“Miss Sunflower, the answer I received from God was ‘Refused.’” Yvette thought for a moment, then turned to the nun. “Is that a common reply?”

“Quite rare.” The nun’s eyes widened slightly. “What exactly did you ask of God?”

“I requested a face-to-face conversation with Him.”

“—Then being refused is only natural, Miss Yvette.” Miss Sunflower gave a wry smile. “Only the Holy Lord serves as God’s proxy. If you want to hear a revelation in person… well, I’m not sure, but if anyone can, it would only be the Holy Lord.”

“Then the question I just asked—could God see it?”

“That…” Miss Sunflower hesitated, clearly unsure; but soon her expression firmed, and she said with conviction, “God surely has witnessed it. All prayers reach God’s ears and receive their proper enlightenment. Even a refusal must contain profound intent. As for what that intent is, Miss Yvette, you’ll have to grasp it yourself.”

Seeing the resolve in her eyes, Yvette thought: Miss Sunflower really is a professional nun—she almost had her convinced.

A few minutes later, Yvette stepped out of the Sanctum room into the underground corridor outside,

where Ice Rain was waiting—her slim figure out of place among the old-model golems. Seeing Yvette emerge, she asked at once, “Well, Miss Good Samaritan, what did God say?”

“He refused.”

“Ah, what a pity—then there’s no helping it.” Ice Rain sighed, then asked curiously, “But what did you want to say to God? Can you tell me?”

“I wanted to ask Him the truth behind the world’s destruction, and—what became of a friend of mine from the past. Also, who the Witch of the End is and whether She truly fell—besides that, the origins of the Polar Secret Garden, and what causes the auroral belts. I’m curious about it all.”

“I don’t know about the latter ones, but the first—lots of people have asked. God’s usual answer is: go seek it yourself,

He won’t tell you directly,” Ice Rain said. “I think even if you asked the rest, the answers would be about the same.”

“There’s no other way?”

“None.” Ice Rain shook her head with a sigh.

Yvette looked at her, fell silent for a while, and said nothing more. The two of them strolled outside for a bit, and when night fell, they returned home.

Compared with other Golem Kingdoms, the Skyvault Kingdom was relatively progressive: from imitating humans sleeping, they’d evolved to imitating humans not sleeping. Even at night there were plenty of night markets and such for diversion. Not all golems accepted that cultivation ethos, though; at least in the shanty district where Ice Rain lived, most residents still slept most of the time.

Past midnight, once the outside had fallen silent, on the second floor of the metal shack Yvette opened her eyes on the bed, rose quietly, pushed off the thigh Abella had draped across her stomach, and slipped lightly to the floor.

Without disturbing anyone, she turned into a drifting shadow, flashed out of the shack, rose into the air, and shot toward the stars.

It was a cloudless night, the sky ablaze with starlight. Even the anti-gravity aerospace carrier hanging in the heavens was visible, like a shuttle-shaped black cloud.

She planned to go straight aboard the Sanctum Headquarters and find the Holy Lord—if need be, she could flaunt her human identity and see how he reacted. If that still didn’t work, she’d have to use force and compel the God of Machines to speak with her.

Soon, as the distance shrank, the carrier’s vast metal body swelled rapidly in view. Its length was hard to gauge—

a dozen kilometers? Even more? It looked less like a ship than a floating island of steel. Across its hull, countless points of light pulsed—like breathing.

Yvette herself was taken aback by the carrier’s sheer scale.

In the Dream Fog, she’d seen traditional aerospace carriers—wind-element engine types—which still had to account for mass, using the lightest materials possible and topping out at a few hundred meters. The anti-gravity engine drew attention across the Origin Civilization precisely because it lifted the mass limits of conventional carriers; within the bounds of force-field control, you could make them as large as you liked.

Still, building one this big was a visual shock. The Steel Sea-Drake that had so amazed her on Ish Island seemed paltry beside it.

After a dozen minutes, Yvette hovered above the carrier’s centerline. Below she saw several deck zones that looked like landing platforms. On the central deck, a lone figure stood, head tilted toward the moon.

She dropped at once and alit before the figure—a young man in a black suit.

He wore a top hat and held a wooden cane—every bit the young gentleman. Given the howling winds, though, that hat clung to his head without budging; it looked a bit surreal, enough to make one wonder if he’d glued it on.

“Who are you?” Yvette asked. Her smooth silver hair whipped wildly in the deck’s airstream, like a banner reflecting pinpricks of starlight.

“You come uninvited and still want me to announce myself first?” The black-clad youth smiled as he asked. He was not particularly surprised; he only looked her up and down, as if checking something.

Considering there wasn’t a trace of golem about him, Yvette almost wondered if he, too, was human.

“I’m Yvette Loxivia, a survivor of human civilization,” Yvette said evenly. “I’ve come to visit the God of Machines.”

“A human from before the Cataclysm?”

At her answer, the air on the deck seemed to still; only the moonlight remained as chill as ever.

After several seconds, the young man’s expression shifted—complex now. In a voice edged with expectation, he asked, “Is what you said true?”

For some reason, Yvette found his tone odd, but she nodded. “You should be able to tell.”

Hearing that, the young man stared at her for a long time, as if afraid the girl before him was a bubble that would pop at a touch. At last he exhaled, smiled, and sighed, “I’ve waited so long—and you’ve finally come.”

“You were waiting for me?” Yvette cocked her head—had she finally triggered the main quest?

“I was,” the young man said with a smile.

The next second, a dense darkness exploded at his feet—like a singularity that devoured all. A deep black sphere swelled outward at terrifying speed, and in a second or two it engulfed the entire central deck and everything upon it.

Caught unprepared, Yvette was swallowed by layer upon layer of shadow. When she came to, she found herself in an absolutely dead, dark space. Starlight, the deck beneath her, the roar of wind—all traces of the real world were gone.

She floated in that pure void, weightless, like at the end of the universe, unable to see her own hand. Stranger still, the laws of magic here seemed subtly altered—new, unfamiliar constraints made her control far more difficult.

Soon, from the rich darkness, an excited voice came from every direction at once, cutting crisply into her ears:

“A pleasure to meet you, Miss Loxivia. Allow me to introduce myself.”

“I am Vermes, Holy Lord of the Sanctum, executor of the God of Machines’ will.”

“Also the monarch of the Silvermirror Continent—the ‘King of Shadows,’ the Goddess’s most loyal servant.”

“By the Goddess’s oracle I took up the office of Holy Lord and have waited here for your arrival—

“—and then, to kill you.”

“I have waited seven centuries for this mission.”

“Now, at last, you have come.”