Why had it taken Erytheia so long to return here — to his wonder?

Perhaps it was his uncertainty at his position as a new page of Cosmos. Perhaps he needed the reassuring — albeit harsh — words of Lady Cosmos herself. Or perhaps it had been the strange and distant darkness that had greeted him solemnly upon his first visit, the cryptic message, the signet ring left as if waiting for him for the past one thousand years...

Or, maybe, he had not been ready to face a whole world alone.

To face the light...

“… Light? Where am I?”

Light — true starlight — like he had never seen before!

This couldn't be Erytheia, yet it had to be. Only he had the power to come here — here, to his wonder — and no where else. It was perhaps the only power he possessed. Yet now he was questioning if summoning his weapon had, in fact, taken him to the right distant star in the whole cosmos.

Erytheia blinked and tried to clear his amber eyes with their flecks of magenta and gold. The starlight shone on him like dew. He half expected the vision of a sky full of countless stars and a warm, sun-set horizon to disappear. But it didn't. This really was Erytheia. Yet why hadn't it looked like this the first time he had visited.

“Oh, Yuri... How cute!”

Erytheia turned behind him to see the tree that he had first encountered, yet it was somehow different. A man in a starlit kimono who looked oddly familiar.

“Welcome to Erytheia! But I suppose by that ring you bear, you must have found your way here before I awoke.” A sly grin crossed the man's face as he stepped out of the shade and into the light. “It would be a shame if someone else got to place that ring on your finger, after all.”

And then Yuki leaned in and grabbed the boy’s face in one hand and.... kissed him on the forehead.

What is a kiss like? Erytheia didn’t know, but this was... different. It was like the wind — ethereal.

And that was how he first met Yuki — his knight ancestor!

The winds blew and he couldn’t tell if it was the ghost’s touch he had felt or simply air.

“You are surprised? Why! The world of Erytheia floats freely in space. It orbits no known star. It occasionally drifts into the gravity of a nearby system, but only for a short time. Aside from these brief movements, the sky of the world the wonder sits is a starry sky, an eternal twilight. Always a wind blows, its source unknown. And, yet, here we are — wandering into the path of yet another star.”

Yuki smiled a large grin — teasing.

“You are the knight of Erytheia now. I wonder what that makes me, hrm? I suppose I’m your ancestor. But you can just call me Yuki. I once held the name Erytheia. Other names, too. Knights of Cosmos come from far and wide and have no true home. For we are of Cosmos!”

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