Night had completely taken over Jangberg Forest. The sky above them was no longer a gloomy gray, but a deep black with no stars, as if the forest had swallowed the last traces of the afternoon sun. The night wind blew through the gaps between the pine tree trunks, producing a low whistling sound that resembled the moans of ghosts.

  By the rocky riverbank, the same as yesterday, Mira knelt. Her trembling hands scooped the ice-cold water, washing her face repeatedly. The river water, originally clear, turned murky, carrying black slime and bone dust that clung to her skin.

  She rubbed her dirty silk sleeves with a river stone, trying to remove the stains of the monster’s rotten blood from earlier. The smell still lingered—the scent of old metal and grave soil—making her stomach turn slightly.

  “I’ve prepared some food.” Kars’ voice came from behind, calm and flat as usual.

  Mira turned around. Under the shade of a giant pine tree whose roots jutted out of the ground, a campfire was burning. Not a large fire, but a neatly controlled one, its flames licking the air with orange and blue at the base—a sign of a perfect burn.

  Kars was sitting on a flat rock. Above the fire, a small copper pot hung from a wooden tripod, boiling something that smelled savory.

  Mira walked over to the fire with difficulty. Her legs still felt heavy, a remnant of the adrenaline fading, replaced by extraordinary muscle fatigue. She sat on a tree root across from Kars, stretching her hands toward the fire.

  The heat greeted her frozen skin, as if hugging Mira tightly and warmly. Sleepiness began to attack her heavy eyelids.

  “Where did this come from?” she asked first after sitting down.

  “I have a dimensional pocket.” Kars raised his right hand, revealing a dark gray bracelet with inscriptions Mira couldn’t read. Mira once had a similar device, a tool commonly owned by nobility. Unfortunately, that device was destroyed along with her city.

  “Eat.” Kars handed her a wooden bowl filled with thick soup.

  Mira took it with hands still slightly trembling. Steam rose from the bowl, carrying the aroma of smoked meat, potatoes, and rosemary. Unconsciously, her mouth watered. She immediately sipped the hot broth.

  The taste was simple, but tonight, it felt like a royal feast. The warm liquid flowed down her throat, spreading energy throughout her freezing body.

  “That is... It was very stressful. I almost die," Mira muttered softly, her eyes staring at the reflection of the fire on the surface of her soup.

  Kars did not answer immediately. He took a piece of dry wood and threw it into the fire. Sparks fly into the air, dancing for a while before dying in the darkness of the night.

  "Death always walks beside us," Kars said, his eyes fixed on the embers, not at Mira. "The only difference between a corpse and a living thing is who blinks first when looking at death."

  Mira fell silent, absorbing the words along with a mouthful of tender smoked meat soup. The sound of the river flowing behind them and the burning sound of firewood became the only lullaby.

  "You not blinked today," Kars added softly, almost whispering. "That's a good start."

  Kars stirred the soup in the pot. Then he added a few spoons to his bowl.

  "You use your imagination well," Kars continued. “Star magic has no fixed techniques. It's flexible, adaptive, and requires creative imagination. The fact that you created that spear of light is proof that you adapt to suit the battle at hand.”

  "So I’m a Light Style user?" Mira asked without stopping her eating.

  "For the first one, yes." Kars stared intently into Mira's eyes. "The magical flexibility of the star is very high. It's not just one or two styles that a user can use, but all of them."

  "So that means I can try using other styles?"

  "Focus on one first, let's strengthen your Light Style."

  "Aye, sir." For the first time since the battle earlier, Mira's lips lifted slightly at the corners.

  In the dark, cold, and threatening forest, the small circle of light from the campfire felt like the safest place in the entire world.

  ***

  Mira couldn't sleep. Even though her body was screaming for rest, her mind was too noisy. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the giant skeletal claw lunging at her face. She saw the red cracks on the chest of the angel statue. She felt a squishy sensation as the spear pierced the monster's heart.

  She was also afraid that the dreams or flashes would come again. Last night was enough to almost kill her if it weren't for Kars waking her up. The horror of each flash was no joke; it appeared suddenly and uncontrollably, especially while sleeping.

  He changed his sleeping position on top of a spread of reindeer hides laid on the ground, but the tree roots protruding beneath his back made him uncomfortable.

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  Across the fire that was beginning to dim, Kars was still awake. The man wasn't lying down. He sat cross-legged, his eyes fixed on the clear night sky through the pine tree canopy. The firelight reflected in his gray irises, creating the illusion that a small galaxy was rotating there.

  "You're staring at the sky as if it's your enemy," Mira said suddenly, her voice breaking the silence of the forest filled only with the sounds of the night wind.

  Kars didn't look back. He continued to gaze at the northern constellation—a group of stars forming a pattern like a broken hourglass.

  "Because it is," Kars replied flatly.

  Mira sat up, pulling her blanket around her shoulders. "I thought... as Stealix, the sky is our ally? Our source of power?"

  Kars finally lowered his gaze, looking at Mira. His expression was hard to read, a mix of fatigue and pity directed at her. He picked up a stick, then drew a straight line in the dusty ground near Mira's feet.

  "What do you see up there?" Kars pointed at the sky with the stick.

  "Stars. Light?" Mira answered hesitantly.

  "Wrong," Kars cut in. He thrust the stick into the ground forcefully until it pierced the hard layer of soil. "That is a wound."

  Kars began drawing strange patterns on the ground.

  "In this world, ordinary people are taught that stars are the jewels of gods or the souls of ancestors. That's just a story for children to help them sleep." Kars looked at the sky again with a sharp gaze.

  "Imagine our world exists inside a dark glass sphere. Outside that sphere... There is an ocean of pure light, chaotic, wild, and deadly. We call it Caelum Dominatium, or the Dominance of the Sky, or the Primordial Ocean. The energy out there is too pure; if it enters, it will burn our reality to ashes."

  Mira listened with her mouth slightly open. This had never been taught at the basic academy or the noble academy.

  "Thousands of years ago," Kars continued, his voice lowering, "the Ancestors—the entities we call Gods—decided that this world needed magic. So, what did they do? They didn’t create magic. They took gigantic 'stakes'..."

  Kars drove small twigs around the lines he had drawn earlier.

  "...and they nail our sky. They pierce the wall of reality. The light you see up there? It's not a burning gas ball. It's a hole. A leak. Light from out there seeping in through those nails."

  Mira looked up at the sky in horror. The stars that once seemed beautiful now looked like needle pricks in black fabric, damming a flood of deadly light.

  "So... the Intian..." Mira whispered.

  "Is the leaking blood of the universe," Kars continued. "Every time we use star magic, we are essentially widening that hole bit by bit. We pull the nails so the blood flows more freely."

  Kars tossed the twig into the fire.

  "That's why Singus is dangerous. That's when its hole opens too wide, and the laws of physics in our world no longer apply."

  "But doesn't Singus make the stars flicker?"

  Kars nodded. "That's what we see from here, and what I explained back then is a comprehensible variation. But the point is still the same—we are borrowing the power of the stars to transcend reality. And if it goes too far, then it's all over."

  Mira shivered. The night wind suddenly felt much colder.

  "So... what happens if the hole tears?" Mira asked softly.

  “Then the world is gone,” Kars answered. He slowly lifted the arm of his left cloak.

  Mira flinched.

  Kars' arm, which had always been covered by a white silk shirt, was not smooth. On his pale skin, there were fine cracks that glowed with a dim blue light. Like broken porcelain glued back together with light. The cracks spread from his wrist and disappeared behind his elbow.

  "This is the price," Kars said calmly, staring at his own arm with a vacant gaze. "The Law of Cosmic Equivalent Exchange. The human body is not designed to be a conduit for the universe's leaks. The more you draw energy from the 'wounds' in the sky, the more your own body becomes that wound.”

  "Does it... hurt?" Mira asked, her eyes welling up as she looked at the glowing crack. She was afraid of becoming like Kars someday.

  "Pain is a signal that you are still human. When the pain disappears... that’s when you know you have become part of the sky. And the sky has no feelings."

  Kars closed his arm again.

  "Go to sleep, Mira. Don’t overthink the philosophy of magic at your stage right now. Your task is only to take a drop of water, not to drink the entire ocean."

  However, before Mira could lie down, a hissing sound was heard from above.

  That voice was like a silk cloth that was forcibly torn.

  Kars and Mira looked up together.

  In the sky just above them, between two bright stars, a thin line of purple opened up. It wasn't a shooting star. It was a small tear in the air.

  From that tear, a blob of luminous liquid dripped out. It's not white or yellow, but a color that isn't in the rainbow spectrum—a color that hurts the eye if you look at it for too long. Bloody purple?

  The droplets fall slowly, piercing through the branches of the pine tree without breaking them, but instead removing them. The twigs touched by the droplets vanished without any ashes remaining.

  Kars jumped to his feet, pulling Mira away from the campfire.

  The drops of 'heavenly blood' fell right into the middle of their campfire.

  There was no explosion.

  Instantly, the fire changed color from warm orange to monochrome gray. The sound of burning wood disappeared. The heat vanished, replaced by absolute cold—cold as the vacuum of space.

  The campfire froze. Its flames turned into static gray ice crystal sculptures. The firewood became stone. The copper pot on top crumbled into metallic dust.

  The phenomenon only occurred within a one-meter radius. Outside of that circle, the forest remained normal.

  Mira stared at the frozen campfire, holding her breath. If she hadn’t been pulled by Kars earlier, she might have already become an eternal ice statue.

  "That's... Void Drip," Kars murmured, his brow furrowing deeply. "It's the leftover energy from our battle earlier today. We've drawn too many Intians in this area. The sky has become thin," Kars said hesitantly. Void drip rarely appears. Even during the great Stealix war, when star-powered abilities were abundant, no Void Drip occurred. But now?

  Kars walked closer to the frozen flame. He didn't touch it. He merely waved his hand, sprinkling silver powder from his dimensional pouch. The powder absorbed the anomaly, causing the frozen flame crystal to slowly fade and disappear, leaving behind a barren patch of earth.

  "This is the second lesson for you tonight, Mira," said Kars, turning to look at Mira who was still in shock.

  Kars's face was illuminated by the remaining moonlight, the blue crack behind his sleeve pulsing gently in time with his heartbeat.

  "Being strong doesn't mean you can destroy everything. Being strong means knowing when to stop... before you tear off the roof of your own house."

  Kars snapped his fingers. A small, warm ball of light appeared, floating in the air, replacing the missing campfire.

  "Now sleep. Tomorrow we go back to Meir'Dea. We have to get away from this spot before the roof leaks again."

  Mira nodded stiffly. She returned to her blanket, pulling it up to cover her chin. But her eyes couldn't close. She kept staring at the sky.

  The stars were still there. Beautiful. Sparkling.

  But now, for Mira, they no longer looked like diamonds full of hope. They looked like prison eyes, peering in, waiting for a crack to flood their small world with nothingness.

  And beside her, Kars was the only madman brave enough to stare back into those eyes without blinking.