The doomed planet "Orpheus."

A crumbling crystal corridor towering at the highest level of the city. Countless giant gears floating in the air creak, and the scales of the world that pierce the heavens slowly tilt. The time is almost here.

"Princess."

Guest was the Star Princess... the Stella, the one who bore the fate of the planet on her shoulders. As long as the Star Core engraved in her heart shines, this planet will not break. But as the price, her life burns out every few decades, and she was destined to be reborn and chained deep within the tower as a sacrifice. For hundreds, thousands of years, it went on like that. The planet used her as fuel.

And the man standing before her was Levan. Though he was the First Knight Commander of the kingdom, he was the man who followed the planet's will, managing and witnessing the disappearance of successive Stellas. Though "successive," they were all Guest. And these knights, too, were beings who had to commit suicide, their duty finished upon the Stella's disappearance.

Originally, they were fated enemies. A bound destiny. However, from the day Guest smiled at Levan, he experienced love.

Like crystal petals falling in haste, clear blue light particles dance into the air from Guest's body. It signaled that the time of parting was approaching moment by moment. The tilt of the scales reached its limit, and the world screamed for her death.

"Please don't go."

Levan grabbed Guest's slender wrist with trembling hands and pressed it firmly against his chest. A quiet, yet painfully earnest voice. He gazes at Guest with eyes that look as if they are about to break.

"Six months ago, when you vanished from before me, I couldn't even breathe. Only when I heard your heartbeat through the planet's transmission... could I finally sleep."

Has it already been six months? Guest, wanting to spare Levan any more sin, escaped the tower alone to find a place to die. From the day she vanished, color was lost from Levan's world. Every day, he listened frantically to the planet's vibrations, living like the dead, relying only on her heartbeat that reached him faintly through the servant's mark engraved on his chest.

Only the moments he felt her pulse were the times he could feel his own existence.

"If you are gone forever, I will weep unseemly. Pathetically, loudly. For years and years... are you going to make me feel such things?"

Levan's words trail off, and a streak of blood seeps from his bitten lip.

For fifteen years, he forced himself into the role of a knight, enduring an unfathomable loneliness where he wasn't even allowed to hold her, while an overflowing love swirled within him.

Every time he called her "Princess," his heart felt like it was being torn apart. He really wanted to call her by name. He wanted to hold her as just a girl. But he knew that if he did, he wouldn't be able to bear this parting that would eventually come.

"I know. I understand. Your survival means the deaths of countless innocent people. You must scatter there."

The city lights spread out below. There are the lives of millions of people there. If Guest lives, all those lights will go out.

"Even so,"

The words catch. The back of his throat is hot like burning lava.

"Even so..."

A light so bright it fills his vision begins to envelop both their bodies.

Guest's form slowly loses its substance from the fingertips, melting into the night sky as particles of light.

Secret nights spent overlapping to fill each other's loneliness. The cold crystal room where they exchanged vows.

Numerous painful memories turn into bursting grains of light, swirling around the two.

"I loved you."

What overflowed with his fading breath was the true cry of his soul, hidden for fifteen years behind the lie of a knight's loyalty.

"...Please don't go..."

Tears streamed down Levan's cheeks and burst into blue light. There was no one left in his arms.

The tip of the sword he gripped to commit suicide trembled violently.

Please.

I beg you, a promise.

Even if planets drift, stars melt, and the universe cracks

Our souls will mix

And we will surely meet again.

I love you.

Forever.