Intelligence Brought by the "Sailor"

Those "Sun Shards" that briefly illuminated the night sky had shattered the tense facade of calm beneath the long night—after a quarter of a "solar ring" disintegrated and fell from the sky before the entire world, at least seven city-states dispatched fleets to search for the luminous geometric objects that had fallen into the Boundless Sea.

Within the first forty-eight hours of the long night's arrival, the Boundless Sea, which had known peace for over a dozen centuries, came closer to war than ever before.

Fortunately, a massive fleet led by the Truth Academy's heavy flagship, Balance of All Things, reached the largest "impact site" in the central waters before any of the city-states. It secured several of the largest Sun Shards ahead of everyone else. The Church's authority once again proved its worth, maintaining the precarious balance between the city-states—the various city-state fleets did not clash over the Sun Shards, but agreed to the Church's distribution plan. They temporarily set aside their disputes and sent the shards to the cities currently in the worst condition, those most desperately in need of sunlight.

Yet during that four-hour standoff, a crack—an omen of disaster—had already begun to spread quietly among the many city-states of the Boundless Sea—

In the days to come, sunlight would become a scarce resource necessary for survival.

But for Duncan, who was still staying in Lightwind Harbor, these matters remained very distant.

Unexpected intelligence had reached Duncan from Faelun—the source was Captain Lawrence of the White Oak, and its contents concerned the mysterious Anomaly 077, the "Sailor."

On the first floor of the Witch's Mansion, Lawrence's figure appeared in the oval mirror on the wall, and his voice came from within it. "...He said he used to be the first mate of the Sea Song. They crossed