The Revelation Chapel in District 1 still looked like a shell.
Floodlights blasted the construction site so hard it felt like midday, turning every plank and scaffold into stark shadows. Inside the half-built nave, workers in gray uniforms moved in and out with carts and tools, their voices echoing off unfinished stone.
Rhine was nowhere near the center of it.
He’d wedged himself into a narrow gap behind a support wall, his body pressed flat, breathing slow. From here, he let his psionic sense drift outward—an invisible hand lifting his vision above the crowd.
He saw it.
A towering statue carved from black basalt dominated the hall: a winged woman with a serene, inhuman face. Gargoyle Mother.
In her hands, she cradled a massive cup, carved from a single slab of crimson stone.
Rhine’s throat tightened.
It wasn’t just “similar” to the Cinnabar Cup he’d taken from Sorrow Theater in the Endless Sea.
It was the same design—same rim, same proportions, same unsettling weight in the shape alone.
‘So the stolen medium really did end up here…’
His eyes tracked the details around the statue. Metal channels embedded in the floor formed a five-pointed star around the altar, each point leading to a recessed basin like a mouth waiting to be fed.
Five points.
Five.
‘Five Lava Lords.’
A cart rolled in from the side entrance. Several workers strained as they pushed a huge stone slab into the hall—freshly carved, still dusted with powder-white grit.
Rhine’s pulse jumped when he saw the writing.
He could read it.
Not because it was New Star’s language.
Because it wasn’t.
It was written in the old script of the Endless Sea.
The workers argued about orientation, then lowered the slab into place near one point of the star.
Rhine read the inscription line by line, the chill in his chest spreading.
“Do not meditate. Do not seek calm.
Offer your sweet blood and clear souls to the Holy Cup.
In your blood rite, I will permit you to attend my grand feast.”
A blood rite.
The pieces snapped together with a sick clarity: the Cinnabar Cup, the fire-worshiping cult, the “vessels” in red, the way corruption could be ferried across worlds if you had the right anchor.
This chapel wasn’t a shrine.
It was a dock.
And the thing they were “receiving” wasn’t meant to be human.
Rhine held his breath and forced himself to stay still.
A moment later, the System’s notification chimed in his mind.
[SYSTEM]
Quest Update: Investigate the Glory Vault Theft (Follow-up)
Progress: 50% → 100%
Quest complete.
Reward acquired: “Your” Memory
A Memory Box has been stored in your backpack.
[/SYSTEM]
Rhine didn’t move for several seconds.
A memory box—belonging to “you,” but not you.
A parallel self.
Useful… and dangerous.
He tightened the strap of his pack and waited until the workers moved on. Whatever was hidden in that memory could be opened later, back in the Endless Sea where he could control the fallout.
Right now, he needed to leave.
He slipped out of the gap and into the maze of scaffolding, keeping to blind spots and shadows. Outside, the night had fully settled, but the floodlights still made the world feel artificial.
As he reached the edge of the site, a soft clatter of footsteps made him freeze.
Two men had entered the lit perimeter—both in matching black outfits that sharply contrasted with the workers’ gray. Middle-aged. Calm. Their posture alone marked them as people who didn’t belong on a construction crew.
Rhine eased back into shadow, his breathing vanishing.
The taller man spoke first, voice low.
“Brother Zhuyuan… your daughter already has the Cinnabar Cup. Why are you still so nervous?”
Zhuyuan’s reply was quiet, clipped. “Because we’re still missing a key medium.”
“What?” The other man’s tone rose a fraction. “We already have four, don’t we?”
Rhine’s eyes narrowed.
Key mediums—plural.
Zhuyuan dropped his voice even further. “Our Tier-2 heard something at the market today. Someone claimed the New Star catastrophe… wasn’t natural.”
The other man went rigid. “Man-made?”
“That’s what he said.”
“Who could do that?” The man’s throat worked as he swallowed. “Who could make the sun go wrong?”
Rhine felt the same question punch through him.
If a disaster on that scale could be engineered, then the culprit wasn’t just strong—they were playing with a world’s sky.
Zhuyuan answered with obvious reluctance.
“Greedy Wolf.”
The name landed like a hammer.
The second man’s face drained of color. “Greedy Wolf? The one who controls the Harvesting Union?”
Zhuyuan nodded once. “I don’t know why he did it. But I don’t doubt it.”
A trembling breath. “Then… what do we do?”
Zhuyuan stared toward the dark outline of the mountains. “My daughter already went up Uranus Mountain. She said she’s going to meet him.”
The other man stared. “Meet him? Why?”
Zhuyuan didn’t answer.
Rhine stayed hidden, letting their words sink deep.
Greedy Wolf.
The Harvesting Union.
The Cinnabar Cup.
A descent rite carved in Endless Sea script.
Whatever was coming, it wasn’t confined to a single world anymore.