20th September 1137 years after the descent of the Starseeker

  Suiming bought a monocle before a duel with a deity.

  Suiming knew he had lost, his dulled Realm-art was no match for the club’s head. Her Realm-art was too powerful, almost as strong as the Letter-Writer of Euth. As he cleaned the dust off his waistcoat, he finally found a clock. He was running late; Suiming couldn’t let this happen; he had already missed the beginning of the annual remnant tide. If he were any later, then he’d have to wait an entire year. Besides, Seren commissioned him to investigate something.

  “Next time, Guiyan, send me a letter when you can!”

  He jumped out of the towering building, breaking the glass with his Realm-art, and grabbed his briefcase. Constellations that looked like they were from encyclopedias emerged out of nowhere as he tried to catch them.

  The absurd law is melting…please…Master of Star-Mansions, I beg you to come back. His opponent’s words echoed in his head.

  “I underestimated you, Guiyan! You are an amazing caster!” he yelled as he fell. Suiming could feel his voice dragging long and distorted.

  “You win! I’ll come back when I fulfill my promise! Vowing on my…uhh…Hair! Yes!”

  The wind blew relentlessly as the wooden mansion flashed in front of his eyes. In a brief second, he saw his reflection in the window. His black hair was messier than ever, purple eyes with keyhole-shaped pupils turning around, the black shirt was filled with wind as one of his boots almost fell off his feet.

  Should I buy a new pair of socks…or should I just stitch up the holes? Wait…did I leave the stove on before I left?

  His open blue waistcoat flapped like butterfly wings as he tried to catch his hat. No matter how many more stars and constellations he summoned, they couldn’t stop his fall. Suiming could even smell the scent of metal and smoke from the fireworks. The stars he evoked left a trail as if he were an asteroid doomed to be burned to ashes.

  Suiming wished he had not made those decisions that led to his dulled Realm-art; if not, he wouldn’t even worry about landing safely. His Realm-art wasn’t this weak before; he used to be powerful enough to bear the title of Master of Star-mansions, but he lost it, in the typical textbook way of regretting and making wrong decisions, just like how right ones can sharpen one’s Realm-art, wrong ones can do the exact opposite.

  For a second, he was distracted by the fact that he was about to miss his aircraft flight, but he snapped back immediately.

  Right as he was about to yell every profanity in Euthian, Siyunese, Senhashian, Treisaulian, Auderheimian, and every other dialect and dead language he spoke. Just before he was about to let the shock of the ground pass through his spine, and thinking why in the name of Serpent Father he decided to gamble on fighting one of the strongest abnormalities in the Baichuan club, he felt something that wasn’t the hard brick ground that was to break his spine.

  He felt that he wasn’t falling or crashing into something. Suiming looked around, the molten dripping syrup on tanghulus was midair like raindrops, accidentally shooting fireworks in the sky like a blooming flower or a celebration at the end of one’s journey, he could see the aircraft not-so-far-away taking off from the port, its mechanical paddle ceased to move as if the air was solid. On the street, he could see a girl in pink, an Euthain man in his early twenties tripping over a basket of fruit, and the old woman yelling. He felt no smell, only the sound of his heartbeat.

  “…I am not going to question the fact I am still seeing,” he said to himself.

  “You really thought arcane items would follow the rules of physics like a paintbrush following the painter’s hand? I thought you were better than this,” a calm and gender-neutral voice said. The voice reminded him of Fosfor, yet it couldn’t be her. Suiming did not feel her scent as the Barricade of Death.

  “Well, you see, the rules of the Realm and the rules of This World are like a coin, the Faustus think that only the tail is there, but the school of lanterns think that only the head is there.”

  “Plus, have you ever painted? It ain’t that simple. Your hand doesn’t follow your brain sometimes! ” Suiming exclaimed. He looked around as he answered that voice. The world was static as it was before. As he searched for that voice, he realized something.

  He couldn’t feel his Realm-art. The stars he cast, the power he has as an abnormality.

  No Realm-art can directly influence other Realm-art’s casting.

  “Are you thinking where your Realm-art went?” the voice said again as Suiming noticed a movement in the crowd. A splash of gray on the colorful street. The gray moved swiftly, and in the blink of an eye, he was right in front of Suiming. His arms folded as he floated.

  Suiming recognized him.

  Damn it, I shouldn’t have made the painting analogy…

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  “…Canvas…weren’t you missing? Do you know how many critics, journalists, and collectors are looking for you?”

  The man’s grayish-blue eyes looked at Suiming. It was the first time he met the sort-of-famous artist of the Grand Dome. His fair face was stained by acrylics and gouache as if he were a dirty palette, and so was his cloak, which made him look like his pseudonym-Canvas. Canvas did not try to fill the silence as he took out his sketchbook and pencil from one of the patched pockets on his trousers.

  “Oh, in the name of Existences, you are now drawing me?!”

  “It isn’t every day you see a Lily’s Brotherhood member falling off a building. They say photographers capture the beauty of the real world…but a camera would be too expensive for me.”

  “What is your business, Canvas? I don’t have time to play around here.” Suiming said as he tried to move. He felt his muscles strengthening as it moved through the air; it felt like swimming through mercury, just not toxic.

  “My business? No, no, no…it’s our business.”

  “Do you want to know where she is?”

  Suiming looked back at Canvas. His face frowned as if he had just heard someone claiming that the Existences weren’t uncaring.

  “I’ve seen many people promising me this. The messengers, the Court of Silu, the smugglers, and cultists in the dark corners of the Dome. Do you know how many fulfilled what they promised?”

  “Handful?”

  “None.”

  “To do is to speak, Canvas.”

  Canvas did not respond. He looked dead into Suiming’s eyes as if he were looking at a contemporary art piece. Judging yet waiting for something to happen.

  “I’ve heard that you can never refuse a good mystery,” Canvas said as he scratched his chin.

  Suiming smiled. It is truly the only thing that he cannot refuse, almost irrefutable as a pint of kvass or her invitation to dance. Yet now no one had been to Treisaules after the War, and the one who danced with him had already left.

  “If you can, Suiming, find out where my power comes from or even better, where yours comes from.”

  “A tiny hint is that I never pay for hotels.”

  “Here, I made your monocle an arcane item,” Canvas said as he peeled off a page from his sketchbook. From the light behind it, Suiming was sure that it was the portrait of him. It flew in the air as it burned into cinders.

  “What is our business then?” Suiming said as he took off his monocle. It was no longer just glass. On it were carved two hands of time and numbers written in old Euthian. It was crystal-like, as if it were a moment frozen in time.

  “I need you to travel with my apprentice. You will recognize him once you meet. You better hurry, the clock is ticking.” Canvas said as he pointed towards Suiming’s monocle.

  “Remember, time is money, and the monocle ain’t a volunteer.”

  The noise of the world came back. Time started to flow again. Fireworks bloomed, and crowds started to move.

  Suiming found himself standing on the ground, clothes clean as before the fight. Out of nowhere, he felt heat on his clothes.

  It was the talismans.

  “Shoot,” Suiming said, throwing off the talismans as he used all of his muscles to pull them off. They slip through his hand. Slippery as if it were a paper fish.

  The talismans were blown by the wind like a traveler on their journey. Suiming hoped that the talismans wouldn’t fall onto a box of fireworks or something ignitable.

  But surely the folks from the Court of Silu can take care of it, right?

  ……

  Three years ago, Acryl

  “Where am I?” Acryl muttered as he held the envelope.

  The wind blew. The shadow sun shone a light of shadow as he wandered in the field of white flowers.

  From afar, he saw a woman dancing by herself. Tapping with her heel and toe, twirling around as if she were dancing with an invisible partner. Her head-to-body proportion was one to six, not very tall but also not too short, approximately half a head taller than Neon.

  He could hear the quiet song in the wind in a language unheard. It reminded him of a song about two lovers challenging each other with impossible tasks.

  “Thyme.” A voice said from behind. It was the dancing woman. Her hair was tied in a high ponytail, wearing a white hooded sweatshirt. Acryl can’t picture her inside any paintings or drawings, as if she would erase herself from them.

  “… what’s your name? We use pseudonyms around here, but I need to know it as I’m in charge, for now, at least,” she said as she grabbed Acryl’s shoulder. It hurt like stepping on a dice.

  “A-acryl.”

  “… Is your dad the previous Thyme? Canvas? He only showed up once and left Lily’s brotherhood.”

  “I’m an orphan…he’s my guardian and mentor,” Acryl clarified.

  “Fosfor, Fosfor Luce Oakside, also an orphan like you, welcome to Lily’s Brotherhood, call me Lily around here.” She said, smiling, as she stretched her arm for a handshake.

  “Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme…now we only need to wait for Rosemary.”

  Fosfor and Acryl walked for a while. He couldn’t stop looking at the flowers. Where shadows were supposed to be bright, but where the sun shone was covered by shadow. His eyes hurt to look at them, but his curiosity and instinct as an artist made him want to inspect them further.

  The white flowers covered the horizon, not a single building in sight. The sky was embroidered with something similar to runes and Realm-art implants.

  “May I ask who Rosemary is?”

  “She? Oh, she’s a friend of mine and the real leader of this place, I’m only the landlord.”

  “Unfortunately, she had been missing. Forget-me-not is looking for her…but…tsk…Somehow, I have a feeling that you three will cross paths…” Fosfor said as Acryl looked at the shadow sun. Behind it was a sky, emotionless gray and covered by runes. Looks like the border of Treisaules. Acryl thought. The sun floated there like a period, an end to anything.

  “If you happened to meet her, you can call her-”

  “Nameless.”