The lights of Under the Stellar Sky Studio had been on all night.
The night before, it had been a solitary vigil under cold fluorescent light. Tonight, that same glow carried warmth from distant places.
Kiana lay with her head on the desk, staring at the message Theresa had sent her. She had read it at least twenty times, and every time she got to the part where Theresa said "Anyone who messes with you, messes with me," her eyes would grow inexplicably warm.
Mei sat beside her, patting her back gently. On her own phone screen was an internal message from the Raiden Group.
Her father, Raiden Ryoma, had been grumbling that he had no interest in getting involved in "children's games," but his legal team had already begun pulling together the relevant documents.
Bronya was still at her computer, though the screen no longer showed data tracking. Instead, it displayed an encrypted communications interface.
On the other end was Welt Yang of the Anti-Entropy Group, whose exact words had been: "Get the evidence organized and send it to me directly. I'd like to see who has the nerve to go after a place where my student works."
Dan Heng had, unusually, stopped typing altogether. He sat quietly, gazing out the window. His phone rested face-up on the desk, screen still lit with a message from Jing Yuan: "I heard you all got pushed around. Want me to send someone over for a chat?"
Stelle and March 7th were still working through the flood of incoming messages, but their faces had shed the exhaustion from before. Something had shifted.
Because among all those messages, the insults were growing fewer and the words of support were growing louder.
Countless unfamiliar usernames, countless ordinary names, all finding their own way to stand up for a game that had barely existed for a month.
Arthur's phone had been buzzing non-stop for the past ten minutes.
First came a forwarded message from Kiana, relayed from Theresa's side: "Is the evidence ready? My legal team is on standby."
Then Bronya forwarded Welt's message: "Tell Arthur he did well. Anti-Entropy's channels are available to amplify his voice whenever he needs."
Then Dan Heng forwarded a message from an unknown number, someone going by the handle "Jing Yuan Rising Again Again Again," who said that if they needed "special assistance," they could reach out to that number.
Then, that same unknown number called him directly.
Arthur picked up.
On the other end was a woman's voice, gentle and composed.
"Am I speaking with Arthur, the person in charge of Under the Stellar Sky Studio?"
"Yes, that's me."
"Hello. I'm sorry to call out of the blue. My name is Eden."
Arthur's grip on the phone tightened, just slightly.
Eden.
Anyone who knew anything about the music world understood exactly what that name meant.
Twenty-three years since her debut. Cumulative global album sales exceeding five hundred million copies. Seventeen Grammy Awards.
Platinum certification in thirty-four countries. Tickets to her concerts regularly got scalped at ten times face value. Even rumors of her retirement were enough to send ripples through stock prices across the entire industry.
She was the living legend of this era, the last symbol of what people called the Golden Age.
Retirement rumors had been circulating for a while now, but the name Eden still shone as the undisputed gold standard of her generation.
"Ms. Eden." Arthur kept his voice as steady as he could. "Hello."
"No need for formalities," she said, a hint of warmth in her tone. "Eden is fine. I'm calling because there's something I'd like to discuss with you."
"Please go ahead."
"My dear friend Elysia has been treated poorly."
Her voice remained gentle, but beneath that gentleness, Arthur could hear something razor-sharp.
"I saw what those trolls said about her. Honestly, I'm not pleased."
Arthur said nothing, waiting for her to continue.
"Elysia mentioned your game to me," Eden went on. "She said that even though I don't really play games, the music inside it was worth my time. So I listened. She was right. It's genuinely good."
She paused briefly.
"That said, there are a few things I think could be done better. If I were involved, there are certain details I'd handle differently."
Arthur's heart skipped.
"Ms. Eden, are you saying..."
"I'm saying," and now her voice carried a quiet smile, "that I want to help you."
"Help us?"
"Yes. In two ways."
She spoke without rushing, as if this were the most ordinary conversation in the world.
"First, regarding the people who have been attacking Elysia: I'll be putting out a statement to make my position clear. My fanbase may not be quite as passionate as that girl's, but it's nothing to scoff at either. They'll know what to do."
Arthur's mind immediately called up the numbers behind Eden's record sales, and the sheer scale of the audience that implied. It was a battlefield of an entirely different order.
"Second," she continued, "regarding your game itself. If you're open to it, I'd be happy to offer some thoughts on the music and help with a few refinements. It wouldn't be free, of course. I'd charge market rate, but I could offer you a friends-and-family discount."
She paused again, and when she spoke, the smile in her voice had deepened.
"Elysia rarely recommends things to me with that kind of sincerity. A game that has her, of all people, genuinely invested? I want to see for myself what the fuss is about."
Arthur held the phone and was quiet for a few seconds.
Then he smiled. It was a tired smile, a moved smile, the soft and unguarded expression of someone caught off guard by unexpected warmth.
"Ms. Eden. Thank you."
"Don't thank me," she said, her voice gentle as ever. "Thank Elysia. She's the one who showed me that what you're building is something worth protecting."
The call ended.
Arthur set his phone down and looked up.
Everyone in the office was watching him.
Kiana lifted her head from the desk, blue eyes full of questions. "Who was that?"
"Eden," Arthur said.
"Oh, Eden, sure..." Kiana started to nod reflexively, then shot upright in her chair. "Wait, WHAT?! That Eden? The singer Eden? The about-to-retire Eden?!"
"That's the one."
"Why was she calling you?!"
Arthur looked at Kiana's wide eyes, at Mei's expression of quiet surprise, at the slight raise of Bronya's eyebrow.
"She said," he answered, one word at a time, "that she wants to help us."
At that same moment, in Eden's private recording studio, she settled back into the sofa after ending the call, fingers tracing idly along the edge of her phone.
On the workbench in front of her, a tablet was playing footage from the game, and the main menu's background music had just looped for the seventh time.
Elysia's message was still glowing on the screen: "Eden Eden!! That game!! Go listen to the music right now!! I don't really know how to explain it but I just KNOW you'll love it!!" followed by a string of emoticons and stickers.
Eden looked at the message, and the corner of her mouth curved upward.
"Oh, my Elysia." Her voice was soft. "Getting dragged through the mud like that, and you're still out here recommending music to people on someone else's behalf."
She rose and walked to the window.
Outside lay the nightscape of the city in all its brightness, a sea of lights flickering in the dark. In the distance, the glow of neon signs made the letters of Interastral Peace Corporation just barely legible.
Eden looked in that direction, the city's shifting light reflected in her eyes.
"Then let them see," she murmured to herself, "what the Golden Age actually looks like."
She turned, walked back to the workbench, and picked up the personal account she rarely used, the one she kept for public statements.
Her fingertips touched the screen.
And word by word, a message began to take shape.