Wayne gazed toward the horizon for a long time. In the first few minutes, the sheer cognitive dissonance left him unable to even guess what he was looking at, whatever it was, it bore no resemblance to any sun he knew.
That broad, majestic arc continued to rise, and in its initial stages it climbed far faster than a normal sunrise, so before long Wayne could see a small portion of its curved surface. The surface did glow, with hazy colors at its edges and indistinct, cloud-like structures. This world's light and heat evidently came from this thing, yet its radiance wasn't blindingly intense like the sun, quite the opposite, in fact.
Wayne could stare directly at that curved surface and even make out faint patterns upon it.
After roughly estimating its curvature, Wayne realized this was something with an apparent diameter dozens, perhaps even a hundred times larger than the sun. Of course, its actual size was probably smaller than a normal star, it was simply extraordinarily close to the surface.
At this distance, once it fully rose, it would probably obscure roughly a fifth of the sky... though that was only Wayne's rough impression, since the emotional impact was so immense that his intuitive estimates were bound to carry significant error.
The oppressive feeling of watching a colossal celestial body rise before your eyes was difficult to put into words.
He quickly searched Gwayne Seawright's memories and, sure enough, found countless equally spectacular "sunrises." The thing in the sky wasn't some abnormal celestial phenomenon, it was simply the most ordinary sight in this world.
So what was the explanation?
Wayne rapidly generated several interpretations based on his own knowledge. Perhaps the physical laws of this world were fundamentally different from those of his home universe, making the star's light and heat output extraordinarily inefficient, while the planet beneath his feet orbited very close to it, hence the enormous apparent size without the surface being scorched. Alternatively, perhaps it wasn't a star at all, but some kind of aperture radiating light and heat, or some other thoroughly unscientific but very magical contraption...
But the most likely explanation was that the planet beneath his feet didn't orbit a star at all. It orbited a gas giant. This world wasn't a planet, it was a moon.
And what was rising in the sky...
...was this moon's parent body.
In that moment, the sensation of being in an alien world struck Wayne more powerfully than ever before.
"Great Ancestor? Great Ancestor?" Hestia's voice came from beside him, finally jolting him out of his daze.
"Ah... huh?" Wayne snapped back to awareness, looking at his many-times-great-granddaughter with a slightly bewildered expression.
The beautiful noblewoman, having left the dark, cramped, danger-filled underground tunnel, had recovered a touch of her former poise. She gave Wayne a slight bow. "Great Ancestor, you were staring into space just now, but we need to leave this area first."
Wayne mumbled a vague response, then noticed that the tunnel exit was on an exposed, unsheltered hillside. Standing around like a fool in unknown territory was hardly wise, so he nodded. "Let's head to higher ground first and get a look at the surroundings. What I know is the terrain from seven hundred years ago, it may not still apply."
The group set off toward the nearby slope under Wayne's direction. Along the way, he couldn't help stealing several more glances at the enormous "sun."
"Great Ancestor, you keep looking at the sun," Rebecca asked from behind him, a touch of concern in her voice. "Is something wrong?"
Amber commented offhandedly from the side. "Your ancestor slept for seven hundred years without seeing daylight. Now that he finally sees the sun, of course he's going to stare."
Wayne ignored Amber and glanced at his N-plus-one-times-great-granddaughter, shaking his head slightly. Internally, he confirmed what the locals of this world called the thing in the sky, they did indeed call it the sun.
Or rather, regardless of how the word was pronounced, in the minds of this world's people, that word referred to the sun and nothing else.
Wayne searched the body's original owner's memories once more. After trying several keywords and fuzzy queries, he finally looked up with dawning understanding, gazing at the opposite side of the sky where it was still somewhat dim.
In that sky, not yet fully bright, still dotted with lingering stars, he found a "star" roughly the size of a grain of rice, brighter than all the others.
The humans of this world called that special celestial body Sol Invictus, and had imbued it with extensive religious and esoteric ritual symbolism.
The first two hypotheses could probably be discarded. Only the third held up.
Sol Invictus was this solar system's actual sun, unimaginably distant, its light falling on the ground beneath Wayne's feet almost as cold as any other starlight.
And in the cool morning breeze, Wayne climbed to the top of the slope.
A stretch of land ravaged by war and decay, exhibiting a grotesque state of ulcerous corruption, sprawled across the distance.
As if strong acid had been poured over living flesh, the earth was rotting. Vast swathes of rock and soil had turned ashen black, with spreading networks of cracks visible everywhere. All vegetation had long since been corroded away, and the remaining tree trunks had twisted into shapes resembling demonic claws. Farther out, collapsed walls, charred houses, and House Seawright's ancient castle shrouded in smoke and dust were visible.
The monstrous Others, towering like giants, roamed that blighted wasteland.
The fields and crops had long been obliterated by the magic tide the monsters had brought, completely unrecognizable.
"The family's territory..." Rebecca lay flat on the slope, jaw clenched tight. Her eyes were reddening, and tears of either fury or grief swirled in them. This young woman who had only just inherited the family estate, who hadn't even adjusted to being a lord, seemed in this moment to have lost everything.
"This is what land corrupted by the Tide looks like," Wayne sighed. "Back in the day, the Gondor Imperium rotted from the inside out until it looked just like this. I'd guess the corruption still occupies the old empire's wasteland to this day, and now a new wave of it has appeared within civilization's borders."
Amber broke out in a cold sweat. "Shadow God above... we were surrounded by this stuff the whole time?"
Hestia was thinking about the family's prospects for recovery. "Is there any hope?"
"None," Wayne shook his head. "You failed to stop the Others' advance. They've already achieved group resonance, and the elemental contamination caused by the resulting Tide is irreversible. Even if every last monster were destroyed, the pollution entrenched in this land would persist for a very long time."
"How long?" Hestia looked reluctant to give up.
"Has human civilization returned to the lands of the Gondor Imperium yet?" Wayne asked a seemingly unrelated question.
"...It remains a dead zone. No one dares set foot on the land beyond the Great Wall."
Wayne shrugged. "Then it looks like Seawright territory's corruption will last at least seven hundred years as well."
Rebecca and Hestia stared at their ancestor in surprise. They couldn't understand how this great man who had founded House Seawright could remain so composed while watching the family's last territory being destroyed by monsters, no anger, no grief, as though he were observing something that had nothing to do with him. The attitude was almost frightening.
But Wayne quickly noticed their expressions and spoke up. "Is something wrong?"
"Great Ancestor, aren't you... angry?" Rebecca asked cautiously. "This is House Seawright's last territory..."
Wayne started, immediately realizing he still hadn't fully committed to the role and had let his mask slip. He quickly put on a stern face, mustering every ounce of acting ability he possessed.
"Wallowing in these things helps no one. Gwayne Seawright is a pioneer. Every inch of land and scrap of wealth this family ever had was built from nothing by my own hands. If the territory is gone, it's gone. At worst, we find somewhere new and start over, what's with all this hand-wringing?"
Hestia and Rebecca nodded vigorously, while internally prostrating themselves in admiration. A legendary ancestor was a legendary ancestor, the vision and composure were simply on another level. They just weren't sure where, in an era when all land had already been divided among the existing nobility and every unclaimed territory was basically a forbidden zone, the Great Ancestor planned to go pioneering...
"There's nothing more to see here. We need to plan our next steps. First priority is finding a town, then figuring out how to link up with the group that broke out earlier," Wayne said, seizing the moment while the afterglow of his bluff still lingered to change the subject. "I recall a knight named Philip led the breakout? Did you agree on a rendezvous point?"
Rebecca answered quickly. "The plan was to meet at Gulltown to the north. If Gulltown was also hit by monsters, they'd continue north along the Kingsroad."
Wayne nodded and was about to leave when a strange sensation suddenly made him freeze mid-step.
After a moment's pause, he and Ser Byron shouted almost simultaneously. "Get down! Take cover!"
Though they didn't understand why, Rebecca and Hestia immediately followed Ser Byron behind a nearby boulder. Amber had vanished into the shadows the instant Wayne opened his mouth, disappearing to who-knew-where. Wayne ducked behind Rebecca, then suddenly noticed that the slightly dim-witted little maidservant Betty was still standing in the open, clutching her frying pan with a blank look on her face. He shot out, grabbed her, and pulled her back behind cover. Almost the very next instant, a pressure that made every heart tremble descended from above.
In the growing radiance of the rising "great sun," an elegant, enormous creature glided slowly across the sky.
It was a dragon, dozens of meters long.
In her terror, Hestia instinctively cast a third-circle spell, [Refracted Light Field], concealing everyone from sight. But she had absolutely no confidence that this rudimentary spell could fool the eyes of a legendary creature.
The dragon, however, genuinely didn't notice the people on the ground, or perhaps simply didn't deign to bother with them. He or she merely beat those great wings in a slow, stately rhythm, gliding across the sky with elegance and majesty. Those enormous eyes reflected the Tide-ravaged lands of Seawright territory below.
Then it let loose a breath of... well, not sparkling water, a torrent of dragon's breath that set the entire area ablaze.