The Nameless had never acted for empty fame or reward.
Dan Heng looked up. In the distance, Star Skiffs streaked past, their dazzling trails casting fleeting reflections in his calm eyes.
He felt that, at the very least, the Chrysos Heirs—who bore the last Core Flame of their civilization and had only just broken free from a nightmare spanning thirty million ages—should first be allowed a stretch of peace that belonged purely to them.
Several Chrysos Heirs had only been able to enter the galaxy and move freely because of their Soul Steel bodies. With their consent, Black Swan, a Memokeeper, had carried out the necessary sorting and softening of their thirty million ages of memories—memories vast enough to crush any mind.
The process had not been easy. Dan Heng had once happened to see what Mydei looked like after emerging from a brief memory review.
He had braced himself against a wall, his Soul Steel-simulated breathing ragged for a full quarter of an hour, his knuckles whitening slightly from the force of his grip.
Though the results had been remarkable, preventing them from being consumed by an ocean of painful memories and allowing them to face their new lives with relative ease, that heavy undertone had not vanished completely.
These days aboard the Express were exactly the remedy their tightly wound nerves needed to gradually relax.
The desserts Pom-Pom prepared, the strange photos March 7th dragged them into taking, even the aroma that filled the air when Himeko brewed coffee—all of it became bricks that built up a sense of reality in the present.
At a time like this, calling them to a meeting to discuss the ownership and trade of the World-Cleansing Golden Blood—
Dan Heng would never agree to it.
It was no different from discussing the