Ed lowered his head and rubbed his eyes. He stared at the night sky for so long that when his gaze fell back on the map, there seemed to be countless stars in front of him, twinkling in a black mist.

Outside the window, the whole of Stonebuch was still asleep in the night, and the vision that happened in the northern wilderness was too far away from here after all. However, when Ed awoke from his sleep, Iss had already jumped out of the window and soared into the sky.

Ed rushed to the window, only to see the northern sky, a ray of light like a sharp blade cutting through the night, as if a star was falling.

He didn't know much about the starry sky above him, and it wasn't until the meteor that had streaked across the sky that night not long ago that he began to study the star map treasured in the Black Tower. Even so, it took him a long time to recognize that there was an extra star in the northern sky.

The star has not fallen—it has just been born.

If it weren't for the star's unusually bright moment, he probably wouldn't have been able to spot it.

Isis didn't come back, he couldn't sleep anymore, so he could only sit down at the table and open the map that Dorian had just sent during the day.

The map, which had been in his father's collection, was more accurate and detailed than the map sent by Lockburg, but above the Sidney Basin, there was only a blank space, and there was no forgotten Light of the Arctic North, let alone the newly built Temple of Nesses.

Ed drew a small circle on top of the blank space. He was almost certain that the light had something to do with the Temple of Nesses...... It has to do with Scott, who once again quietly disappeared from Tonbuch.

The tip of the pen is drawn to the north-east to point out the location of the light of the far north, then to the south, to make a shallow mark on the small castle representing Balach, and then to the north, in the middle of a vast ocean, to point out the island of White Rock......

Ink-colored markers are dotted across the map, like another kind of star.

Ed rubbed his eyebrows. He couldn't find any more connections, but he instinctively realized that this was just the beginning.

If Isis had been here, he would probably have seen more. A dragon will know better than anyone that it and its ancestors have looked up at the starry sky for thousands of days, and the land they have flown over countless times.

He did not wait until dawn to return to Is, but waited for another guest.

"I beg your pardon. ”

The uninvited Nick Stobel remained polite, but he couldn't hide the uneasiness in his eyes, and the question blurted out was even more abrupt: "Last night...... Did you see that?"

Ed nodded: "...... One more star. ”

Naria, who brought them beer, blinked in surprise, but left quietly, thoughtfully leaving them plenty of space.

“...... Not much. The mage's voice was still hoarse under the smell of beer, "That star may have been there all along." ”

Then he hesitated and asked another question: "What does the stars mean to you?"

It's almost a faux pas. Even though he no longer had the name of a saint, Ed was still a priest, and for the priesthood, the stars meant gods and devotional spirits who had passed away and ascended to the temple—unquestionably and accepted by all.

"What about you?" Ed asked calmly. He didn't feel offended, the mage in front of him, his face had a confusion that he had never felt before—he didn't mean to be offended at all.

This time Stallbell was silent for a longer time, and finally spoke with some hesitation: "Before I decided to become a mage, I had another teacher. ”

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Nick Stone's origins are similar to Ed's. His father was a well-known merchant and his mother was the daughter of an obscure nobleman. Such marriages are not uncommon in Neo, and there will be no contradictions in the cultivation of heirs like Ed's parents had before - in Neo City, in addition to the high-ranking and powerful mages, rich and powerful merchants are far more respected than flashy nobles.

Storbel's childhood teacher, Avar, was a slightly neurotic old man who danced so excitedly that he didn't care if anyone was listening, or if he could understand it. He has traveled across continents and at sea, knows almost every place and is fluent in many languages.

Stobel liked the teacher very much, but his deepest impression of Abel came from the old man's fanaticism for the stars.

There have always been many people who study the stars. Elves boast of knowing the story of each star, clerics use the stars to predict good and bad luck, and mages like to study what kind of astrological signs are best used to exert the power of magic.

But for Avar, the entire starry sky is one.

"They're connected to each other. He told Stormel that his eyes, which had begun to cloud, were as bright and warm as the stars, "in a very precise way...... As precise as the circle in the Archmage's Tower. ”

In fact, he believed that the entire starry sky was a huge magic circle, if he could solve the rules in it...... If he could learn the secrets - he would be happy.

It was this that Stobel still could not fully comprehend, and although he was a mage, Avar's fanaticism had no real purpose, not to pursue any kind of profit or power, but to pure love—"solving the mystery" was the greatest pleasure for him.

Stormel vaguely knew that Avar's interpretation of the starry sky was based on the change of the stars - the stars are not eternal, they will fall, they will be reborn, but at the same time, except for the rising and setting every night, all the stars are moving slowly according to some kind of rules, even if that change, let alone humans, even the elves may not be able to detect the long life.

To understand those changes, in addition to tireless observation day after day, it takes a large number of star charts from different time periods – even if most of them are not very accurately drawn.

In Avar's not-so-cramped room, a mountain of various star maps was piled up. All of Avar's income was spent on this, and he even did not hesitate to cheat in various ways. The first time Storbell entered the Archmage Tower, he was tricked into it by this teacher as a bait so that he could have a chance to steal the ancient star map in the secret room.

It was on that occasion that Stormbell accidentally bumped into Kerman Santo, the great stone shaper.

"Sounds interesting. ”

The tall archmage, with a white beard and hair, who looked up like a god in the eyes of the little boy, used these words to rescue Avar, who was caught by the mages and almost turned into a spell material.

He generously lent Avar several star maps drawn by different races. And those drawings, which seemed to shatter at the touch of a button, and I don't know what material they were made of, eventually drove Avar into madness.

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