Shunjiro placed the thick blue book on the table.

The title had been pressed into the cover in faded gold lettering.

The Conquest of the Dawnless Crown.

His fingers rested on the edge of the cover for a moment before he opened it. The pages were old but well kept, their color faded from white into a deep cream. The first few pages listed no author, which made Shunjiro pause.

“There is no name,” he said.

Malachi sat across from him with another book already in hand. Its cover was dark brown and unmarked, and he made no effort to show Shunjiro what it was.

“Many old histories do not carry an author,” Malachi said. “Some were copied so many times that the first writer was forgotten. Some were written by people who did not want their names attached to what they recorded.”

“Is this reliable?”

“For the most part.” Malachi turned a page in his own book. “But all history is touched by the hands that preserve it. Remember that.”

Shunjiro looked down at the title again.

“So some parts could be wrong?”

“Some parts could be polished,” Malachi corrected. “Especially when the subject is a king beloved by his people and a war that ended with the founding of Radiance.”

Shunjiro nodded slowly.

That made sense.

A story could be true and still be shaped by admiration.

He pulled the book closer and began reading.

The opening pages did not begin with Kakai Soleil’s childhood or the birth of Radiance. There was no slow explanation of where Kakai had come from or what kind of man he had been before the war. The book began with the state of the Light Continent before Radiance existed, when the land that would one day become his home had been fractured by fear and controlled by a military empire called the Dawnless Crown.

The name belonged to both the empire and the fortress at its heart.

Shunjiro leaned forward slightly as he read.

The Dawnless Crown had not always been the same kind of place. The book described it as an old fortress of great strategic value, standing over roads and territories that allowed armies, trade, and information to move across the Light Continent. Whoever controlled it could influence surrounding kingdoms without needing to rule them directly. That power changed when Morrigan took it.

The book called him Morrigan the Phantom King.

He had been human, though the way the book described him made that feel almost difficult to believe. It did not explain his ability clearly, only that he moved through battle as though his body did not fully belong to the world. Blades passed where he had been a heartbeat before. Soldiers who swore they had surrounded him found themselves striking empty space. Those who survived his campaigns described him as a phantom wearing the shape of a man.

Shunjiro’s eyes narrowed at the page.

The Phantom King.

Morrigan had taken the fortress by force after killing the ruler who held it before him. That ruler had been one of the Great Kings, one of the world’s highest seats of authority. Morrigan claimed the fortress, reshaped its armies, and turned the Dawnless Crown into an empire built on obedience. The book did not describe him as a man who wanted to protect people, or even one who wanted to be loved by them. He despised weakness. He looked at ordinary people as though they were insects beneath his feet, useful only if they served, worthless if they resisted.

Under him, the Dawnless Crown spread across enough of the Light Continent that entire kingdoms began to move carefully around his shadow. He did not rule every land, but he controlled enough roads, supplies, and military pressure that life under his influence became suffocating. People could not travel freely. Smaller rulers paid tribute to avoid being crushed. Guilds were absorbed, threatened, or destroyed. Those who lived inside the fortress were divided between loyal soldiers, families trapped by circumstance, civilians who had nowhere else to go, and people who supported Morrigan because fear had taught them that standing near power was safer than opposing it.

Shunjiro continued reading, and the more he learned, the more he understood why the book said the Dawnless Crown had made the Light Continent fall into darkness.

It was not because the fortress stole sunlight.

It was because it stole freedom.

The title of the empire became a symbol of despair. The Dawnless Crown was the place where hope ended, where kings bent their heads, where armies marched out and villages disappeared beneath banners they had never chosen.

Then the book introduced Kakai Soleil.

Shunjiro slowed.

He knew the name already, but only in the way children knew the names of old founders. King Kakai Soleil had always sounded distant to him, more like a statue in a city square than a person who had once stood beneath the same sky as everyone else. But the book did not describe him first as a king.

It described him as an EX-ranked warrior.

Kakai was already famous before the conquest. He was not born into a throne. He was a quiet man with overwhelming power, known across the Light Continent for carrying the heat and force of the sun itself. The book described him as humble to the point of making other rulers uncomfortable. He did not speak loudly. He did not posture. He did not demand followers. Yet people followed him anyway because wherever Kakai appeared, the fear that Morrigan spread seemed less absolute.

Shunjiro found himself reading more carefully.

The book made Kakai sound almost impossible, but not arrogant. He was powerful enough to stand among monsters, yet pure enough that people believed his strength belonged to something greater than conquest. 

But Kakai was not alone.

The next section brought in another name.

King Sultan of the Elf Empire.

Shunjiro’s eyes moved quickly across the page.

Sultan ruled a kingdom in the northern Light Continent, smaller than many others but respected far beyond its borders. The book described it as the Elf Empire, though it noted that not every person within its lands was an elf. It was open to others, but its heart, its culture, and most of its warriors were elven. Sultan himself was one of the Great Kings, and the book referred to him with a title that made Shunjiro stop for a moment.

The Goddess’s Perfect Creation.

Shunjiro read the line again.

Sultan was described differently from Kakai. Where Kakai was quiet and pure, Sultan was learned, strategic, and unsettlingly composed. The book stated plainly that many believed Sultan was stronger than Kakai, though Kakai’s power made him far more terrifying to face directly. Sultan’s strength was not described in detail, but it made clear that he was not only a ruler. He was one of the most dangerous beings alive in that era.

More importantly, Sultan was the person who first gave shape to the idea of the Great Kings as something beyond individual rule.

Shunjiro paused again.

He had known the Great Kings existed. Every continent had rulers whose authority carried weight across the world. King Shadis Solmere of Radiance was one of them in the current age. But Shunjiro had never thought deeply about who created the system or why it existed.

According to the book, Sultan believed the world could not survive if its greatest rulers only guarded their own borders. There were threats too large for one kingdom and too dangerous for pride. The Great Kings had been formed so that the strongest rulers of the era could meet, speak, and act together when the world itself was in danger.

That had been the original idea.

Shunjiro sat back slightly.

The Great Kings were not just meant to be powerful rulers. They were supposed to work together.

The thought made him look at the page differently.

In the current world, the Great Kings felt almost mythical from a distance, figures who ruled over capitals and continents. But Sultan’s idea had been simpler than that. Strong people with enough authority to change the world should not wait until disaster swallowed everyone separately.

They should stand together before it reached that point.

Kakai and Sultan’s alliance began because both understood Morrigan could not be allowed to continue. The Dawnless Crown was not just a Light Continent problem. If Morrigan kept expanding, if other rulers learned that fear and force could bend entire kingdoms without consequence, the peace of the world would eventually crack beneath it.

The book then introduced Sultan’s elite force.

Shunjiro’s breath caught before he fully understood why.

The word appeared plainly on the page.

Illumina.

He stared at it.

For a moment, he did not keep reading.

The letters sat there in old ink, surrounded by the history of kings and war, and yet they felt more alive than anything else on the page.

“Illumina?” Shunjiro said aloud.

Malachi looked up from his book.

“Yes,” he said. “Sultan’s elite force.”

Shunjiro did not answer immediately.

His fingers tightened around the edge of the page.

Illumina.

The name of his guild.

The name he had found in that strange book in the Grand Library back in Radiance.

He remembered holding it in his hands. The cover had carried the title clearly enough, but the inside had been unreadable. Not written in another language. Not coded. Just scribbles, meaningless marks that none of his friends could understand.

None of them except him.

He had been able to make out only a few words.

Kings of Old.

Humanity at war with an ancient race.

Those words had stayed with him because they made no sense, but he had not known what to do with them. He had liked the sound of the title and named his guild after it. At the time, it had felt almost random.

Now the name was sitting inside an old historical record, attached to one of the most important forces in the era of the Great Kings.

Malachi was still watching him.

“That name means something to you,” he said.

Shunjiro looked up slowly.

“It is the name of my guild.”

Malachi’s eyebrows lifted slightly.

“Your guild is called Illumina?”

“Yes.”

“That is an interesting choice.”

Shunjiro swallowed.

“It was not really planned.”

“Where did you get it?”

Shunjiro hesitated for only a moment.

He could not tell Malachi everything. Not about the unreadable pages. Not about the words only he had seen. Not yet. Maybe not until he understood more himself.

“I found the name in a book at the Grand Library in Radiance,” he said. “I liked how it sounded, so I used it.”

Malachi studied him for a moment.

Then he nodded.

“A good name,” he said. “Heavy, though.”

Shunjiro looked back down at the page.

“Was Illumina famous?”

“According to the books, yes,” Malachi said. “But most people remember Kakai and Sultan before they remember the force that opened the path for them.”

Shunjiro’s eyes lowered again.

There is no way this is a coincidence.

The thought came immediately.

He tried to push it down.

Maybe it is. Maybe I saw the name in a book because it was old history, and that is all.

But that explanation did not settle.

The book in Radiance should not have been unreadable. His friends should have been able to see the same words he did. If Illumina was only a forgotten historical name, then why had the book shown him phrases that connected to kings and a war that this record did not even mention?

If I get back to Radiance, I need to look at it again.

His heart beat faster at the thought.

More words might appear.

The idea made him want to stand up immediately, leave the library, cross the Shadow Realm, and force his way home just to open that book again. But he stayed seated. Malachi had already told him that rushing back weak would solve nothing.

So Shunjiro took a breath and kept reading.

Sultan’s Illumina was made up of five elves, the strongest five under his command. The book did not name them, but it described their role in the campaign with obvious respect. They were not a large guild meant to replace an army. They were the kind of force sent where armies could not go. They broke supply lines, silenced fortress watch posts, destroyed hidden communication routes, and moved through enemy territory with a precision that made the Dawnless Crown’s commanders fear shadows behind their own walls.

The campaign itself was not small.

It was called a civil war because it was fought across the Light Continent, but the conflict drew eyes and forces from beyond it. Inari of the Nature Continent was mentioned as one of the Great Kings who supported the alliance, though the book did not explain the details of her involvement. Yuudai of the Darkness Continent sent a squad of dark knights, warriors whose presence was recorded with respect but also with a strange caution in the wording. The author did not accuse Yuudai of betrayal or cowardice, yet Shunjiro noticed the book described his aid as useful without ever calling it trustworthy.

The other Great Kings of the era were not named.

Their absence made the record feel incomplete, but perhaps that was the point. The book focused on those who took part in the conquest and left the rest in shadow.

Shunjiro read through the first phase of the war.

Kakai gathered the forces willing to march. Sultan brought Illumina and the weight of his kingdom’s support. Smaller Light Continent kingdoms joined them after years of humiliation under Morrigan’s influence. Some came because they believed in Kakai. Others came because Sultan’s support made them think the war might actually be won. A few came because they feared what would happen if they remained neutral and Morrigan survived.

The book did not pretend unity came easily.

There were disagreements. Commanders who hated each other. Kings who wanted victory but feared losing their own authority if Kakai became too beloved. Guilds that wanted payment before loyalty. Soldiers who had already watched friends die against Dawnless forces and no longer believed victory was possible.

But the campaign moved anyway.

The Dawnless Crown did not rely only on its fortress. Its armies spread outward in disciplined formations, breaking villages that supported Kakai and cutting roads behind the alliance. Morrigan’s generals used fear as effectively as weapons. They did not need to destroy every army they faced. Sometimes they only needed to make one unit flee, one town betray its neighbors, one king reconsider whether freedom was worth the cost of losing everything.

Shunjiro felt his hands tighten around the book.

The writing was not simple. It did not make the conquest sound easy. It did not make every person on Kakai’s side noble or every soldier under Morrigan a monster. Many people inside the Dawnless Crown had been trapped by the empire as much as anyone outside it. Some soldiers fought because their families lived under Morrigan’s control. Some civilians believed the alliance would slaughter them if the fortress fell, because fear had been the only truth given to them for years.

That was why the final campaign had to be precise.

Kakai could not simply destroy everything in his path.

Sultan understood this. Illumina understood it. The alliance needed to break Morrigan without becoming another force that crushed innocent people beneath victory.

The next section of the book described the march toward the fortress itself.

The Dawnless Crown stood like the center of a wound. Its armies had been pushed back, its outer territories weakened, and its commanders forced to retreat behind layers of defense. By then, Kakai had become more than a warrior to the people following him. Soldiers began speaking of him as the dawn that would return to the Light Continent, though the book made clear that Kakai himself never encouraged that worshipful language.

He remained quiet.

He listened more than he spoke.

When people knelt before him, he told them to stand.

That detail made Shunjiro pause.

He liked that.

The book described Sultan as the one who held the alliance together when fear threatened to divide it. Kakai inspired people, but Sultan understood how to make frightened rulers move in the same direction. He argued with kings, redirected armies, and sent Illumina into places where a single successful mission changed the shape of the campaign.

Shunjiro’s eyes returned to the name every time it appeared.

Illumina reached gates before armies could.

Illumina entered cities before banners arrived.

Illumina found the paths that larger forces could not see.

The more he read, the harder it became to treat the name as random.

Eventually, the campaign reached the Dawnless Crown fortress.

The book described the final siege as lasting longer than most songs later claimed. There were no clean heroic charges that ended everything in a day. The fortress was too well defended, its soldiers too disciplined, and Morrigan too patient. He did not panic when surrounded. He drew the alliance closer, then used the fortress itself as a weapon, turning hidden passages, elevated walls, and internal defenses against anyone who tried to breach it.

The author wrote that Morrigan appeared on the walls only once before the final battle.

He simply looked down at the armies gathered beneath his fortress and smiled as if they had all come to die in the place he had chosen for them.

Shunjiro felt a chill move through him.

The book never fully explained Morrigan’s phantom ability, but the few descriptions were enough to make him unsettling. He could not be cornered easily. Attacks failed to touch him when they should have landed. More than one commander who reached him found that Morrigan’s body flickered away like smoke, only for his blade to appear from an impossible angle moments later.

Even Kakai could not simply walk in and defeat him.

The path had to be opened.

That was where Illumina became central to the record.

The five elves under Sultan’s command entered the fortress during the chaos of a failed assault. The book did not explain every detail of how they got inside, only that they passed through defenses thought impossible and reached the inner structure where Morrigan commanded his forces. They did not conquer the fortress alone. They did something more important.

They made it possible for Kakai and Sultan to reach the core.

Shunjiro leaned closer, reading faster now.

The core of the Dawnless Crown was described as the heart of the fortress, the place Morrigan had remade after taking power. From there, he controlled the inner defense, protected his commanders, and held the fortress together through fear. If he remained there, the siege could continue until the alliance collapsed from exhaustion, mistrust, and loss.

Sultan entered first.

The book did not name the technique he used. It only said that when Sultan faced Morrigan, the air itself seemed to obey a law Morrigan could not escape. For the first time in the campaign, the Phantom King failed to move. His body did not vanish. His steps did not slip between moments. His blade did not arrive from nowhere.

Sultan stripped him of motion.

Only for a moment.

But a moment was enough.

Kakai arrived at the core of the fortress while Morrigan was held in place.

The book described the final strike in language so grand that Shunjiro understood why Malachi had warned him some histories were polished. Yet even if half of it had been shaped by legend, the event underneath was still extraordinary.

Kakai raised his hand toward the sky, and the sun answered.

Not solar energy that resembled sunlight.

Not a technique named after the sun.

The book claimed the actual sun bent to his will.

Light descended upon the Dawnless Crown. It did not fall like fire. It did not spread like an explosion. It entered the fortress as though the structure itself had been judged and found unworthy of remaining in the world. Stone dissolved into gold. Towers unraveled into streams of light. Walls that had stood through generations broke apart without crushing the people beneath them. The fortress fed upward into the sun, erased piece by piece while the civilians, prisoners, and soldiers who could still be spared remained untouched.

Shunjiro stopped breathing for a second.

He erased the fortress without killing the people inside.

He read the line again, slower this time.

That was the moment Kakai Soleil became the Sun God.

Not because he destroyed.

Because he destroyed only what needed to be destroyed.

Morrigan survived.

Shunjiro had expected the book to say Kakai killed him, but it did not. Morrigan was defeated, stripped of his empire, and imprisoned by Kakai’s order. Many demanded execution. Too many had suffered under him. Too many had died because of him. But Kakai refused to end the war with a public killing that would turn justice into spectacle.

Those who remained loyal to Morrigan after the fall were hunted and arrested in the years that followed. The empire did not vanish in a single day. Fear had roots. Some soldiers and commanders fled. Some tried to rebuild Dawnless influence in secret. But the fortress itself was gone, and with it the symbol that had held the Light Continent beneath its shadow.

The land where it had stood became the beginning of Radiance.

Shunjiro stared at the page.

Radiance had not been built on empty ground.

It had been built where a fortress of despair once stood, after Kakai erased it with sunlight and left the people alive.

That realization filled him with a strange kind of pride.

He thought of Radiance Castle. The white stone. The gold. The sunlight that always seemed to make the capital feel brighter than anywhere else. He had never wondered why Radiance looked the way it did. He had never thought about what came before it.

Now he knew.

The kingdom had been founded as an answer to the Dawnless Crown.

Not just a place of light, but a declaration that darkness had once stood there and lost.

After the conquest, the remaining rulers of the Light Continent faced a problem none of them could ignore. Kakai had not been a king when the campaign began, but he had done what no king had been able to do. He had broken Morrigan, spared the innocent, and removed the fortress without turning victory into massacre. The people looked to him. The soldiers trusted him. The smaller kingdoms that had suffered under the Dawnless Crown accepted that no ordinary ruler could hold the center of the continent after such a war.

Sultan supported Kakai publicly.

That seemed to decide what hesitation remained.

The book stated that Sultan could have pushed for influence over the newly freed lands. He was already a Great King. He was stronger than most rulers alive. He had brought Illumina into the heart of the fortress and helped make victory possible. But Sultan refused any claim over Radiance. He had his own kingdom, his own people, and a different role to play.

He believed Kakai was the one meant to carry the burden.

So Kakai accepted the crown.

Not because he wanted power, according to the book, but because he believed refusing it would leave the Light Continent vulnerable to becoming divided again. He became the first King of Radiance, the first of what would eventually become twenty-eight kings, and after Morrigan’s fall, the world recognized Kakai as the eighth Great King.

Shunjiro sat back slowly.

The number mattered now.

Before Kakai, there had been only seven active Great Kings after the previous eighth had been killed during Morrigan’s rise. Morrigan had claimed power through conquest and fear, but Kakai replaced that shadow with something different. With Sultan’s vision of the Great Kings as protectors rather than isolated rulers, Kakai’s ascension completed the circle again.

Eight rulers.

Eight seats.

An idea meant to make the world better.

Shunjiro looked across the table.

Malachi was still reading his own book, though Shunjiro had the feeling the older man knew exactly when he had stopped.

“You knew all of this?” Shunjiro asked.

Malachi did not look up immediately. He finished the line he was reading, then closed his book partway around one finger to hold his place.

“Most of it.”

“You knew the Great Kings were created because of Sultan?”

“Yes.”

“I thought they were just… kings.”

“They are,” Malachi said. “But titles are rarely born without a reason.”

Shunjiro looked back down at the open book.

“The original idea was good.”

“It was.”

“Did it work?”

Malachi’s expression became difficult to read.

“Sometimes.”

He looked again at the section about Kakai’s coronation. The book described the first days of Radiance as a time of rebuilding rather than celebration. People returned to lands they had fled. Roads reopened. Guilds that had been destroyed or scattered were allowed to form again. Soldiers who had served the Dawnless Crown were judged by what they had done, not only by the uniform they had worn. The innocent were protected. The loyalists who still worshiped Morrigan’s strength were hunted across the following years.

Kakai’s reign began with the difficult work that came after victory.

That part made Shunjiro admire him more.

Winning a battle was one thing. Building something better afterward was harder.

His hand moved lightly over the page.

What kind of leader am I supposed to become?

He had named his guild Illumina because he liked the word. He had wanted something that felt bright, something that represented a team moving forward together. He had not known the name once belonged to five elves who helped open the path for kings in a war that changed the Light Continent.

Maybe it was still coincidence.

Maybe it had to be.

But Shunjiro could not stop thinking about the unreadable book.

Kings of Old.

He had now read about Kakai, Sultan, Inari, Yuudai, and Morrigan. Great Kings from an era more than a thousand years gone. The book in his dorm had used words that pointed toward the same kind of history, but also toward something this book did not touch.

Humanity at war with an ancient race.

That war had not happened here. The Conquest of the Dawnless Crown was earlier. It was about the founding of Radiance, not whatever ancient conflict the mysterious Illumina book had hinted at.

Which meant the unreadable book had not been showing him this event alone.

It was pointing farther ahead.

His pulse quickened.

When I get back to Radiance, I need to check it.

He imagined the book sitting in his guild dorm, silent and unreadable to everyone else. Maybe nothing had changed. Maybe he would open it and still see only scribbles. But if the words had appeared once, more could appear. And if the name Illumina connected to Sultan, the Great Kings, and some future war, then Shunjiro needed to know why that book had found its way to him.

He glanced at Malachi.

For a moment, he considered telling him.

The words nearly came out.

There was more in that book.

He stopped himself.

Not because he thought Malachi would hurt him. He no longer believed that. But some part of him knew the mystery belonged to something larger than he understood, and speaking about it too early might change the way Malachi looked at him.

Shunjiro already had enough reasons to seem strange.

His spiritual energy could vanish completely.

Tsubasa had taken interest in him.

He was the younger brother of Takeshi Tenzai, one of the eight EX ranks.

Now the name of his guild connected to a legendary force from the era of the Great Kings.

Maybe there is something more to me.

The thought made him uncomfortable.

He had never thought of himself that way. Takeshi was the one who stood above everyone. Takeshi was the impossible one. Shunjiro had always known his brother was strong, but EX rank had never felt like a real possibility until recently. It still seemed random in a way Shunjiro could not explain, as if his brother had reached a place no one in their family history had prepared him to understand.

And now Shunjiro’s own energy was something no one in history should have been able to do.

No. Do not turn everything into fate just because you found a name in a book.

He looked down at the page again.

It could still be coincidence.

But the thought no longer sounded convincing.

Malachi finally closed his own book and set it on the table.

“You have that look again,” he said.

Shunjiro blinked.

“What look?”

“The one people have when they read history and realize it is no longer staying politely in the past.”

Shunjiro looked back at the book.

“I did not know Radiance began like this.”

“Most people know the polished version.”

“The Sun God who founded the kingdom.”

“Yes.”

“This version feels bigger.”

“It usually does when the details are returned.”

Shunjiro traced the edge of the page with one finger.

“Kakai was not king before this.”

“No.”

“He accepted it because people needed someone.”

“That is what the record says.”

Shunjiro glanced up.

“You do not believe it?”

“I believe Kakai was a good man,” Malachi replied. “I also believe good men are often pushed into roles they did not seek because everyone else needs them to stand somewhere visible.”

The words settled heavily with Shunjiro.

He thought of Kakai accepting Radiance’s crown.

He thought of Sultan refusing to take what he could have claimed.

He thought of Illumina opening a path no army could open.

Then he thought of his own guild, small and young and nothing like the legendary force in the book.

At least not yet.

“Illumina was only five people,” Shunjiro said.

Malachi nodded.

“Five people can matter.”

Shunjiro looked at him.

“They helped change the Light Continent.”

“They helped create the chance for someone else to change it,” Malachi said. “That is sometimes the more important role.”

Shunjiro looked back at the name on the page.

Illumina.

The word felt heavier now.

He did not regret choosing it. If anything, he felt more certain that the name belonged to him and his friends somehow, even if he could not explain why. But now it carried history with it. A challenge. A question.

What would his Illumina become?

Would they be strong enough to protect anyone from what was coming?

Would he?

Shunjiro closed the book carefully, though he kept one hand resting on the cover.

“I want to keep reading tomorrow.”

“I assumed you would.”

“There is more I need to understand.”

“There always is.”

Outside the library windows, the Shadow Realm remained unchanged. The black sky pressed over the dead forest, and the world beyond Malachi’s estate was still filled with threats Shunjiro could not face yet. Tsubasa was somewhere out there. The Eclipsed Abyss was moving toward a purpose no one had explained. Radiance was far away, and with it the mysterious Illumina book that had suddenly become more important than ever.

But Shunjiro did not feel lost the way he had when he first woke beneath the black sun.

He had learned something about his power.

He had been given a weapon.

And now he had opened a book that made the world feel larger, older, and far more connected than he had ever imagined.

He looked down at the title one more time.

The Conquest of the Dawnless Crown.

Then his thoughts returned to the other book.

The unreadable one waiting in Radiance.

When I get back, I am opening it again.

Shunjiro held that thought quietly as Malachi reached for the lamp, and the two of them prepared to leave the library behind for the night.