The sun was setting and dusk had melted away. At that moment, the chaos was at an end.

Every star in the night sky held echoes of words that were lost forever.

With each dawn offering a panacea for all cardinal sins,

And each grey sky blanketing all would-be cinders of foolish ambition.

Frigid.

A wintry embrace has ascended from the depths of an indifferent abyss.

An embrace that embodied the circadian sway of a total solar eclipse.

Dark.

The world had melted away

All that was within reach has ascended to another plane,

Never to be traversed again.

Peculiar.

These words belong to a familiar stranger.

A brush stroke that's anomalous to the dark canvas at hand,

But convincingly well-practiced to the hand that stippled the stars into existence.

Hollow.

The stars are born and they die,

And are born again, all the same.

They expect no regard or sympathy.

However, the starweaver, the hand that invokes the birth of these constellations,

Is an alchemist who disregards the equilibrium of equivalent exchange,

If death is dealt with neither rhyme nor reason.

Chaos.

Such is the nature of an eternally nascent existence.

A docile beast with relentless potential, yet

Extremely... Unforgiving.

Ezel woke up feeling disoriented, realising he was lying on a solid surface. These words echoed in his mind in the form of a voice he had no recollection of. The last thing he remembered was finishing the repairs in the tower belfry, and everything after that was a blank. An odd lulling sensation had fallen upon him right before, one that felt out of place since he'd gotten far more rest than he should have in the past day or two. It was already nighttime in Eisengrahl, with a pleasant evening temperature and a gentle breeze. If it had been colder, Ezel didn't think his body would have been able to endure sleeping outside for as long as he did. The silence up in the tower was comforting, so he remained there for a while longer. The hard surface didn't deter him from enjoying the scenery at all, with his thoughts allowed to run freely and disappear as calmly as they had appeared in the first place. One persistent thought had occurred to him: Why had nobody looked for him in the first place? He constantly brushed this off as the Eisenites simply knowing that he was still within the confines of the village, therefore there's no need to worry. Barragan, Xero, and the others had more than likely known that any possible escape routes were well and truly sealed. The thought of escaping the village was an odd one in and of itself at that moment since Ezel had long resigned himself to forever being caged within the walls of Eisengrahl. However, without moving a single muscle, he felt an unnatural chill running throughout his body. He'd only ever felt this sensation when the unnerving gaze of Iala would befall him whenever he was found where he shouldn't have been. He swiftly sat up, looking to where he'd felt the sensation from. His eyes fell on a cloaked figure sitting idly on the tower railing, with one leg hanging off the edge and the other being bent up and held to the figure's chest with both arms.

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"You might just be the first person I've met who could spot where I'm lurking from with such accuracy. I'm impressed," the cloaked figure said. They gracefully lept off the railing and stood in the same spot. Ezel remained sitting up on the ground, having felt the initial danger pass. He had no way of explaining this sense of his, but he'd written it off to instinct a long time ago.

The cloaked figure went on, "Oh? You're not scared?"

"Well, a normal person would be. You just caught me having a weird day and I'm still in the process of waking up. As you probably just saw now," Ezel replied. He noticed a glint on the left side of the person's chest. It looked like a badge symbolising an emblem he'd found oddly familiar. There wasn't much to note in the every day life of an Eisenite, so a stranger wearing a badge that isn't common wouldn't go unnoticed by even the most docile villager.

"So, can I ask why you were just watching me sleep? I could ask for your name, but I have a feeling that'll come up eventually," Ezel continued.

"My name is Larlunt. I'm just a passerby who was looking to pass the time. This place is pretty boring, so finding a sleeping beauty up here was the most entertainment I had going for me today." Larlunt said this and removed the hood that was covering their head, revealing a girl who more or less looked to be around the same age as Ezel. She had medium-length hair that was tied up in a ponytail. Her soft facial features were paired with a notable scar running on the left side of her face, starting from her jaw and going up across her eye. Ezel stood up and fully grasped at that moment that there was a notable height difference even in the small distance between them, with Larlunt seemingly standing at almost an entire head above Ezel himself.

Passerby? She's not from Eisengrahl? is the piece of information that stood out to him the most. Multiple possibilities sprung from that comment alone, but there's only one that could explain the scar, towering physique, and the emblem he saw on her black cloak. The emblem was in the shape of two celestial bodies overlapping, with the one in the background shining like the sun and being mostly covered by the other that's pitch-black. This reminded Ezel of an actual celestial phenomenon he'd once read about, which was known as an eclipse. He'd longed to see one for himself but remembered that they're extremely rare.

"Wait. Are you... A Starklander?" Ezel couldn't hide his intrigue. This could very well be the break in monotony that he'd been longing for deep down.

Larlunt raised an eyebrow and smirked, "You just keep surprising me. I didn't think you'd piece that together so quickly. You must be Ezel then?"

"How on earth did you know that?"

"Well, I've been told you're the youngest Eisenite. I've only seen oldies around, so it's not as much of an impressive guess as what you just pulled off now," Larlunt slowly approached him while saying this. She inquisitively eyed him from head to toe, stopping a meter away from him. Ezel couldn't help but notice the somewhat eerie glow her green eyes gave off in the night.

"Who told you tha-" but Ezel cut himself off in the middle of his sentence, "Iala by chance? Is that why you were stalking me?"

Larlunt laughed, "I wouldn't say I was stalking you. Just 'curiously observing' would be a better way of putting it. She was right, you are an oddball."

"You calling me an oddball is a bit ironic, but I'll take it," Ezel replied. An awkward silence followed. He kept looking at Larlunt, and she looked back. He'd only ever read and heard about Starklanders, well-trained combatants that were the only faction allowed to travel between villages. One of their main duties was to survey the land and report to any of the Älteste of possible dangers that may be approaching the villages. That's the most Ezel knew of them, with any of the questions surrounding their existence not being met with answers of any kind at all.

"So... Are you just going to keep gawking at me or do you have any other questions?" Larlunt finally broke the silence. Ezel still said nothing. "Well, I guess that's that. I'll be off now. I need to report to Iala."

As Larlunt turned away and lept to stand on top of the railing, Ezel finally spoke, "Wait. I need to know more. Why on earth is a Starklander here in Eisengrahl?"

"Ah, so you weren't finished. Well if you want to know," Larlunt smiled and lept off the rail, then she picked Ezel up with extreme ease, and swung him onto her back with him instinctively wrapping his arms around her neck in surprise, "let's go together, shall we?" She deftly lept over the edge of the tower, with the pair of them freefalling and being buffeted by the night's breeze. Ezel couldn't remember the last time he felt such a rush of excitement while still being terrified. Larlunt laughed before landing on another building's roof and dashing off with a nigh superhuman pace. Today was a good day to finally fix that tower, Ezel thought to himself.