It was a small celebration, really. Sev heard Orkas say that he would have preferred it to be bigger, but there hadn't been time to gather everything they needed — part of why they had taken so long to reach the Guild to begin with was because they'd sent out several of their hunters and gatherers to try to collect food, both to lessen the burden they would place on the Guild and to gather enough for a small feast.

But it really was a small feast, and Sev felt a little guilty that he was part of the celebration at all. Misa wanted him there, he knew, and yet the food was so scarce; what was placed out on the tables barely seemed enough to feed all the villagers, let alone two extra mouths...

Then again, Misa had scoffed and told him to ignore it, when he'd brought up the problem.

It turned out that every villager had already had dinner — the feast that was laid out here wasn't meant to be a replacement for a meal. It was meant to be a small celebration of the village, with all the popular dishes that were often shared by the best cooks they had.

Or the worst, in a few cases. It was a celebration of the little bit of culture they'd developed together as a village. That didn't mean that all of it was good.

"You should try the bloodberry pie!" Charise beamed at him. "Adremel made it. He's our resident blacksmith. Very quiet, keeps to himself, basically just bakes this every time we have a village gathering."

Behind her mother, Misa rapidly shook her head. Sev blinked at her once, then at the slice of pie that Charise was offering him. It steamed and... bubbled?

Why was the pie bubbling?

He couldn't exactly... refuse? Because he could see Adremel, staring at him with a look that he absolutely could not read. The lizardkin stood in the corner of the gathering with his arms crossed, rebuffing most attempts to speak to him with a short glare — except for Vex, who was rambling animatedly about enchanting onto metal. Adremel didn't seem to mind him.

Sev swallowed, looking at the pie Charise was offering him, and — with far more drama than was probably necessary — he took the plate, carefully sliced into the pie with his fork, and took a bite.

It was delicious. Flaky pastry, some sort of chocolate-strawberry taste that sparked over his tongue. Sev paused, taking a moment to savor the flavor.

Then he glared at Misa. "You made me think this was bad!"

"It's tradition," Misa said with a grin. "We make everyone think Addy's pies are bad when they first try them. All the kids think he can't cook because he's a blacksmith."

"Turns out blacksmiths are really good at controlling fire," Charise said cheerfully, and Addremel grunted in the background, as if in agreement.

"Bloodberries require a lot of fine temperature control," the blacksmith explained after a moment, when the conversation between him and Vex paused. "Too hot and they taste burnt. Too cold and you can't really bring out the flavor, and they taste like overprocessed chocolate."

"The fire mana does something to the flavor, I think," Vex added.

"Now it's your turn!" Charise swung yet another slice of the pie, this time towards Derivan, who took the plate and stared at it awkwardly.

"I am... unable to taste?" he said.

"Don't worry about it," Charise said with a grin. "I got our skeleton friend to taste some stew, I can help you too. We just need our resident [Taste Tester]. Michael!"

A short, brown-haired kid popped up. "Wha?"

"We need your [Remote Tasting] skills again," Charise said cheerfully. Michael brightened.

"I get to have more pie?"

"Not too much," Charise warned, but he was already reaching greedily for the plate; Sev grinned a little as the kid nearly gobbled down the pie. A faint glow was the only hint that he'd used [Remote Tasting] at all.

Poor Derivan seemed mostly overwhelmed.

"This is what taste is like?" he asked. He moved his head experimentally around, as if trying to work at the phantom taste he was experiencing, though Sev had no idea what it felt like to him. "I am... unsure what to think."

"I was hoping he'd be more wowed," Vex stage-whispered to him. He was watching the display with wide eyes, though, clearly interested in Derivan's experience of a new sensation.

"Eh, cut him a break. It's his first time experiencing any kind of taste. For all he knows it's fucked," Misa said dryly, then glanced at Addremel. "Uh, no offense."

"None taken," the blacksmith said, his voice a low rumble.

As Michael calmed down a little in his wolfing down of the pie, though, he began to take slower bites — actually savoring the food he was eating, rather than just swallowing it. And that seemed to give Derivan the time he needed to actually process what he was feeling, too. Vex leaned forward in interest, his eyes glowing in the usual telltale sign of him focusing on his mana sight, and Sev watched them both with interest.

"It is... pleasant," Derivan said after a moment. "Strange, to be tasting without doing anything in particular. But I appreciate the new experience."

"You're welcome!" Charise said cheerfully.

"I can kind of see what the skill is doing," Vex murmured. "Not exactly. That's not a spell, and the way it's influencing the mana around Derivan is weird... but I can see how it's adjusting the enchantments, kind of. I wonder..."

"Going to figure out how to let Deri join us in meals?" Misa grinned, popping up behind Vex so suddenly the lizardkin let out a startled yelp. He almost fell forward, and it was only Misa reaching out and grabbing his shoulder that stopped him.

"I mean, y— kind of!" Vex defended himself. Sev wasn't sure why. He didn't really need to. "He should get to join us. And I want to know how to help him experience more things."

"He sure seems to be enjoying himself now," Misa said, amused, and Vex looked over to see that Derivan was indeed doing exactly that — he'd found a stump of a tree to sit on and was leaning forward with his eyes closed, as though to savor the bloodberry pie.

As with all good things, though, the pie had to come to an end. Derivan made a sound that was vaguely disappointed as Michael polished off the last few crumbs, gave them a thumbs up, and vanished back into the crowd.

"Please tell him thank you for me," Derivan said to Charise, and then nodded an additional thanks to Addremel, who nodded back at him. He walked forward to join the other three around the campfire they'd chosen, even as Charise left to find Orkas and pull him into a dance; there was music that was playing, too, fast and rhythmic and delightful. But the adventurers were tired, and just wanted to talk over a fire.

Well, mostly. Vex vaguely seemed like he wanted to dance, in Sev's estimation, but he also seemed too embarrassed to ask. Before he could prompt the lizardkin, though, Misa interrupted his thoughts.

"Oh yeah," the half-orc said, glancing at Sev. "How's the thing with Aurum going? Is he attached yet? What about your rewards?"

"Oh shit I forgot," Sev swore. "Uh, yeah. The attachment completed earlier today, and it... I don't really know the details, but I can talk to Aurum the way I could talk to Onyx, before. There's some kind of connection linking the two of us. Aurum said he was going to try to remember what happened while he was gone..."

Sev paused, listening for the connection between him and Aurum — but it was still silent. Whatever the god was doing, it didn't echo back down the connection. The most he could feel from it was a silent sort of pulse, like Aurum was alive and focusing on something; every so often he could feel a faint reverberation, like a realization or a memory was beginning to touch on the god, but then it faded again.

"Whatever it is, he's not done yet," Sev said with a shrug. "Maybe he will be soon. Although now would maybe be... not the best time?" He glanced around at the still-ongoing celebration.

Part of him had been worried that all of this would be happening too soon for the villagers to be able to relax, but it seemed like Orkas and Charise knew what they were doing. They were practically dragging even the most reluctant villagers into the party, except for those that really seemed like they needed time to themselves, and while it wasn't a perfect solution —

— for the most part, people were smiling. That was a far cry from the worried glances

he'd seen when they were traveling back towards the Guild.

"What about your rewards?" Misa asked eagerly, and Sev blinked.

"Oh, right," he said. "Give me a second."

He'd dismissed the notification a while ago, and now he brought it back, blinking at the message.

Congratulations on completing The Village's Last Defense>! Here are your rewards:

Item: [Bottle of Something Old]

Skill: [Look Up]

"What?" Sev muttered, staring at his rewards. He reached out to accept them, feeling vaguely pensive — the red lettering stood out to him. He only remembered seeing red before in one instance, when the dungeon had been supposed to spit out the name of his bonus room and had given him instead what seemed to be a message...

He didn't know who that message was from, still, now that he thought about it. It might have been Onyx, but he'd never confirmed. Maybe there was someone else he needed to look for.

Was this a message, too?

A potion bottle manifested in his hands as the notification pinged; a bright, shimmering light shone within it, spinning and turning and singing, though the sound was muffled by the glass.

The skill box appeared in front of him a second later.

[Look Up] [Active Skill] [Grade: Maxed]

Look up and remember. — Onyx

Sev glanced upwards. It was a message, then, in the form of a skill? There was nothing unusual, as far as he could tell. The sky was dark, since it was in the middle of the night, and the moon shone down on them all.

Through his connection with Aurum, Sev felt a shock of recognition. The shock reverberated, and the connection between them suddenly expanded, divine mana pouring in waves into that connection — he felt pressure pushing against him, asking him for permission, and he felt an instinctive urge to deny —

— not his own, he realized. An instinct. He was anchoring Aurum, and anchors had to reject requests like these —

— Fuck that.

He accepted.

Divine mana burst out of him, coalescing into robes, into an orb of gold, into Aurum — an avatar of him, anyway, composed purely out of golden mana. The god was far smaller than he had been in the Serpent, the approximate size of a human child, which was likely for the best; this event would have gotten people's attention as it was...

...except it hadn't. Everyone else was frozen in time, save for him and his team. Aurum bent over and retched, and his chest heaved in panicked, frightened breaths.

"They're gone," he said, his voice trembling. "I remember now — It's hard to remember. But you have to remember. Please. I can't say it. It doesn't let me."

"What the fuck," Misa said, her eyes wide; an instant later, they narrowed. "I tried [Endless Echoes]. There's something censored from us. I can't pull information from half the echoes."

"My status is flickering," Derivan reported. "The new stats are all going red and white."

"Mana is going wild, especially around that bottle of yours," Vex said. "I can... it's trying to tell me something, too. I've never seen mana behave like this."

Sev tried to use [Look Up], but the skill seemed to do nothing. Vex's gaze flickered over to him again when he did.

"Do that again," Vex said, and when he did, Vex frowned. "Your mana's reaching out to Misa... I can't see where it goes."

"I can Shift that mana to be visible," Derivan offered, and when Vex nodded at him, he reached out. There was no apparent visible change for Sev — but Vex evidently could see something. The lizardkin reached out.

"It's trying to touch the anchor, but the anchor is rejecting it," Vex said softly. "If I can just..."

He reached out with his mana manipulation, like he was forcing a key into a lock.

Something clicked.

Sev remembered, now. He remembered looking at the sky above the anchor, at the pinpricks of light; remembered staring at the Serpent of the Night Sky and its endless sea of gleaming points.

Vex and Derivan remembered the skill he'd used, the dark fog that looked just like the dark sky above them, and the fireballs that hung in the air.

Misa remembered the five-point fruit, too, the one she'd used in an echo.

There was one word that could have been used to describe all those things — one word that had been eroded into conceptual nothingness.

"It's the s̵t̷a̶r̸s̷," Sev said, though they all seemed to realize it at the same time. It was important, anyway, and so he said it out loud, and ignored the way the word seemed to catch on the wind and get whisked away. He tried again, pushing on the skill, and Vex and Misa and Derivan all helped, shattering whatever remnants of the infolock remained, if it had ever been an infolock at all.

Sev looked up at the blank expanse of the night sky, and felt a cold dread creep into him.

"The stars are gone."

BOOK ONE END