Star Rail： Chant of the Terminal Paradise

Herta Space Station - Medical Bay

The soft green glow of the regeneration pod pulsed like a heartbeat. Nanite currents shimmered across Lyca's chest as Arlan concluded his rounds with a silent nod, the alloy door sealing shut behind him. The sterile air hummed with filtration systems and the faint tang of antiseptic ions.

An unregistered comm frequency pierced the monotony—a sigil of interlocking crystalline fractals spinning on Lyca's display. Recognition flared in his eyes. Elio.

"Accept," Lyca rasped, voice raw from disuse.

A hologram coalesced: not a solid form, but a constellation of light-points shaping a figure robed in twilight fabric that drank the light, deep indigos bleeding into cosmic violets. Seven luminous prisms orbited him, edges etched with flowing golden runes. Their refractions painted ever-shifting constellations across his ageless, tranquil face.

"Lyca of the Blade's Wing," the voice resonated directly into Lyca's mind, clear as water striking deep stone. "Entropic signatures indicate non-combat metabolic deceleration. An unexpected path to Ester."

"Elio!" Lyca winced, shifting against the pod's restraints. "Your prism array's grown since the 'Corridor of Shattered Echoes.' Me? Had a... reunion with an old friend in the Valley of Weeping. Costly." He grinned through the pain. "Ester guards Lucerius Star. Something vital stirs there."

The prisms accelerated, runes blazing gold. "Lucerius... Designated agrarian world. Yet my Resonance Prisms detect anomalous interference—pure Beauty harmonics entwined with Entropy's dissonance. This pattern... vibrates in sympathy with mirror-fragments I traced within the 'Wall of Sighs' ruins."

Lyca's breath hitched. He knew the Reflectors. Their Transcendent Mirror shards—believed to be crystallized fragments of Idrila's shattered divinity—were pursued with fanatical devotion. Elio, master of cosmic aesthetics, saw patterns invisible to others. "You suspect a shard? Or—"

"A Confluence Point." Elio's mental voice sharpened. A tetrahedral prism drifted forward, its face dissolving into a hologram of Lucerius and its twin moons. "Here, Beauty and Entropy don't clash. They dance. A paradoxical harmony—the perfect canvas for the Mirror to manifest. I need Ester's sword, his sight, and the anchor of his conviction."

Lyca transmitted coordinates and landing protocols without hesitation. "Tell the Captain: wounds mend. Waters run deep here—tread carefully."

Elio's prisms dimmed in a gesture akin to a bow. "May the light of the mending mirror heal the warrior's fractures." The hologram dissolved into stardust, leaving Lyca alone with the weight of impending storms.

Lucerius Star - The Radiance's Bridge

Warmth from the village below—the scent of baking bread, distant children's laughter—drifted into the sterile bridge. Ester stood immersed in holographic torrents: the upgraded Tracker Alpha core fused with Herta's AI matrix. His fingers flew, inputting combat data from Sam, Stellaron energy signatures, Caelus's corruption vectors—forging a predictive threat model.

A chime. Lyca's face appeared, color returning to his features.

"Captain," Lyca smiled weakly. "Arlan 'patrolled' Medical seven times today. Wears grooves in the floor."

Ester's shoulders relaxed a micron. "Herta's provisions serve you well. Report."

"Elio contacted me."

Ester's hands stilled. *The Mirror-Speaker.* "Purpose?"

"Tracking 'Mirror-echoes.' Detected a Confluence Point—*here*. Beauty and Entropy in symbiotic resonance. He believes it's a beacon for a **Transcendent Mirror** shard. Needs your strength to secure it. I gave him coordinates." Lyca paused. "He seemed... intensely focused. Like deciphering the Necrontyr star-charts."

Silence stretched. Ester's gaze flickered to the village's life-sign monitors. "Understood. Heal. These waters are mine to navigate." The screen darkened.

*Elio. Coming here. The Reflectors sought Idrila's physical legacy, shards holding slivers of Her power. Their goal mirrored the Knights'—restoring Beauty's light. But Ester knew their creed: *The Mirror Above All*. To awaken a shard, they'd let a civilization's artistic heart be crushed by a stellar storm if its "destructive beauty" resonated with a fragment. Elio was subtler, but the core remained: retrieve the shard, consequences be damned.

Would his arrival shatter Lucerius's fragile balance? Or awaken the slumbering cataclysms beneath its soil? Ester's knuckles whitened against the cold viewport.

The Reflector's Descent

Three days later. Dusk bled across the wind-scarred crimson mesa of Ester's designated landing zone. The Radiance stood sentinel.

Space rippled—no sound, no flash. A vessel like a faceted obsidian geode *unfolded* from the void. It settled soundlessly, landing struts kissing rock without a tremor. A portal irised open, not a ramp, but a gateway of swirling prismatic light.

Elio emerged.

He descended on lotuses of solidified light, blooming and vanishing beneath each step. His twilight robes hung motionless, untouched by the wind. The seven Resonance Prisms orbited him—celestial mechanics made manifest—scattering rainbows across the barren stone. His ancient eyes, deep as event horizons yet alight with supernova intellect, found Ester.

"Ester of Beauty," his voice resonated in Ester's mind, crystalline and vast. "The tides of Mirror-echo drew me here. To you. To this crucible where Being and Unbeing dance upon a singularity." He halted ten paces away. Prisms hummed.

Ester stood like a monolith, hand resting near Oathkeeper's hilt. Pure Beauty energy thrummed beneath his calm—a frozen river ready to surge."Elio. State your intent for the Confluence." Ice edged his tone.

Elio's gaze swept the horizon, lingering on the distant village haze, then the twin moons ascending. "This world," his mental voice wove an eerie cadence, "sings a fragmented hymn to Her. Faint. Deep. Bound... yet stirring. And entwined with it—Entropy's seductive murmur."** A prism edged in golden spirals drifted between them.

**"The shards we Seek..."** Elio fixed Ester with his gaze, **"...manifest only where purest Light embraces deepest Shadow. Where Creation's hymn and Finality's sigh waltz upon the precipice." The prism's core ignited. Not a reflection—a vision: a nebula of shattered stars, frozen tears, and indescribable chromatic splendor—a shard of Idrila's lost realm, "Kaleidoscape"! It vanished like mist.

"Knight, we share a purpose: restoring the Ideal. Mending the Mirror. Yet the path is veiled." Elio stepped forward, a light-lotus blooming. His eyes pierced Ester's defenses, seeing the turmoil within. "Before we seek the Confluence... a question lingers in the glass, Ester. A question that charts our course."

The prisms slowed. The wind died. Elio's final words struck like a scalpel:

"Whom do you serve, Knight of Beauty? The eternal Principle of Beauty itself... or the memory of the Aeon who wore its face?"

The question hung—a guillotine over Ester's faith. It was Sam's cold script, Caelus's mad rant, his own torment on the bridge laid bare. Elio, Seeker of shattered reflections, had gazed into Lucerius's mirror and seen the crack in Ester's soul.

Ester's grip tightened on Oathkeeper. His eyes widened—not in fury, but in the shock of inner conflict violently exposed. Only the Tracker Alpha's soft hum persisted in the suffocating silence.