, grimy, cramped little thought, like sun through dust.

Forced by fate, boxed by circumstance, borne by the tide—every cover and excuse he wore fell away in an instant of radiance, leaving his naked heart, unhidden.

The Divine Being did not scold him. Instead—agreement?

[Without doubt, your thought is no ugly evil. To yearn for greatness is the root of a golden soul. Square your shoulders; be proud of your resolve.]

“But my children, my wife, my people—they won’t rejoice because of my resolve. Then… is my choice truly right?”

His question landed like a stone tossed into himself, rings of doubt spreading.

“If I choose death—”

Yes. The old knight’s wish would end in death, an autumn leaf’s drop.

—No revision. No room to change. Truth be told, the tragic ending felt like the greatest aim, the black line that makes gold gleam brighter.

“—those I love, those who love me, will surely weep. Can that still be called right?”

He asked, brow knotted like a storm cloud.

[Not justice. Yet…]

With the Divine Being’s words, more horizons opened, petals unfurling. Time fell back into a past lit by a harsher sun.

[…You have earned the right to deem yourself right.]

Back then, Robin wore his hair long, no need for fine hats or helms. His gold hair caught the sun like a banner.

He was freshly dubbed, reckless, praised only for his martial skill—a green knight with knuckles white on the reins.

No people to guard. No princess to defend. No darling children to cradle.

Only his horse, Worbi, and a lance, a flag, a sword, a shield—plain gear like river iron.

Oh, and the far horizon, a boundless tide of monsters rolling like storm surf.

Forty-six years ago, old King Vineri died. The new king had not yet learned a king’s weight. The autumn hunt failed to cull clean, so the winter Black Tide swelled worse than ever, a night flood shouldering the land.

Two hundred sixty-seven frontier estates at the front faced direct impact. The people could not withdraw in time. Before the army gathered, the nearby Royal Black Thorn Knights rode out in full, first to take the blow, spears like braced saplings in wind.

Robin turned his horse toward that black mass of monsters, lowered his lance, raised his shield, and charged with his comrades.

Like instinct. Like a heartbeat stepping onto a drum.

The mood in the knight order wasn’t tragic or sacrificial. Robin still remembers: when the captain assigned tasks—or last wishes—his eyes lit with excitement, like stars pricking dusk.

Expectation.

They hoped to meet challenge. They hoped to do something for this era, for this country. They hoped to live strong and beautiful, and die clean and great, like a blade washed in snow.

His heart hammered like it would burst from his chest. Robin pressed it down with his shield hand, clenched his teeth to keep from laughing out loud, and charged. Charge!

Hooves.

Shouts.

Roars.

The wind clawed at battle flags.

The knight order’s first hundred, a spear of light, tore the dark and punched through earth carpeted with monsters.

At the instant his lance pierced the stone troll’s eye, hills, grass, monsters, comrades—everything shattered and drifted away like morning mist.

Robin, dazed, eased his horse, searching for enemies and friends. Only after a long breath did he realize this was a horizon the Divine Being granted, not a battlefield’s blood.

“I… I think I understand,” he murmured, lowering his lance tip. When he raised his eyes, the mane before him had become a tabletop’s wood grain.

No stench of blood, no sound of war. Quiet. Clean. Like snowfall over empty streets.

“I should—likely—I understand my wish.”

[Then go to the Time Ruins of the Endless Sea. As you wish. As you choose.]

“…”

[No matter. A Divine Being should grant choice, not choose in your stead. Yet today is different. This era is different. The age will pass; the Time Ruins are a last resting place for heroes. Even if I am resented, I will grant the future most pleasing to humanity—this is the counsel of Wisdom God Haydon. Complain if you must, protest if you will; these are the last echoes.]

“An era?” The sudden word struck him like a stray bell; Robin blinked, uncomprehending.

[The gods will soon go far and never return. Human blood and soul will degrade, generation by generation, no longer pure. One day to come, human descendants will grow as ugly as once-enemies. It will be a mournful era, a tragic era. Better to bury heroes at a dream’s fair ending, let death’s sleep hold the memory of past glory like embers in ash.]

“…”

[Thus I speak: the Time Ruins of the Endless Sea are the final resting place gifted to heroes, the last chapter of a hero without tears.]

“In the end, it’s still for humans to choose whether to accept?”

[Though I know this counsel beyond the rules feels like a command. Yet it is inevitable. The last gift is given. After, it will be humanity’s era.]

Robin smiled, a curve like sun warming frost.

The Divine Being’s counsel left little room for rebellion. It pleased more than an emperor’s decree. So yes, it was like an order.

No need to dwell there. Only this—

“I, a small figure muddling through a life, can become a hero?”

[If you want to, if you’ll walk your wish.]

“…If I speak this aloud, it’ll shake society in ugly ways. Ah, damn it—why would Your Eminence tell me such grand tides? I’m just a small man.”

He curled on the chair, hands holding his head like a storm holding rain. He wanted to roar, but had no reason to open that throat; the breath stuck like a pebble caught in a reed.

His palm trembled hard, in thrill or fear—it didn’t matter. He already had his answer, a coal glowing in his chest.

[You will. You won’t. I have foreseen the future.]

[Hero, Robin Toscana.]

Above the Starry Sky Divine Kingdom, the all-knowing, all-powerful Divine Being fell silent, like night laying a velvet mantle over the stars.