Chapter Forty-Four: Turning the Sun’s Pointer

"Where exactly is this firefly leading me...?" Lily, who had been following the drifting firefly, had long lost track of how far or for how long she had walked. The boundless darkness remained as impenetrable as ever, and the solitary firefly was her only guide, gliding ahead in silence. Lily couldn’t even tell if she’d turned or circled back at any point.

Although the firefly’s earlier answer had revealed to Lily that she was in a different world now, this experience felt different from her previous travels between worlds. This time, she encountered nothing strange or uncanny, nor did she witness any scene grand enough to shake her heart.

"So what is the reason for this world's existence?"

One question after another drifted through Lily’s mind, only to vanish as she continued on her way, deep in thought.

What Lily failed to notice was that the firefly was leading her in a wide, looping path—not as a prank, but as if it were... drawing a figure.

At last, Lily saw the firefly stop ahead, no longer trailing its glowing tail as it floated gently up and down. The sight reminded her of watching Ander play computer games, in which a floating quest cursor would bob up and down, pointing the player in the right direction.

Lily approached the firefly cautiously, steeling herself for whatever might come next.

When she thought she was close enough, she stopped to observe. But unexpectedly, something tugged at her, causing her to stumble two steps forward and land right in front of the firefly. No sooner had she steadied herself than the firefly darted into her chest, merging with her once more.

Reflexively, Lily touched the spot where the firefly had entered, feeling a faint warmth above the surrounding skin.

But then, the world plunged once again into unfathomable darkness.

Suddenly, as though someone had cracked a glow stick, a faint light began to emerge at her feet, quickly spiraling outward, tracing a wide arc around her. Unlike what Lily imagined, the spiral didn’t close in on itself, but at the far end, it formed another circle.

At the center of that circle, it seemed, another spiral and a single point of light were being etched.

But that wasn’t all. Lily saw that the massive spiral beneath her feet was extending at both ends, forming two arms—one long, one short—like the hour and minute hands of a great clock, intricate and ancient in design.

On either side of the spiral, two more extensions appeared, shorter than the first pair, but each shaped like a pointer.

At last, a slender, luminous ring swept past all four pointers, threading through the distant spiral and occasionally spinning off even finer pointers than those on the sides, until a perfect, seamless circle was formed.

“How beautiful...” Lily couldn’t help but exclaim.

What she saw was more than awe-inspiring; it stirred within her soul a profound appreciation for the existence of perfection.

If her first journey to the world with three moons had confronted her with the soul-shaking splendor of a miraculous clocktower, then what she witnessed now in this world of darkness was another kind of miracle—an absolute embodiment of beauty.

Unbeknownst to Lily, the same sigil was being silently etched around her left eye. Yet, compared to the emblem she witnessed in the darkness, hers possessed even greater detail. Within the perfectly closed circle, a smaller ring appeared, and at each of the slender pointers, symbols resembling Roman numerals emerged. If one looked closely, they would notice there were exactly twelve, as if marking the hours on a clock.

The instant the final stroke of the sigil was completed around her eye, Lily, who was still marveling at the glowing, serene, and elegant emblem before her, clutched her left eye and cried out in agony.

“Ah!!...”

“It hurts... It hurts so much... Help... someone help...”

Lily had no idea what was happening. The pain struck her suddenly and fiercely, centered in her left eye. It was so excruciating that one might think it would be better to claw out the eye entirely, but Lily didn't even have the strength for that. It was as though every pain receptor in her body had converged on her left eye.

Perhaps, because of her first journey to that other world and the terrifying ordeal that had split her into a thousand fragments—a memory she still shunned—she had gained the ability to endure negative experiences by dispersing them across countless selves, allowing her to survive even this agony without fainting.

Normally, a shock or pain of this intensity would cause a person to lose consciousness as a form of self-protection.

But now, Lily was forced to remain conscious and bear pain beyond the limits of human endurance.

“Am I dying? Am I going to die? Ander, Hugh... Aiden...”

“Pointer of the sun, scene of fates, the false and wicked shift their forms.”

Suddenly, Lily began to recite, in perfect, sonorous tones, a verse in Chinese.

“Thieves take, mockery is play, the cunning god works wonders.”

“The merry-go-round of fate... begins to turn.”

As the final syllable left her lips, Lily was lifted into the air, her left eye’s sigil rising up, detaching slightly from her eye socket, and finally forming an ancient-looking monocle—then vanishing in a flash.

At once, as if all her strength had been drained, Lily plummeted from above. Yet she managed to regain control and landed gracefully.

The pain in her eye was gone, as if it had never existed.

No sooner had she opened her eyes than she seemed to see many figures surrounding her, some near, some distant, both men and women. What drew Lily’s attention most was that each figure had a radiant point somewhere on their bodies: some on the shoulder, some at the flank, some on the head, some on hands or feet.

As Lily looked at each figure, they seemed to sense her gaze and looked back at her in turn.

What... what kind of gathering is this?

Who are these people? One... two... there are thirteen.