≪ Constellation Continent, Fea Country Capital, Zodia Kingdom ≫
The moon above Zodia was holy white.
It hung over the eastern capital like a silver eye, bathing the palace towers in pale light and turning every window into a shard of reflected starlight. Beneath that moon, the royal palace of Fea glimmered with quiet majesty, its marble walls veined with blue crystal and its highest spires crowned with rotating rings of brass and glass.
Those rings were not decorations.
They were astrolabes.
Sacred instruments built to follow the movement of the heavens.
In Fea, the sky was not merely beautiful; it was sublime.
It was scripture.
It was the law.
It was fate written in the stars.
For more than three thousand years, the people of Fea had believed that the heavens spoke through patterns hidden among the constellations. Ancient records claimed that when the First Emperor Zodia wandered the wilderness during the Age of Fractured Crowns, a star descended from the sky and gifted him a crystal eye capable of reading celestial destiny. Whether the tale was truth or myth no longer mattered. The story had become the foundation of an empire.
Every generation of House Zodia was raised beneath that legend.
Every ruler learned the names of the Eight Celestial Houses, the Twelve Guiding Constellations, and the Thirty-Three Wandering Stars recorded within the sacred Astral Codex.
The Codex itself was one of Fea's greatest treasures, a collection of prophecies, observations, and divine revelations accumulated over centuries by royal astrologers. Entire wars had been avoided because of its predictions. Entire dynasties had risen because they correctly interpreted its warnings.
Fea itself was unlike any other nation on the Constellation Continent.
The country stretched across fertile valleys, crystal-rich mountain ranges, and vast grasslands that glittered beneath the night sky. Most nations measured time through seasons or harvests. Fea measured it through celestial cycles. Farmers planted crops according to the alignment of constellations. Sailors departed ports only after consulting licensed star readers. Even marriages among noble houses were often arranged according to compatibility charts approved by temple astrologers.
The capital city of Zodia reflected that obsession.
Built around the original Starfall Citadel, where the first emperor supposedly received his divine revelation, the city expanded outward in concentric circles resembling a celestial diagram. Broad avenues represented the Twelve Guiding Constellations, while districts were named after famous stars recorded in the Astral Codex. At night, enchanted lanterns illuminated the streets in patterns mirroring the heavens above, allowing travelers to navigate by matching the city's lights to the constellations overhead.
Visitors often described the capital as a city built by astronomers rather than architects.
They were not entirely wrong.
Throughout Fea, hundreds of observatories ranged from humble village towers to monumental institutions funded by the crown. The Royal Observatory alone employed thousands of scholars, mathematicians, historians, and Pathway researchers. Their findings influenced everything from taxation policies to military deployments.
The nation's economy benefited greatly from this culture.
Fea exported precision instruments, enchanted lenses, navigation charts, and celestial crystals mined from the Azure Peaks in the north. Merchants from distant continents traveled to Fea seeking star maps considered the most accurate in the world. Some claimed Fean navigators could cross oceans during storms by reading gaps between clouds.
Whether that was true remained debated.
The reputation certainly was not.
Religion and government were similarly intertwined.
The Celestial Shrine, headquartered within the capital, served as both a spiritual institution and an advisory body to the throne. While the emperor held ultimate authority, generations of rulers had relied upon the shrine's interpretations of heavenly signs. This balance occasionally created tension. Priests claimed to speak for the stars. Emperors claimed to rule beneath them.
History suggested neither side enjoyed surrendering influence.
To outsiders, Fea appeared peaceful.
To those who understood its history, Fea was a nation built upon the terrifying belief that destiny could be measured.
Inside the palace, a young princess walked down a shadowed corridor paved with baby-blue diamond tiles. Her footsteps echoed softly through the empty hall, each step measured, elegant, and deliberate.
Behind her followed two attendants.
The first was a maid in her twenties with soft brown hair and a patient expression. Her name was April.
The second was a knight in his mid-thirties, broad-shouldered and silent, his silver armor polished until it reflected the moonlight spilling through the tall windows.
"My Princess," April asked gently, "are you certain you wish to attend tonight's banquet?"
The princess stopped.
Slowly, she turned her head.
Her golden eyes shimmered with star-like flecks, each one bright enough to make the hallway seem darker by contrast.
"Wouldn't it be wrong for me to isolate myself from the nobles and merchants?" she asked.
Her voice was calm.
Too calm for someone her age.
Then she faced forward again and continued walking.
"This is a rare opportunity, April. As the Star God Candidate, information is more valuable to me than applause."
April's eyes softened.
"Of course, Princess Staria."
Princess Staria Zodia.
Third princess of the Fea royal family.
Daughter of Emperor Tarus Zodia.
Candidate of the Astral Pathway.
The road leading toward the Star God.
More importantly, the Astral Pathway itself was deeply connected to the Zodia bloodline. Unlike the Twelve Divine Portfolios that governed the recognized gods of the world, the Astral Pathway stood apart as an independent and mysterious route, much like the infamous False God Pathway. It was one of the oldest secrets of the royal family, a legacy passed through generations beneath layers of celestial doctrine and imperial tradition. Most believed the stars favored House Zodia.
Staria knew better.
The connection ran through blood.
Long before the modern kingdoms existed, before the continents established trade routes and before the Divine Churches gained influence, there had been an era known in surviving records as the First Sky Age. During that distant period, the Star God was said to walk openly among mortals. The earliest ancestors of House Zodia served as astronomer-priests beneath that divine being, recording celestial movements and preserving fragments of heavenly authority.
When the Star God vanished during the Cataclysm of Falling Lights, most of those blessings disappeared.
Most.
Not all.
Something remained within the bloodline.
A fragment.
A resonance.
A hereditary connection to the Astral Pathway that no scholar had ever fully explained.
In this world, Divine Candidates were not merely talented individuals. They were chosen vessels whose Authority Cores had awakened in response to a Genesis Crystal. Each Candidate belonged to a Divine Pathway, a sacred road leading toward one of the great thrones of existence.
The Tyrant Pathway led to the Storm God.
The Solar Pathway led to the Sun God.
The Fateweaver Pathway led to the Oracle God.
The Astral Pathway led to the Star God.
The stars had chosen and Staria Zodia.
At least, that was what everyone believed.
Only Staria knew the truth was far stranger.
She was not truly Staria.
Not completely.
The soul inside the princess's body had once belonged to a twenty-three-year-old woman named Annabelle Jackson.
A woman from another world.
A woman who had died and awakened inside her favorite novel.
Heaven Does Not Claim.
A world of gods, pathways, divine candidates, forbidden bloodlines, and catastrophic futures.
A world whose lore Annabelle had once spent countless nights obsessively reading through online forums and author notes. She remembered timelines stretching back thousands of years, hidden references buried in side chapters, and cryptic hints regarding forgotten gods whose names had been erased from history.
At first, Annabelle had believed she was blessed.
A second life.
A beautiful body.
A royal family.
A Divine Pathway tied to the heavens themselves.
Then she remembered the plot.
And the blessing began to feel more like someone had handed her a jeweled goblet full of poison.
Because Staria Zodia was not a background character.
She was introduced in Chapter Eighteen of the novel as a genius astrologist, a princess with the rare ability to interpret celestial movements and glimpse fate through star charts. Her mother had been a musician-composer from the village of Thena, a woman whose songs were said to resemble falling stars.
Staria's future should have been magnificent.
A journey through the stars.
A bridge between continents.
A scholar princess who would one day uncover the truth behind the Divine Pathways.
The truth itself was one of the novel's greatest mysteries. According to scattered clues, the Divine Pathways were not originally roads toward godhood. They were remnants of something older, fragments left behind after a primordial conflict between beings known only as the First Authorities. The gods worshipped in the modern era had inherited those fragments and transformed them into systems mortals could comprehend.
Or so one theory claimed.
Another suggested the gods themselves were merely successors occupying abandoned thrones.
Annabelle remembered spending hours debating those theories online before her death.
Now she lived inside them.
And that was significantly less fun.
But Annabelle knew better than to trust a beautiful setup.
In Kiryuu's novels, beautiful setups often came wearing funeral perfume.
They reached a pair of silver double doors.
On the surface of each door was engraved the golden insignia of Fea: a star with an eye at its center.
The Eye of the Heavens.
The symbol of the Astral Pathway.
The symbol carried its own history. Ancient murals depicted it hovering above battlefields, temples, and observatories. Priests taught that the eye represented the heavens observing all things equally, while royal historians insisted it symbolized humanity's duty to observe the heavens in return.
Two guards lowered their heads and opened the doors.
Light, music, and conversation spilled into the corridor.
One guard stepped forward and announced loudly,
"Princess Staria Zodia of the Zodia Family."
The banquet hall quieted.
Staria stepped inside.
Dozens of eyes turned toward her.
Nobles in jeweled coats.
Merchants draped in foreign silks.
Military officers wearing ceremonial swords.
Scholars from the Royal Observatory.
Priests of the Celestial Shrine.
Every person in the room watched her with interest, curiosity, expectation, or calculation.
Many of those guests represented different regions of Fea.
Delegates from the northern Azure Peaks wore cloaks embroidered with crystal-thread patterns. Representatives from the western coast displayed jewelry crafted from moon pearls harvested in the Silver Gulf. Wealthy landowners from the central plains favored elegant robes decorated with constellation motifs unique to their provinces.
Fea's unity often impressed foreigners.
Its diversity surprised them.
Though ruled by a single crown, the nation comprised dozens of historical territories absorbed over the centuries through diplomacy, marriage, conquest, and prophecy. Some regions maintained local traditions older than the empire itself. Settlers had founded others following celestial migrations recorded in ancient star charts.
The empire endured because House Zodia gave those differences a common identity.
The stars belonged to everyone.
At least that was the official narrative.
Staria lowered her head in a perfect formal bow.
Behind her composed expression, Annabelle was internally spiraling.
Calm down. You read this scene—Chapter Eighteen.
Staria enters late, everyone stares, Emperor Tarus tests her composure, and she responds with a line that earns the nobles' respect.
You know this.
You can do this.
Probably.
Maybe.
Please do not trip over the dress.
She lifted her head and walked forward.
The emerald-green dress she wore shimmered softly beneath the chandelier light. Silver thread formed constellations along the hem, each pattern representing one of Fea's ancient star houses.
Her every step was watched.
Her every breath measured.
Royal life was exhausting.
The banquet hall itself was enormous. Pillars carved from white stone stretched to the ceiling, where enchanted glass displayed a moving image of the night sky outside. The stars above slowly shifted in real time, reflecting the heavens beyond the palace walls.
At the far end of the hall sat the royal family.
Emperor Tarus Zodia occupied the central seat.
He was a tall, broad man with a fair complexion, long dark hair streaked faintly with silver, and eyes that resembled Staria's, though his were colder, heavier, and far more dangerous.
He did not need to raise his voice.
His presence did enough.
Tarus Zodia was not a Divine Candidate, but the Zodia bloodline had ruled Fea for generations. The family carried an old imperial authority, a royal pressure born not from Pathway power but from command, tradition, and generations of celestial legitimacy.
To most nobles, his gaze alone felt like judgment from the moon.
Staria approached him, lifted the sides of her dress, and knelt.
"Apologies for my late appearance, Father," she said. "I thought this approach would be more effective."
Whispers rippled through the hall.
Some nobles frowned.
Some smiled.
Others leaned closer to one another, already preparing gossip.
Tarus studied his daughter.
"You kept your guests waiting," he said. "That is not good for your reputation."
Pressure descended.
Not magic.
Not mana.
Authority.
The kind wielded by kings, emperors, and fathers who expected obedience.
Staria felt her body tremble slightly.
Annabelle disliked that sensation intensely.
The body remembered fearing him even when her own memories did not.
"Forgive me, Father," she said, keeping her head lowered. "It will not happen again."
Tarus's eyes narrowed.
"Will it not?"
Staria slowly lifted her head.
Her golden, starry eyes met his.
"This may have been my mistake," she said softly, "but perhaps you fail to see the result."
The whispers stopped.
Tarus leaned forward.
"And what result would that be?"
Staria's lips curved into a faint, strange smile.
"I would not want to spoil the fun."
Silence.
Then, somewhere among the nobles, someone chuckled.
Another followed.
The tension loosened by a thread.
Tarus stared at her for a long moment.
Then his mouth curved, barely.
"Stand."
Staria rose.
Annabelle released a silent breath of relief.
Good.
Still alive.
Banquet politics survived for another day.
As the evening continued, Staria moved through the hall like someone born for it. She spoke with merchants about trade routes. She listened to nobles complain about tariffs. She smiled at military officers. She asked scholars harmless questions that were anything but harmless.
Every conversation became a thread.
Every rumor became a star point.
Every lie became a gap in the constellation.
That was the first gift of her Astral Pathway.
Her current Array was known as Star Chart.
At the lowest stage, it did not grant overwhelming combat power. She could not summon meteors or command constellations like the Star God of legend. Not yet.
Instead, Star Chart allowed her to map relationships between people, events, rumors, and fate pressure.
Where a Fateweaver perceived threads of causality, an Astral Candidate perceived the world as a sky.
People were stars.
Secrets were hidden planets.
Danger was a red comet.
Destiny appeared as constellations forming patterns that only she could understand.
It was not prophecy in the purest sense.
More like celestial deduction.
A divine detective board written in starlight.
Annabelle privately considered it extremely useful and extremely likely to cause migraines before thirty.
As Staria passed through the banquet, faint constellations appeared in her vision.
A merchant from the southern trade guild glowed with a weak red trail.
Lying.
A noblewoman near the wine table carried a silver-blue orb around her.
Useful information.
An elderly duke speaking too loudly about border stability had a black star hovering over his shoulder.
Dangerous.
Not to her.
To himself.
Staria remembered him from the novel.
He would be executed in three years for selling military maps.
She smiled politely and moved on.
Eventually, her gaze drifted toward the great doors of the hall.
Beyond them lay the road to the world outside Fea.
Beyond Fea lay the sea.
Beyond the sea lay the Astra Continent.
And somewhere on that continent was Xion Trinity.
The boy should have been introduced much later in the story.
The last known child of the Trinity bloodline.
The future Devourer.
The anomaly.
The person her Authority Core had shown her in dreams.
Not clearly.
Never clearly.
Only fragments.
A train racing beneath gray clouds.
A cracked halo bleeding black ink.
A red dragon eye opens inside a mirror.
A boy with an adult soul, looking at fate as if it had made a mistake.
Xion Trinity.
According to the fragments Staria had seen, he was currently traveling with the Midnight Lore organization, or would soon be brought under their influence.
Midnight Lore itself was a mystery wrapped in contradictions. Officially, it was a wandering scholarly society dedicated to preserving forgotten history. Unofficially, nearly every intelligence agency in the world suspected it of collecting dangerous relics, hidden Pathway knowledge, and records erased by the major churches.
That matched what she remembered from the novel.
Mostly.
But not completely.
And that was the problem.
The story was changing.
Someone had moved the board.
Staria needed the Zodia Empire to ally with Luminous Country and the Astra Kingdom.
Not because she trusted either nation.
She absolutely did not.
But because Xion Trinity could not be left alone on a continent preparing to turn Divine Candidates into weapons.
If the Southern Kingdom had already begun moving, then the War of Liberation was not merely a political conflict.
It was the opening move of something far older.
A war between Portfolios.
A hunt for candidates.
A divine succession crisis wearing a military uniform.
As the banquet neared its end, Emperor Tarus stood.
The hall quieted immediately.
Music softened.
Servants stepped back.
Nobles turned toward the throne.
Tarus held a crystal goblet in one hand, moonlight shining across his face from the enchanted ceiling above.
"My honored guests," he began, "tonight I have heard many questions regarding the conflict across the sea."
Staria's fingers tightened around her glass.
Annabelle immediately felt a knot form in her stomach.
In the original Chapter Eighteen, Tarus should have spoken cautiously but left the door open for future negotiations.
He was supposed to say Fea would observe the conflict while maintaining diplomatic channels.
That neutrality would later allow Staria to travel as an envoy.
That was how she reached the Astra Continent.
That was how she entered the main plot.