An awkward silence stretched on, flowing like the Milky Way itself.

Kwon Oh-Jin stared at the Celestial made of starlight and asked in bewilderment, “What... did you just say?”

Devour him? What kind of absurd nonsense was that supposed to mean?

Wait.

Obviously, Polaris didn’t mean literally chewing and swallowing him down. It certainly wasn’t some kind of sexual metaphor, which left only one possibility.

“You already know what I mean, don’t you?” Polaris asked.

Yes, Kwon Oh-Jin knew. They both knew.

“With the Black Heaven you possess... devour this wretched Celestial.” Polaris’s tone shifted as if his very personality had changed.

Kwon Oh-Jin’s expression hardened. He pressed his lips together in thought and was about to speak.

Vega suddenly darted in front of him. “P-Polaris! Let me explain everything! The Black Heaven my child carries is not the same as the Heavenly Demon’s—!”

“Vega. Wait.” Kwon Oh-Jin tugged gently on her shoulder and shook his head.

Vega turned to him, flustered. “W-What do you mean wait?! I’ll deal with Polaris myself, so you—”

“No, it’s fine. It seems like Polaris already knows.”

If Polaris truly believed that Kwon Oh-Jin was the Heavenly Demon destined to destroy the world, he wouldn’t have asked Kwon Oh-Jin to consume his constellation. Rather, he wouldn't have called him the Heaven-Defying Star in the first place.

Finally calming down a little, Vega came to the same realization. “Ah...”

“How did you... No, I don’t even need to ask.” Kwon Oh-Jin said.

The Stigma of Ursa Minor could glimpse into the future, so he didn’t need to ask how Polaris had found out.

The important question wasn’t how.

“Since when did you know I possessed the Black Heaven?” he asked.

Starlight shimmered in Polaris’s eyes like stars in the night sky. He answered calmly, “Since the first time we met. To be precise... even before that.”

Kwon Oh-Jin had been found out from the start even while he tried his very best to hide it.

“Ha...” He dryly laughed as the weight of it hit harder than expected.

Kwon Oh-Jin dispelled the Black Curtain around him. “If you knew I carried the Black Heaven, then why did you call me the Heaven-Defying Star?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Polaris’s starlight figure shimmered faintly.

Countless radiant lights shone in front of Kwon Oh-Jin as though gazing directly into his soul.

“Because you are the one destined to overturn fate itself, the Heaven-Defying Star.”

The Heaven-Defying Star was the savior who rewrote the world’s destiny by defying time itself. Vega had once said that maybe the Heaven-Defying Star didn’t necessarily have to be a Regressor, but that left a contradiction.

“I’ve never gone back in time.”

The main reason Celestials equated the Heaven-Defying Star to being a Regressor was because the savior was supposed to defy the flow of time.

Only Lee Shin-Hyuk and the Heavenly Demon had actually done that. Kwon Oh-Jin didn’t meet that qualification to be the Heaven-Defying Star.

“But you carry a constellation that has defied time within your Black Heaven.”

“You’re saying, because I absorbed Lee Shin-Hyuk’s Stigma, that makes me the Heaven-Defying Star?” Kwon Oh-Jin bitterly laughed.

Sure, on paper, that patched up the contradiction.

But come on, that can’t be all there is.

The Heaven-Defying Star couldn’t just be passed around like a name tag and claimed by whoever happened to hold it next. He looked at Polaris for an explanation and received an unexpected answer.

“What do you think of fate?” Polaris asked.

“Fate?”

Why bring that up all of a sudden?

Never really believing in fate, Kwon Oh-Jin’s answer came out flat and unconvincing. “Fate is just a predetermined future, right?”

“I wasn’t asking for the definition of fate. What I want to know is, what do you believe to be the nature of fate?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Damn, he sure knows how to twist his words.

Kwon Oh-Jin scowled and cursed in his head.

“Let me rephrase the question. Do you believe fate can be changed?”

“If it can’t be changed, then something like the Heaven-Defying Star wouldn’t even make sense.”

“Then what do you think it takes to change fate?”

Kwon Oh-Jin started to feel irritated.

“Did you drag me here just to play these riddles?” He glared at Polaris.

Polaris slowly shook his head. “Some say fate is like this. Just as a butterfly’s tiny wingbeat can stir a typhoon, so too can the smallest of actions alter fate.”

“Well... I suppose that’s true enough.” Kwon Oh-Jin agreed.

After all, if the future wasn’t set in stone, the tiniest actions could obviously change its course. If someone who always took the right-hand road home one day chose the left and got into a fatal accident, then that one simple choice, just a step onto a different path, had overturned not only his own fate, but also the lives of everyone connected to him.

That’s right. Just like...

Lee Shin-Hyuk’s death meant Kwon Oh-Jin never became the Heavenly Demon.

“No, fate is not something that is so easily changed.” Polaris shook his head again. “You said it yourself, didn’t you? That fate is a predetermined future.”

He raised his hand and swept it slowly from left to right. A brilliant line of starlight stretched across the air.

“Fate is not a straight line like the one before us.”

He swept his arm down, and starlight cascaded like a waterfall.

“Fate is like a torrent, endlessly pouring down.”

“And what exactly are you trying to say?” Kwon Oh-Jin asked.

“Do you truly believe tossing a pebble into that torrent will change its course?”

At last, Kwon Oh-Jin began to understand what Polaris was getting at.

“Are you trying to say that fate isn’t something that changes so easily?”

“That’s right.”

“Then why didn’t you just say that from the start instead of twisting it up like that?”

What are you, some knock-off Socrates?

“Sometimes, a fitting metaphor is necessary to grasp a concept accurately.”

“It just sounded like you were spitting out empty words to me, but okay.”

Still, I get what he’s trying to say...

“My fate is nothing like my past life’s, though.”

Song Ha-Eun’s, Vega’s, Isabella’s, and Cassia’s fates had also all changed. Perhaps even the entire world’s fate itself had diverged because of his choices.

“And that is precisely why I called you the Heaven-Defying Star.”

“Ah.”

At last, the pieces connected. The question Kwon Oh-Jin had from the very beginning was finally answered. The reason why Polaris called him the Heaven-Defying Star.

“In other words, I became the Heaven-Defying Star because I changed fate?”

“That’s right.”

Time-travel itself had never been the real point. Kwon Oh-Jin had overturned the unchangeable and twisted the torrent’s course. Thus, he had earned the right to be called the Heaven-Defying Star.

I had it backward.

He hadn’t changed fate because he was the Heaven-Defying Star. Changing the unchangeable future made him the Heaven-Defying Star.

“You... I mean, Lord Polaris, want me to absorb your constellation using the Black Heaven?”

“Only now have you decided to show me respect?”

“Because I’ve confirmed that you don’t mean any harm.”

“There’s no need to show me respect,” Polaris gloomily said. “After all... I am nothing more than a wretched Celestial, condemned to merely watch fate unfold, powerless to alter it.”

Earlier, he had compared himself to one bound by the torrent of fate.

“Are you bound by the Law’s restrictions or something?”

Polaris slowly shook his head, his eyes clouded with bitterness. “No, I’m bound by something far greater. God gave me eyes to see the future, but took away the arms and legs that could ever change it.”

He was filled with self-loathing and guilt.

Though the starlight obscured his face, Kwon Oh-Jin could easily imagine the expression behind it.

“Back then too... All I could do was remain bound here, forced to watch fate as it flowed by.”

“Back then?”

“You already know, don’t you? Long ago, the world was destroyed once before by the Black Heaven.”

Kwon Oh-Jin had visited that very Grave of the Stars with Vega last time. The world had been destroyed so long ago that even the present Celestials barely remembered it.

To Kwon Oh-Jin, it sounded as distant as the extinction of dinosaurs.

“Don’t tell me you’ve been trapped in this spring since then?”

“I have.”

That simple answer carried an unfathomable depth of sorrow.

“As I watched the world perish and be born again, I waited and kept waiting.”

Through ages so vast that they could never be measured... Like Prometheus chained to the mountain, begging in desperation, yearning in anguish, and cursing his own helplessness... Polaris waited and waited.

“For someone to change this future.”

For someone who could stop the endless despair and pain unfolding before his eyes.

“Even as I split my crumbling mind into countless fragments, waiting for the one who could change fate...”

No one, not a single soul, appeared.

“No one who could alter fate ever came.”

Then—

“You... appeared.”

Kwon Oh-Jin was like a single beam of starlight, shining brilliantly against the black sky. The Heaven-Defying Star, born to overturn fate, finally arrived.

“At last, the time has come to put an end to this endless waiting.” Polaris faintly laughed.

To know everything, yet be able to change nothing. To see destruction coming, yet only watch in silence. Kwon Oh-Jin couldn’t dare to imagine the depth of despair that had consumed Polaris.

“I understand, Lord Porlaris,” Kwon Oh-Jin formally said.

Polaris had dismissed a need for such formalities. However, Kwon Oh-Jin couldn’t help but show respect for the immeasurable life that Polaris had endured.

“I will... put an end to your constellation, Ursa Minor.”

At first, it sounded like a strange request. After all, Kwon Oh-Jin had only seen the worn and eroded Polaris, ground down by time. He didn’t dare to imagine how long Polaris had endured such hopeless despair before finally asking someone to end his existence. He couldn’t know. Even if he did, no words of comfort could ever suffice.

The only thing I can do now...

Kwon Oh-Jin could only put an end to that long life filled with despair, regret, and self-reproach.

“Thank you...” Polaris said.

Kwon Oh-Jin couldn’t tell which was his real voice, the solemn one or this quiet and gentle one. Perhaps he would never know since the passage of endless time had long since worn away and scattered the true Polaris. 𝙧𝙚𝙚𝔀𝒆𝓫𝓷𝙤𝓿𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝙤𝓶

“Then, I’ll begin,” Kwon Oh-Jin said.

Black clouds poured from Kwon Oh-Jin and coiled around the Celestial of Ursa Minor.