History books say that the "mad poet" Pullman, who lived hundreds of years ago, was someone who touched forbidden truths but was fortunate enough to survive. Legends also record that this eccentric poet often fell into dreams, claiming to have traversed various times and spaces in his dreams, visiting all sorts of bizarre realms.

This mad poet left behind countless chapters that amazed later generations. He was a gifted writer, and even in the early stages of his career, his elegant and profound poems had conquered even the most critical commentators in the city-states. However, towards the end of his short life, the poems he left behind gradually began to change—the words increasingly depicted strange and bizarre things, filled with unsettling metaphors and almost prophetic ravings of a madman. He incessantly wanted to tell the world about things that did not exist in the real world, even blasphemous things, and thus became a pitiful and feared madman.

Those who once admired him left him, and those who once praised him gradually regarded him as a dangerous element. The church authorities tried to contact him but could not find any substantial information with polluting or blasphemous power in his writings.

The final fate of this talented but deranged poet is another mystery in the eyes of the world—people say he was imprisoned by the church and quietly died in an asylum on a remote island. Others firmly believe that he lived on, even until a winter in 1842. These people claim they saw the poet that year: he stood on the famous sea cliff of Frost, looking exactly like the portraits in the books, with paper and pen in hand, recording poems.

A "caretaker" who claimed to have looked after Pullman in the last few years of his life and witnessed the final fate of this pitiful man wrote in his autobiography:

Pullman eventually became lost in his bizarre dreams—the poet roamed in every dream of his, drawing experiences from them to transform into his gorgeous and strange poems. He eventually succumbed to a distant dream he was unwilling to wake from. One sunny morning, the poet disappeared from his bed, leaving only a small poem on the bedside table.

Vanna walked forward to the place where the madman had last disappeared, bending down to pick up the crumpled roll of paper and pencil stub before they were blown away by the wind.

She frowned, looking somewhat perplexed, and then she opened the paper, staring blankly at the sentences recorded on it—

"...I saw it, the sunlight has retreated, in the night, all things fall into silence... The ship comes from the sky, the stars like a curtain, granting eternal slumber to the world... In silence, in stillness, in sleep, sleep, the dead embrace the dying world..."

The wind and sand swirled, the paper rustled, and Vanna suddenly heard a voice beside her, the voice of the madman who had just disappeared—but only the voice was heard, and his figure could not be seen anywhere around: "Look, look, do you see it? The scene I saw... is so beautiful, the curtain rises from the end of the sea, reflected in the whole world..."

Vanna looked in the direction of the voice, where there was only swirling dust, chaotically rotating in place, driven by the wind. She frowned tightly, her voice slightly hoarse: "Are you trapped here too?"

The voice ignored her question and muttered to itself, saying some unintelligible ramblings. After a while, his voice became clear again—

"I've been chased, they chase me, like bloodhounds smelling blood... I fall into all sorts of places, and in every dream, there's always a crack for me to hide in. Hey, I'm finally tired, it doesn't matter if they catch up... So I was devoured by the bloodhound called truth, so I saw distant things, so I came here..."

Vanna frowned as she listened to the other party's seemingly insane soliloquy, realizing that communicating with him seemed to be a difficult task, but she couldn't help but ask again: "Do you know how to get out of here?"

"No, no, no, you can't leave, my friend..." the voice said immediately, but then came incomprehensible gibberish, "...I'm in the basement, the people in robes say this is a safe place, the iron cage can lock up my spirit, to prevent them from running out of my body in dreams, the brazier can scare away the shadows that gather when they smell me, so I won't be eaten clean by something while I'm sleeping..."

A series of vague noises were mixed in with the wind and sand, the voice was blurred for a few seconds, and then suddenly became clear again: "...Hey, you know, you know, many years later... by then I'm already dead, many years later, a girl was also locked in a similar cage, but by then the technology was much more mature, and she walked out of the basement alive...

"Ah, the poor girl, I saw her crowned, and I saw her head being cut off by those who crowned her... I'm hesitating whether to write this into my poem... no, no, I shouldn't, the people in robes told me not to write the things I see in my dreams into poems anymore, they said that doing so would establish more and more connections between me and things outside of the real dimension, which is not good... There aren't many things I can write about, I have to save these precious sentences for more important things...

"Listen! Someone is knocking on the bars, and there's the sound of keys clashing... jingle, jingle, jingle... The keepers are here, they have to make sure I'm still in the cage..."

At this moment, the wind and sand swirled up, and Vanna heard the familiar "jingle, jingle, jingle" sound again.

And the mad voice was still muttering to itself: "But am I in there? They will see me lying quietly on the bed, but I'm not there, not in that skin, I'm here, in this place full of ashes... What are you doing here?

"You should leave, you don't belong here, your path is still ahead... Give me my poem, and my pencil, those are mine, they shouldn't be held in someone else's hands... They will drag you deeper..."

Vanna subconsciously loosened her grip on the paper and pencil stub, but saw them turn into yellow sand in the wind in the blink of an eye, swirling and disappearing into the air.

"Which way should I go?" she asked the voice blankly, "I can't remember where I came from, and I don't know where to go... How can I leave this city?"

"Where? Nowhere," the voice said, as if it was rapidly moving away, becoming more and more blurred and faint, "This place is infinite... He locked himself in a closed loop of a dream, I just saw it, outside the city is a desert, and outside the desert is the city, you can't get out by going outside, the further out you go, the more you sink... But I should go now, I should go now, haha, waking up again..."

The voice finally disappeared completely, disappearing into the increasingly chaotic wind and sand.

Vanna stood there blankly. In the vast night, countless lights illuminated this city abandoned and destroyed by oblivion. Her figure seemed to gradually merge with the lights. In the light, she saw the shadows of carriages and horses vaguely appearing on the broken roads, and bright shop windows appearing on the collapsed buildings. Music came from afar, gradually covering the sound of the howling wind—and the tingling from the dense wounds on her arm was turning into a gentle caress.

She slowly closed her eyes, as if about to fall asleep in this prosperous and warm world.

But the next second, her eyes suddenly opened.

Imperceptibly, something seemed to snap. Her will awakened from this slow but irresistible fall. The phantoms that appeared in the lights faded away, and then she felt the biting cold wind of the night desert blowing across her cheeks, and countless dense wounds on her arm sent out sharp stabs of pain.

But she smiled—pain is good, pain is real.

She doesn't belong here. Although she can't remember her name, and she can't remember where she came from, she knows that she must remember one thing: she doesn't belong here.

Only in this way can she avoid being "dissolved" here.

And in this moment of clarity, Vanna also realized another thing: she must find her "anchor point."

She must figure out who she is and where she came from as soon as possible.

She seemed to have gradually recalled some things and understood the essence of this boundless desert. She realized that she seemed to be trapped in a strange world dominated by "forgetting," and the only way to leave here was to fight against "forgetting."

She didn't blindly walk "out of the city" anymore. After knowing the "infinity" of this city, she realized that simply breaking out outward couldn't really leave here. There should be other ways to leave here.

She stopped at the illusory crossroads of lights, letting the wind and sand blow and erode her body. She allowed her mind to gradually calm down, and tried to find a way out through thinking and perception.

She remembered the information she saw and heard in the wind and sand—the words, conversations, and relics that seemed to correspond to various "times" and "events." Those things seemed to be various "anchor points" in this desert of oblivion.

She should also have her own anchor point, something that could prove that she once existed in a certain place, once existed in the memories of some people, existed in... the world.

She half-closed her eyes, and after an unknown amount of time, a slight throbbing finally emerged in her heart.

In this boundless desert, she finally found a ripple related to herself—

Vanna suddenly opened her eyes and saw a torn piece of paper flying past her eyes.

She grabbed it suddenly and saw the words on the paper clearly:

"...The border exploration fleet is executing the 'Over the Border' operation again. The Lost Home and the Brilliant Star have crossed the six nautical mile boundary... heading to the end of the world to find..."

At the same time, she heard familiar voices talking in her ear again, the voices intermittent, like a vague moment in history—

"...Any special news?"

"...A briefing from the Deep Sea Church..."

"They will be safe, don't worry so much, Heidi..."

"Because of that powerful captain?"

"Because of your father..."

"Father, and Vanna, they are doing something great..."

Vanna's eyes widened suddenly, as if her heart had relearned to beat. In a rebirth-like awakening, she recalled her name, and—

"Lost Home... Captain?"

She looked at the piece of paper in her hand, muttering to herself.

Then, a wisp of ghostly green flame appeared at the edge of her vision, and a familiar and majestic voice appeared almost immediately behind her:

"I am."
Chapter 1 The Beginning