“I suppose I must go see for myself.”

A few days had passed since Eve left.

I, anxiously waiting in the temple for news of victory, finally decided to go outside. For a Celestial, leaving the Sanctum was a heavy burden. If I went out in a smaller form, I could withstand the Law’s restrictions to some degree.

“Are there any Celestials who want to come with me?”

Before leaving the Sanctum, I sought out the Celestials whose Awakeners had also gone to the battlefield with Eve. Perhaps worried for their children, they readily agreed to step outside the Sanctum with me. We went together to the battlefield.

Looking over the village, drenched in blood and piled with corpses like hell, I fell into despair.

“A-Ah.”

I raced through the battlefield like a madman, searching for Eve. Luckily, not long after, I found her collapsed.

“Lord... Mobius?”

I stumbled forward and pulled her into my arms.

The bitter shame of not being able to embrace that small girl in my tiny form filled me with revulsion. She was wounded so badly that she could hardly stand, yet she urged me to run.

“It's dangerous here. You have to run.”

As if hearing those words, a massive swarm of demonic beasts quickly surrounded us. I quickly deployed my Sacred Ground to hold them off.

Eve grabbed my sleeve in panic, knowing what I was about to do. “No, Lord... Mobius. Celestials... aren’t allowed to use their power outside the Sanctum.”

“Ah.”

I remembered telling her that Celestials couldn’t use their power recklessly outside the Sanctum due to the Law’s restrictions, set by the great creator who gave birth to the stars.

What use was that Law now? The Law meant nothing if it prevented me from saving the child dying right before my eyes.

“Do not worry.” I turned from the trembling girl and looked at the Celestials who had come with me. “We must use our Sacred Ground.”

Even if I had to pay the price of disappearing from this world, the Law’s restrictions still prevented Celestials from using even half their normal strength outside the Sanctum. I needed the others’ help to shield the girl from that wave of demonic beasts.

However, none of them reached out for the children.

I pleaded in vain. “Our children are dying! Is the damn Law more important than the lives of these children?!”

I begged them.

“Please... please help us. I cannot protect these children alone.”

Despite my cries, they remained silent with their heads bowed like criminals. Their eyes turned away from the deaths happening before them.

“Please... hold me tight... so I don’t feel cold.”

The girl died miserably and horribly. Left unaided, abandoned by the gods she had trusted. She closed her eyes quietly.

“We hereby expel the Celestial of Ophiuchus, Mobius, from the Sanctum.”

And I became a false star for breaking the Law.

***

A silence pressed down and crushed the atmosphere. In that stone-still tension, the Celestials exchanged glances. They all knew what it meant to use their Sacred Ground outside the Sanctum.

“But to deploy our Sacred Ground outside means...”

“Isn't that breaking the Law?”

They weren’t reluctant merely because of the cost they had to pay. Just like how humans had laws, Celestials also had codes they couldn’t violate.

The very creator who created the stars had made the Law, which kept the order of Celestials intact.

Of course, unlike in the past, the belief that the Law always had to be obeyed had weakened among Celestials. After all, even bestowing a blessing upon an Awakener was, strictly speaking, an act that violated the Law.

Just as there was a difference in weight between jaywalking and murder, not all violations of the Law carried the same meaning. Granting a blessing to an Awakener and deploying a Sacred Ground outside the Sanctum were two incomparable acts.

“Wasn’t it the North Star Celestials who said that Sacred Grounds must not be used outside the Sanctum?”

To be exact, those were Polaris’s words. Vega and Deneb had merely agreed with him.

At the time, Vega had thought Polaris was right and believed his words to be the unchanging truth until she met Kwon Oh-Jin. Before meeting him, she had never once doubted the Law established by the creator.

“That’s right! And isn’t that why the Celestial who broke the Law was banished from the Sanctum?”

Vega’s eyes trembled.

Back when she isolated herself within her temple, refusing to communicate with other Celestials, she had heard one rumor. A Celestial had been expelled from the Sanctum for the crime of using his Sacred Ground beyond its bounds. That Celestial was none other than the Celestial of Ophiuchus, Mobius.

Vega faintly sighed. “Ah...”

Only now did she finally understand why Mobius harbored such hatred for the Celestials, and why Polaris had asked her to deliver his apology to Mobius before vanishing.

Vega turned to Mobius and sorrowfully smiled. “I see, so that’s how it was. You... were our karma.”

Before meeting Kwon Oh-Jin, she was a foolish Celestial who didn’t even know what it meant to cherish her own child. She simply regarded the given Law as absolute truth. She had rejected and condemned those who defied the Law. Now, the karma from that foolish and ignorant past had come back to bite her.

Vega had no intention of hiding behind cowardly excuses by saying she had merely agreed with Polaris.

“It was all my fault.”

Even inaction, standing by and watching, had to be taken responsibility for.

Vega bowed her head deeply toward Mobius. “I’m sorry.”

Mobius looked down at her and bitterly laughed. “And what meaning does that have now?”

Eve was dead, and he had joined hands with the Heavenly Demon. A mere apology could never make up for something that already happened.

Mobius twisted his lips into a smirk and spread the Black Heaven’s clouds. “Nothing will change. Every Awakener here will die, and you will all just stand there and watch just as you always have.”

Bound by the shackles of the Law, hiding like cowards inside the prison of their own making, and tied to the Law’s restrictions.

“Because that’s what you call the duty of a Celestial.”

Vega pressed her lips together and took a step forward. Brilliant silver waves of light spread out from her.

She paused and turned back toward the Celestials standing behind her. “Do you love your children?”

The Celestials exchanged glances, then nodded.

“Yes, we do.”

Back when they hadn’t really understood humans, Celestials merely viewed them as soil in which their Stigmas could take root.

Then, they grew closer to humans while learning, arguing, forgiving, weeping, and seeing them smile. An emotion they had never expected took root within themselves—a love for the children who bore their Stigmas and even for humanity itself.

It wasn’t forced or commanded. Naturally, it happened like water soaking into the earth. The Celestials grew close to humankind.

“I, too, love my child. Not as a Celestial, but as a woman.”

Vega’s words struck like a bomb, and shock rippled through the Celestials.

“L-Lady Vega?”

“With... a human?”

“I heard there were Celestials dating humans these days, but you, Lady Vega?!”

They stared at her, eyes wide in disbelief.

Vega asked, “Are there any among you who have become lovers with your children?”

A few Celestials exchanged uneasy glances before hesitantly raising their hands.

“Do you remember? Only a few years ago, the very idea of a Celestial and a human becoming lovers was unthinkable.”

She recalled how shocked she had been when Spica confessed that she was dating a human.

A Celestial and a human together as lovers? Vega had firmly shaken her head, saying it was absurd and impossible.

However, something unthinkable just a few years ago had now become a natural part of daily life.

The moment she unfolded her Sacred Ground, the Law’s restrictions responded immediately.

“Ugh!”

The shackles forged by the creator tightened around her throat.

Vega suppressed the pain that threatened to choke her. “I once believed that this Law was the absolute truth that must be obeyed.”

She thought that following the Law was a Celestial’s natural duty.

“But I no longer believe that.”

She had changed ever since she met Kwon Oh-Jin. So much so that even she felt astonished by her own transformation.

“I will no longer force upon you the duties of a Celestial.”

Even if every Celestial here turned their back on her, she had no right to condemn them.

“However...” She took another step forward. “If I am not the only one who has changed...”

If, just like her, the other Celestials had also encountered someone who changed them—

“If you cherish your children not out of your duty as a Celestial, but as friends, lovers, or parents...”

If they, too, had changed like her—

“Then please, stand up for the sake of your children.”

Gazing down at the wounded and fallen Awakeners, Vega slowly gathered her power. Blue sparks burst through the waves of silver light surrounding her.

Crackle!

The more she expanded her Sacred Ground, the stronger the Law’s restrictions pressed against her. The growing force could lead to the destruction of her own existence.

The goddess, who had once obeyed the Law more faithfully than anyone, now raised her defiance toward the creator himself.

“Haha! Do you really think they’ll break the Law and come to your aid?”

“That, I do not know.” Vega only knew one thing for certain. “Just as you once did, I too will give everything to protect my child.”

Even if the price for that was her very existence.

“Sacred Ground Deployment, Milky Way.”

Brilliant waves of silver light swelled and completely filled the surroundings.