It was around 11pm on New Year's Eve.
As the stars covered the entire cosmos, the boy raised his head. The clear air spreading through his entire system and the liberating geosmin smell told him he was in an open field.
The Lunaria was embraced by the cosmic clouds and its stars as if they were her children. It was a painting only God could have created, but to the boy, everything was nothing.
He raised a hand toward the moon at its zenith, a single question pressing down with the weight of a world.
"Why am I?"
He tried to stand, to reach what he could not see.
But his legs shook, and he collapsed back into his wheelchair.
With a sigh, he removed his blindfold. Moonlight brushed his smooth caramel skin, but his eyes — black voids — swallowed all light. They radiated not sight, but a malevolence born of silence, darkness, and distant cries of unholy anger twisted with divine conviction.
His eyes were completely black.
The boy had tried this, time and time again, but he was always met with a wall of darkness.
He had tried this countless times, always met by the same wall of nothingness. Shapes, outlines, vibrations — enough to survive, but never to live as God intended.
A miracle, and a tragedy.
One might call him blind and, in more than one way, he really is, but the kid was able to live his life, at the very least, similar to other children.
The first drops fell. Then rain. Clouds rolled over the capital of the Realm of the Seed.
Beside him, Kazan tried to break the mood.
"You did well back at the bar, kid."
"...Thanks."
Silence.
The rain thickened. Kazan chuckled softly. "This weather reminds me—"
"I don't remember," Bando cut in. "And you know that."
The silence deepened, heavier this time. Then his voice rose, bitter and fragile:
"Every year, around this made-up birthday, you try the same one-liner. Every year, I tell you the same thing: that piece of history you want me to remember doesn't exist in me."
Kazan said nothing.
"...But you're right," Bando sighed. "My birthday's close."
Kazan forced a grin.
"And like Vana said, so's the new year. In commemoration for all of these good things coming, you may make a wish! Who knows, a word or two can make anything happen in Stellaria, *wink* *wink*"
Kazan tried his absolute hardest to keep up the good spirits, even if it meant that he'd have to drop the usual stern and silent act.
"You don't have to say you're making a weird expression for me to know, Kazan."
He sighed softly, and then returned the gaze towards the sky.
A gentle smile grew on his innocent face.
"Tell me about the other worlds.
The beasts that harbour all kinds of different terrain, the kings and queens, princes and princesses, saints and tyrants ruling over the masses.
Both the good and the bad.
Tell me about the Ark."
As the things he talked about grew in depth, like a burning sun, his overwhelming sense of joy and passion only intensified.
"Tell me about my past self, what I used to be like, my favourite things to do! What friends I had made along the way. How badly we used to argue and how we made up again and acted like nothing happened."
When the smile slowly turned into a frown, it felt as though mother nature herself had resonated with him, as the shower of rain turned into a storm.
"Tell me about my love for my mother and father."
When question turned to desperation, his shaky voice began to rise in tone and intensity.
"Tell me about my crush, the feeling deep down in my heart whenever I saw her smile."
"Tell me about my dream, Kazan!"
Despite the heavy rain's act doing its part on the kid's face, the boy never shed a tear himself.
His voice resembled a wailing baby's, but there were simply no eyes for him to cry from.
Bando lived in a world of melancholy, where each day blurred into the monotony of grey.
Zuri tried to pretend this was a special night, but Bando knew better. It was only another coping ritual — a way to cover the rising unrest spreading through Stellaria. Beings driven by instinct, stripped of morality and reason, had turned the world unstable. Many believed they were the cause of the curfews choking the city.
The Garden, once alive with laughter, had withered under that weight. Even the fam could no longer sustain themselves that way. They, too, had been forced to seek other means of survival.
Kazan looked helpless. He remembered the junkyard where he'd found this boy two years ago at a far edge north of Stellaria bordering the void. He recalled that same distinct face— an expression that encapsulated the very essence of depression.
"Artefacts. Paintings. Literature. All are core pillars that serve history in keeping its purpose. The very foundation of expression and remembrance. And here I am, an inferior person who, over time, gained the ability to perceive despite my blindness for the sacrifice of my own mind, that continues to fail me as time passes."
Kazan sat on the grass and gently smiled, silently listening to Bando's take on his life.
Bando's voice softened. "Kazan... Eliphas. You know I can't die. Not by my own hand. Not with this body. Not with you watching."
"I know," Kazan said quietly.
"Do you see me as a son?"
"Our bond," Kazan chuckled weakly, "goes far beyond that."
Bando smiled.
They laughed, briefly, under the moon as the rain eased.
"I actually had someone else spark some hope in me earlier."
"Really? But when I found you, no one else was around..." Kazan frowned, looking more like a confused child than a hardened veteran.
Bando smiled. "From now on, I think I'll try and be happy for real."
Kazan's face stiffened.
"This... happened sooner than expected..." he muttered, not meaning for the boy to hear.
Bando tilted his head, smiling in confusion, then pressed on.
"With the new era so close, I think The Garden is about to reach new heights."
"Right…" Kazan's agreement was hesitant, uneasy.
But Bando's joy could not be contained. He turned the bracelet in his hands, his face glowing."I think I'll become a knight."
"I think I'll become a knight."
Kazan froze. His sapphire eyes widened, ghostly pale in the moonlight.
What events could have possibly led him to this conclusion???
He remembered his conversation with Vana.
"If evil consumes this realm, then its opposite is bound to rise." Bando added. "And as someone who preserves and protects, I can't just sit by and watch."
Kazan's sapphire eyes widened.
"Everyone gave their all today. It was the best day of my life." He clenched his fist. "Maybe this is fate's doing."
There he was. Bando, with his eyes posing as black holes, and the biggest smile painted on his face.
By chance — or destiny — a sound carried from the city, a faint sneeze. Any other ear would have missed it, but Bando turned his head just an inch…
And in that instant, it entered his vision.
A streak tore across the northern sky, burning violet and green, its form warped, inconsistent, wrong.
He couldn't make out a word, but his body served as a messenger for his shock. Next thing he knew he was standing on his own.
A hand was stretched out in another attempt to grasp it. He felt the cool wind passing his body as he saw something the second time in his life. In a room filled with shapes, patterns and darkness, that shooting star was the only thing that had colour.
Kazan's mask shattered. The stoic knight's face twisted with shock, his sapphire eyes wide, mouth parting in awe. For a man who never broke, it was a sight unthinkable.
Time itself seemed to pause.
As he slowly turned around to face Kazan, Bando's next words shook him to the core.
"That's my North Star," he said as he pointed toward the flying object that danced through the night sky.
The flames it had caught were that of violet and green, its shape or form was inconsistent and wrong in a way
A tear had left the void of his right eye and slowly traveled down his cheek. He knew that he couldn't wait any longer.
"There's someone inside — they need our help!" Bando shouted, and time lurched back into motion.
A heartbeat later, he launched himself skyward with everything he had. The earth cracked beneath him, a crater smoking at his feet. He flew across the distance that should have taken a cart half an hour, crashing down into a parking house deep within Belbog's crowded districts. Thankfully, the building only shook for a moment and wasn't damaged in a way that endangered anyone, and the smokescreen helped him avoid attention.
The city was on the edge of curfew. Traffic surged, streets clogged with carts and cars, people rushing home in waves. For Bando, it meant only one thing:
chaos.
He leapt again — and the world erupted into colour.
For the first time in his life, his surroundings lived.
Towering buildings stretched around him, neither ancient nor futuristic, but alive with character. Streets swarmed with people of every shape and culture — some human, some beastlike, some between. The air throbbed with motion: hoverboards flashing through skyscraper knots, a zeppelin gliding across the horizon, creatures of scale and wing threading through the skies.
Everywhere, light. Screens and billboards flared with ads, music videos and fragments of story. Neon reflected off steam clouds and the haze of gasoline. Belbog was breathing — loud, filthy, radiant.
Kazan was right, Bando thought, awe burning through him. This is the work of Stellaria's greatest minds. The city that colonised the first heavenly body.
He landed on an abandoned hoverboard hanging in midair. His body moved on instinct, steering with a mastery he shouldn't have had. He wove through the dense swarm of traffic, slipping between carts and beasts and gleaming metal.
Then, without pause, he leapt free — bounding from rooftops, railings, and signposts, his body flowing like second nature.
Below, crowds froze in their tracks.
At first they were startled — then enchanted. They watched the boy who should not see dance through the city's veins, his movements a symphony of freedom. Just as in The Garden, their fear turned to awe.
For a fleeting moment, the world watched a miracle in motion.