Faranden Kingdom, Royal Capital, deep within the palace.
The aged king was roused from slumber by frantic attendants and stumbled to the terrace.
Looking up at the eerie night sky, his face turned pale.
"Where are the astrologers? Where is the archmage?! What… what omen is this? What has happened?!"
From the shadows, an old mage clad in robes adorned with stars and moons slowly emerged.
The crystal atop his staff flickered violently, even beginning to crack. His voice was dry, laced with fear.
"Your Majesty… the constellations cannot be read… the star charts are in complete chaos… all divination spells have failed…"
"But this power—it carries a clear direction… it points… to the Northern Territories."
Greed and dread both flashed across the king's eyes.
"The North?"
"Dispatch the Shadow Raven corps immediately. I must know what has transpired! At all costs, uncover the source of this anomaly!"
…
On the summit of an arcane tower where thunder rolled eternally, a legendary mage wreathed in lightning arcs crushed the crystal goblet in his hand, roaring in shock.
"Mana tide! This is a mana tide vast enough to overturn the entire continent!"
"Find the source! If we can seize the origin of this power… hahahaha!"
His apprentices lay collapsed on the ground, magical instruments exploding one after another, the chamber descending into ruin.
"Master, it's impossible to calculate… the backlash is too violent!"
"We can only confirm—it lies somewhere in the northern continent…"
…
In the depths of the far northern glaciers.
A pair of molten-gold eyes abruptly opened.
A deep roar, tinged with confusion, reverberated through the eternal ice layers.
A colossal beast, its arms dragging against the ground, its body draped in white fur, heaved an iceberg upright as it rose to its feet.
It stared at the shifting heavens with a fierce gleam, then turned its gaze southward—toward where the starlight had fallen—and roared in defiance.
…
Meanwhile, far beyond this continent, beyond even this star system, in a desolate corner of the universe.
There floated a massive planet, gray-black and lifeless.
Its surface was littered with titanic fossilized beasts, frozen in grotesque forms of their final struggles, forming a chilling necropolis of stone-like corpses.
At the highest point of this planet stood a mountain range fashioned from innumerable colossal bones, a pale ridge like a monument to extinction.
There, a pair of eyes—vertical pupils sculpted of ice and flawless diamond—slowly opened.
They bore no warmth, only eternal cold and deathly silence.
Yet now, within those eyes, a faint ripple stirred.
Their gaze pierced immeasurable distance, directly seeing the disturbance on that distant world.
"…Castarella… the Cradle…"
A low murmur echoed through the dead planet, grinding like stone against stone.
It was not a language but a primordial resonance, an instinctive wave of consciousness.
"Covenant… of the Stars…?"
The gargantuan head, covered in pale, bone-like scales, turned toward the source of that power.
After a long silence, its continent-sized body began to move.
Wings caked in millennia of frozen dust slowly spread—so vast they seemed to smother the stars.
Even that faint motion shattered countless fossils below into dust.
The next instant—
Its vast form became a blur of pale radiance, ripping across the cosmic void with speed that defied physical law, hurtling toward that distant beacon.
Wherever it passed, even starlight froze and withered before the aura of icy death it exuded.
…
In the garden.
The [Star Bloodline] ritual was drawing to its close.
The pillar of starlight connecting heaven and earth slowly faded, and the forcibly descended firmament receded.
Blue skies and warm sunlight returned as though the previous vision had been nothing but collective hallucination.
Lilith's radiance of stars gradually converged, flowing like rivers into her body.
She descended lightly to the ground.
In her sapphire eyes swirled the slow orbit of an entire galaxy.
Her aura had transformed completely—her very essence of life transcended, noble, pure, mysterious.
Though merely a baptismal rite, it had elevated Lilith's realm to that of a Senior Magus!
She felt the surging, boundless star-mana coursing within her.
For several seconds she stood stunned, then joy and excitement exploded within her heart like fireworks.
She leapt into Leo's arms, bouncing with delight.
"Father!"
"Just now—I felt like I had become a star!"
"They were singing to me! Welcoming me!"
Her little face flushed crimson with excitement, sapphire eyes wide with awe and worship.
"But…"
She clutched tightly at Leo's sleeve.
"Father, you tricked me!"
Cough, cough—
Leo was caught off guard, never expecting this to be her second reaction.
"Didn't I tell you I was a peerless powerhouse?"
"That's not what I mean… I'm talking about two years ago!"
"When Dalton Town was raided by bandits—you fought them off but got badly hurt!"
"I had to do house chores for two whole months, and you even laughed at me for wobbling like a boiling kettle while carrying water!"
"And three years ago, on the way to Blackrock City, you were chased up a tree by wild boars for two days, your clothes torn to shreds…"
"And Captain Reize—he always says you once fought him over a potato pie and lost, sulking for days after…"
"Enough, enough! Those are rumors—jokes, all of them!"
Leo hastily interrupted.
Revisiting the past under the assumption he had been pretending was a nightmare—those were practically blackmail-level memories…
But he couldn't exactly admit he had gone to sleep and awakened invincible. Who would believe that?!
"No worries, I've written them all down in my notebook!"
Seeing Lilith grin, showing off her little tiger tooth, Leo felt his beloved daughter was more like a sieve than a padded coat.
"So, Father, who are you really?"
"You must be one of those legendary hidden peerless masters, right?!"
"Just like the bards sing! Tell me your stories, please!"
Leo looked at her birdlike excitement and gently tapped her nose.
"All right. Once I've finished… composing them, I'll tell you."
"Ugh! You're lying again!"
Lilith puffed her cheeks, arms crossed in indignation, clearly saying, "Just try fooling me again!"
Leo couldn't help but laugh aloud.
"I'm nothing more than a fortunate father who happened to gain power, so that I may bring all the best the world holds to my little star."