Having been cast out twice, the Celestial Vault regarded this crown prince with undisguised contempt. And threaded through that contempt was something quieter, something that resembled caution.
After all, he had already been volatile and fraying at the edges after the first banishment. Now that he had been cast out a second time, would he not finally shatter and drag the world down with him in retaliation?
Yet who could have predicted it? After this banishment, he did not shatter at all. He adjusted to his fallen life with an almost unsettling earnestness. There were no incidents. No catastrophes. The only problem was that perhaps he was taking things a touch too far in the other direction.
Some days he would set himself up at the far end of a market street, drawing small crowds with the kind of effortless skill that made onlookers feel vaguely uncomfortable. He played instruments nobody had seen him train on, sang in a voice that did not belong to someone who had lost everything, and at the height of the act he would split stone blocks across his bare chest with a single breath. Word had long circulated that this Royal Highness was gifted in music and performance and a hundred other disciplines, but witnessing it all displayed like this, like a street novelty for copper coins, inspired something in the chest of every observer that sat between pity and a feeling they could not name. Other days he would move through the alleys collecting discarded scraps with focused, quiet diligence, as though it were a task that carried dignity.
The celestial court was shaken to its foundations.
It had become unthinkable that things could reach this point. To say now, "the child you raised is the crown prince of Vaelune," would land more cruelly than any curse. It would hit harder than "may you die without heirs."
He had once been the luminous and untouchable crown prince, a celestial sovereign among the divine ranks. But in truth, no one in all of recorded history had ever collapsed so completely. And so, this became the story of the man the three layers of existence knew simply as their greatest laughingstock.
After the laughter faded, those among the celestial court with softer hearts would sometimes release a slow breath. The darling of the vaults, who had once stood at a height no one else could reach, had truly and completely disappeared.
Sacred statues crumbled. A kingdom rotted to ash. Not one believer remained to whisper his name. Gradually, the world forgot him entirely. Nobody knew where the currents of time had carried him after that.
To be banished once was already a shame that marked a sovereign forever. To be banished twice was to be finished. No one came back from that.
Many more years passed in silence.
Then one day, without warning, a sound split the sky open.
The heavens cracked. The earth groaned beneath it. Every mountain range trembled as though something immense had just decided to exist again.
The eternal lanterns swayed violently on their chains. The sacred flames inside the golden halls convulsed and spat. Every celestial sovereign jolted upright from wherever they stood and rushed out into the open, turning to one another with wide eyes:
"Which new sovereign just ascended?"
"What an entrance. What an absolutely absurd entrance."
They had barely finished marveling before the next breath hit them like cold water.
Hold on.
Was that not him?
That impossible nuisance. The celestial court's most enduring embarrassment. The laughingstock written into the memory of all three layers of existence. That legendary Royal Highness, that crown prince, he... he... he had actually, genuinely, impossibly ascended again.
"Felicitations, Your Highness."
Hearing this, Kaoru Shiren looked up, and the smile arrived before anything else did. "My gratitude. Though I find myself wondering what exactly you are offering felicitations for."
Mizuki Renji stood with her hands folded at the small of her back, her posture impeccable in the way that suggested she had never once slouched in her life. "Felicitations. You have claimed first place on the ranking of Celestial Sovereigns Most Anticipated to be Cast Back Down to the Mortal Realm for this calendar cycle."
"Well," Kaoru Shiren said, "regardless of what the chart measures, first place is first place. But since you are going to the effort of felicitating me, is there anything in this situation actually worth feeling pleased about?"
"There is," Mizuki Renji replied. "First place on this ranking receives one hundred merits."
Kaoru Shiren did not hesitate. "If any similar rankings emerge in future cycles, I would appreciate being notified immediately."
"Do you know who claimed second place?" Mizuki Renji asked.
Kaoru Shiren considered this for a moment. "That would be difficult to determine. In terms of raw qualification, I imagine I could occupy the top three positions simultaneously."
"Essentially, yes," Mizuki Renji said. "There is no second place. The gap between you and everyone else is so vast that the ranking simply ends at your name."
"That is an overwhelming honor," Kaoru Shiren replied. "Then who held first place during the previous cycle?"
"There is no previous winner," Mizuki Renji said, "because this ranking came into existence today."
"Huh?" Something shifted in his expression. "You are not telling me this ranking was constructed specifically around me?"
"You could think of it as," Mizuki Renji said, "you arrived at precisely the right moment and claimed first place before anyone else had the chance."
Kaoru Shiren's eyes curved into something warm and a little helpless. "I will be considerably more at ease if I think of it that way."
"Do you know why you received first place?" Mizuki Renji continued.
"By sheer popular sentiment?" Kaoru Shiren offered.
"Allow me to explain. Please direct your attention to that bell tower."
Kaoru Shiren turned toward where she gestured. What met his eyes was an achingly beautiful arrangement: a grand palace complex carved from pale luminite stone, pavilions and corridors stacked elegantly against each other, sacred clouds drifting lazily between the towers while birds wheeled overhead in slow arcs.
He studied it carefully. Then he asked, "Did you perhaps point in the wrong direction? I see no bell anywhere."
"I did not," Mizuki Renji said. "It is there. You simply cannot see it?"
Kaoru Shiren looked again with genuine effort. Then answered without pretense: "I cannot."
"That is understandable," Mizuki Renji said. "There was a bell there. When you ascended, the tremors brought it down."
"..."
"That bell predates your existence by several centuries. It had a spirited disposition and an enthusiasm for grand occasions. Whenever a sovereign ascended, it would ring a few times in acknowledgment. When you ascended, the tremors were so violent that it rang and rang and could not stop itself. Eventually it shook free of the tower entirely. On the way down it struck one of the celestial sovereigns passing below."
"Is everything recovered now?" Kaoru Shiren asked.
"The tower is still under restoration," Mizuki Renji replied.
"I was asking about the sovereign who was struck," Kaoru Shiren said.
"It struck a martial sovereign," Mizuki Renji said. "One motion of his hand split the bell cleanly in two. Now, please look toward that golden hall. Can you see it?"
Kaoru Shiren looked where she indicated and through the haze of drifting cloud caught the gleam of a resplendent gilded roof. "Yes, that one I can see."
"It should not be visible," Mizuki Renji said. "Nothing was there before."
"..."
"When you ascended, the golden pillars supporting the personal halls of several celestial sovereigns buckled from the tremors. Their gilded roof tiles rained down in pieces. Several of the structures cannot be restored quickly, so the affected sovereigns commissioned temporary replacements to make do in the interim."
"And I bear responsibility for this."
"You bear responsibility for this."
Kaoru Shiren was quiet for a moment. "So I have managed to antagonize a considerable number of celestial sovereigns before I have even properly arrived."
"If amends can be made, perhaps antagonized is too strong a word," Mizuki Renji said.
"How does one make amends."
"Straightforwardly. Eight million eight hundred and eighty thousand merits."
The corners of Kaoru Shiren's mouth pulled into something that might generously be called a smile.
Mizuki Renji added, "I am naturally aware that you do not possess even a tenth of that sum."
"How do I frame this," Kaoru Shiren said with complete sincerity. "I am genuinely remorseful. But if you require even one ten-thousandth of that figure, I do not have it either."
The faith of mortal believers was converted into the spiritual power of a celestial sovereign. Every stick of incense lit on their behalf, every offering pressed into the hands of their statues, all of it flowed upward and became what the divine courts called merits.
Kaoru Shiren let the smile dissolve and asked plainly, "Would you be willing to cast me back down yourself and accept eight million eight hundred and eighty thousand merits in exchange?"
"I am a civil sovereign," Mizuki Renji said. "Casting people down is not within my domain. You would need a martial sovereign for that. And the force they use determines the merit value."
Kaoru Shiren exhaled slowly and at considerable length. "Please give me a moment to determine what my next step should be."
Mizuki Renji touched his shoulder briefly. "Do not despair. The road always reveals itself before the cart runs out of ground."
"In my experience," Kaoru Shiren said, "the boat sinks precisely when the dock comes into sight."
Had this been eight hundred years prior, when the Shrine of Vaelune blazed at the summit of its influence, eight million eight hundred and eighty thousand merits would have been an amount Kaoru Shiren could have shed without glancing down to watch it go. But the present bore no resemblance to that past. Every shrine built in his name across the mortal world had long since been reduced to char and rubble. No believers. No incense smoke curling upward. No offerings left at empty altars.
There was nothing more to be said about it. He had nothing. Precisely, completely, irreversibly nothing.
He folded himself down onto the edge of the main thoroughfare of the Celestial Capital and sat in quiet devastation for a stretch before a different thought surfaced: he had been ascended for nearly three days now and had still not entered the communication array of the Upper Court. He had forgotten to ask for the spoken cipher.
The celestial sovereigns of the Upper Court had constructed an array that allowed consciousness to move and exchange information across vast distances in an instant. Every ascended sovereign was required to enter it, but a spoken cipher was needed to locate the correct channel. The last time Kaoru Shiren had navigated the array was eight hundred years ago, and whatever cipher had been in use then was long gone from his memory. He let his consciousness unspool outward to search and found what appeared to be the right channel. He stepped in.
The next moment he was submerged in noise from every direction.
"Place your stakes and hold them! We are wagering on how long our Royal Highness the Crown Prince survives up there before he comes back down!"
"One year from me!"
"One year? Are you paying attention? Last time he lasted one incense stick! I say three days. Three days, and I am committing my merits!"
"You fool, three days has nearly passed already. Do you understand how wagering works?!"
Kaoru Shiren quietly withdrew his consciousness from the channel.
Wrong one. That was definitely not it.