Western Continent, outskirts of Dawn City, Night Mountain.
While Glaimo was engaged in a Star-Climbing duel within Dream Crystal Plain, two unwelcome guests arrived at Night Mountain in reality.
Across the clear night sky, a vast swath of dark clouds suddenly drifted over.
Looking up from the ground, one would not find anything strange about these suddenly appearing black clouds, only that they had appeared somewhat too quickly.
But if someone had binoculars at that moment, they would clearly see that the black clouds had not drifted over by themselves. Along the edges of the clouds were flocks upon flocks of ravens, packed so densely that they seemed to have traced the clouds' edges with a pitch-black outline.
Hundreds of thousands, even millions of ravens—each one clamped a strand of cloud at the edge in its beak and beat its wings with all its might... They were the ones dragging the thick black clouds across the sky.
Anyone who witnessed such a spectacle would have been astonished.
Unfortunately, it was midnight.
There were not many people on Night Mountain, and most of those inside the only illuminated castle were asleep.
Apart from a few little cats in the castle, no one else saw this scene.
The strange black clouds drifted to Night Mountain's summit and stopped. The ravens holding the cloud strands began to scatter, though they still circled around the clouds. From afar, they looked like black smoke billowing from the clouds' edges.
Time slowly passed.
About half an hour later, a cool, gentle radiance descended from the sky.
The moon had reached its zenith, hanging directly over the peak of Night Mountain.
As the moon revealed its true face, a woman in a robe adorned with stars and moonlight slowly condensed out of the lunar glow. Her bare