Nine black suns hung in the sky, devouring the light of the distant star. The world was no longer so bright, but it had become clearer. The dust in the air had long since been brought down by the snow, and from the planet's surface, one could see the sights of the universe.
The Monk of Joy looked past those Darkness Wardens at a scene a million kilometers away.
There was a belt of shattered rock out there in space, shining in the starlight.
Now, drawn by the auras of the nine Darkness Wardens, countless meteorites were leaving their original orbits and falling toward the ground.
Those shattered rocks were said to have been this planet's satellite many years ago.
During the age of the Ancient Civilization, some foolish humans had smashed half of that satellite apart.
When the god and the Dark Matter Sea perished together, an unimaginably powerful energy storm had directly destroyed the other half, turning it into the rocky belt that existed now.
Following a custom inherited from the Ancestral Star, the satellites of planets inhabited by humans were generally called moons.
This planet was called Moonwatch Star, for much the same reason as a rock was named for a wife watching for her husband's return.
The humans living on Moonwatch Star had never seen a moon, and might not even know the origin of their planet's name.
Nor had anyone ever seen nine Darkness Wardens appear together. Perhaps that god of the past had seen it during the War of Annihilation.
The Monk of Joy looked at the nine black suns in the sky and thought, So fucking ugly. Like frozen pears that haven't thawed properly.
*Why had things come to this? Even if nothing made sense, there still had to be cause and effect.