"Scholars have many bad habits. The worst is probably their tendency to describe simple things with unnecessarily long terms, dressing up the ordinary and mundane in a cloak of erudition.
"'Conjunction of the Spheres' is a perfect example. The name sounds deeply mysterious to ordinary people, but the idea can be explained in simpler words: worlds colliding.
"This phenomenon is easy to explain, even to a child.
"Dear reader, imagine our world as a ship sailing across a vast ocean. Standing on deck, we can see other ships in the distance—that is, other celestial bodies.
"Each of these ships carries cargo and crew, and they usually pass us at a great distance, so far away that we can barely see them even through a telescope. But every few thousand years, a great storm sweeps across this cosmic ocean, blowing the ships toward one another until they sail side by side.
"At such times, some of the crew on one ship can move to another, and cargo may spill onto the neighboring vessel. Once the weather calms, the ships separate again and go their own ways.
"'Post-Conjunction creatures'—monsters such as Ghouls and Basilisks—are passengers who came from other ships.
"We humans are shipwreck survivors, cast into a world once inhabited by an ancient race. After arriving, we learned mysterious ancient magic unlike anything we had ever known.
"Will different worlds collide again? It's possible. Can we prevent such a disaster, or hasten its arrival?
"Some scholars believe that certain creatures have mastered this skill. They carry rare genes that allow them to control the course of our ship, steering us toward safe waters—or toward the end of the world."