Golden Sun series/Detailed plot summary

This is a detailed summary of the events in Golden Sun, Golden Sun: The Lost Age, and Golden Sun: Dark Dawn as they occur from the player's point of view.

A Point of Warning: This page contains a detailed writeup of the Golden Sun story with no holds barred on the spoilers and almost a blow-by-blow account of what happens in the games. Read this page at your own risk.

If you are looking for a spoiler-free walkthrough, please consult one of these three pages instead.

Background
The world of Weyard is a flat, disk-like plane where there is a clearly defined edge dropping into the abyss below, much like the classic Flat Earth idea of Earth. The oceans of the world endlessly flow over the edge of the world's entire perimeter, and all points along the perimeter where the water of the world falls into the abyss below is collectively known as Gaia Falls. To the denizens of modern-day Weyard that live near Gaia Falls, it is an as-of-yet-unsolved mystery how it is that the world's waters never "run out".

All matter on Weyard, living or inanimate and including humanity itself, is comprised of any combination of the four elemental building blocks of reality, which are modeled off the four Greek Classical Elements: Venus, the element of earth, ground, and plantlife; Mars, the element of fire and heat; Jupiter, the element of air and electricity; and Mercury, the element of water and the cold. An individual that has the ability to manipulate at least one of these elements from their surrounding environment using a mental, spiritual power is classifiable as an Adept of that element, and the act of elemental manipulation, which resembles magical sorcery, is known as using Psynergy of that element. While it seems all lifeforms on Weyard are innately aligned with a given element and all sapient and/or sentient lifeforms among them have the potential to manipulate that element with Psynergy, the ability to do so is typically not developed within most individuals; an individual is only truly able to employ Psynergy at will once special circumstances have been met, the most typical of which is either prolonged exposure or sudden contact with a rare, rocky substance called Psynergy Stone, the existence of which is generally unknown by the world at large by the start of Golden Sun.

Ages before the start of Golden Sun, Weyard was a much different place; taking residence upon the lands of the world were thriving civilizations and clans based on each of the four elements. This was made possible by a great power named Alchemy, which is apparently similar to Psynergy, but is much more powerful in that all four of the building blocks of reality are manipulated simultaneously as one rather than just a single element at a time. Alchemy could allow for fantastic effects, such as the transmutation of lead into solid gold, and the ability to thwart death itself.

Alchemy, being what fueled the rise of civilization in this era, would similarly fuel the rise of untold strife, however. Mankind's dreams of endless riches, and then of eternal life, eventually turned to dreams of dominion over all that lived, and aspirations of conquest. The world became the stage for a great conflict, as the nations abused the power of Alchemy to raise armies and wage war against each other. The world was nearly torn apart, but was ultimately saved from its own denizens by the bravery of a few wise men: They sealed away the power of Alchemy out of the reach of the nations of the world of Weyard, and the wars subsided. The secrets to Alchemy were hidden within a dungeon-like shrine named Sol Sanctum, constructed within Mt. Aleph at the western part of the modern-day north-central continent of Angara, where they would remain outside of public knowledge and reach for the ages to come. By the time of Golden Sun, a village named Vale had been founded at the foot of Mt. Aleph. The residents of the village were all Adepts to varying degrees, and they recognized it was due to having lived life in the proximity of a large Psynergy Stone formation near the foot of the mountain, a structure they had adopted as a village monument. Holding their power to be a blessing and gift by gods and by Mt. Aleph, the Valeans had made it their tradition to stand guard over the entrance to Sol Sanctum and to refrain from entering it freely so as to preserve the shrine's sanctity (though they remained unaware of the true secrets locked deep within the shrine). Believing that Psynergy was a craft unique to Vale, the villagers also made it a law never to reveal Psynergy to any visitors from the outside world.

The disturbing of Sol Sanctum
Three years before the present day in Golden Sun, a terrible thunderstorm spontaneously appeared and struck Vale and Mt. Aleph. A massive boulder situated somewhere on Mt. Aleph was dislodged and began a destructive descent down upon the village, and though the adult Adepts of the village tried to slow its descent with their Psynergy so that the rest of the village could evacuate, tragedy was sowed, as several of the townspeople appeared to perish when they were hit by the boulder. Lost and confused, two of the surviving young Adepts of the village, the Venus Adept Isaac and the Mars Adept Garet, were soon happened upon by a menacing pair of strangers who were like humans but had vaguely reptilian features, and who indicated that the storm was caused by them triggering a trap when they had tried to infiltrate Sol Sanctum. The mystery man and woman promptly made the boys forget witnessing them by knocking the boys unconscious with their extremely powerful Mars Psynergy before fleeing Vale.

The families of the victims of the disaster had a very trying time over the years to come. Isaac and his mother Dora were devastated by the loss of his father Kyle, but their grief was eclipsed by that of his and Garet's friend, the Mars Adept Jenna, who had lost her entire immediate family; both her parents and her brother, the Venus Adept Felix, were with Kyle in the direct path of the boulder as it fell, and none of their bodies were ever found in the searches conducted by the villagers after the disaster. Even though all of Garet's family was safe, both Garet and Isaac believed that the disaster might have played out differently had they been stronger as Adepts, so they resolved to study hard to develop their abilities as Adepts, and Isaac, Garet, and Jenna developed strong bonds of friendship.

Three years to the present day, the three teen-aged Adepts had also become friends with an elderly and kindhearted scholar that had been living in Vale for years since he first arrived at the village, Kraden. Kraden had a great interest in the mysteries of Sol Sanctum, and he and the young Adepts planned to sneak into Sol Sanctum for what Kraden claimed merely to be for the sake of their education as Adepts. By coincidence, the very day Kraden and the Adepts had set themselves to do this was the day when a group of outsiders visited the village. On their way to Kraden's cottage, the young Adepts happened upon two of the visitors, who they did not recognize as the very pair of Mars Adepts that had attacked Isaac and Garet three years before. Named Saturos and Menardi, the Mars Adepts had a brief but tense interaction with the teenagers until they decided to let them go without incident.

Kraden was quite troubled, because Saturos and Menardi had approached him and attempted to glean whatever information he had of Sol Sanctum they could, and they had spoken as though they had seen the Sanctum with their own eyes. Isaac and his friends concluded they were thieves who came to rob the Sanctum, but rather than report them to the village elders, Kraden believed it better to carry on with their trip into Sol Sanctum and confirm whether the Mars Adepts were telling the truth about the sanctum before telling the elders. With this decided, Kraden and the three young Adepts sneaked into Sol Sanctum.

The crew employed their Psynergy to discover their way deeper into Sol Sanctum than anyone else in Vale previously knew possible, and soon ascertained that Saturos and Menardi were telling the truth and that they indeed intended to rob the Sanctum. But, because they were so close to whatever secret lay dormant in the Sanctum, Kraden opted to press further. After disarming and solving their way past a trap that apparently would have caused a cataclysm had it been set off, they made a most amazing discovery: the Elemental Star Chamber, the final room of Sol Sanctum, wherein lied four colored jewels that Kraden had previously thought to be mere legend, the Elemental Stars. Scholars like Kraden were educated on the legends of Alchemy, which held that these four jewels, each of which contained the purified essence of one of the four Elements, were essentially "keys" to an all-dominating vessel that apparently embodied Alchemy, the Stone of Sages. Perhaps letting his excitement overtake his better judgement, Kraden had Isaac and Garet collect and fetch the Stars for him to study.

Kraden's group was followed into the Sanctum. Saturos and Menardi promptly sneaked in and took both Jenna and Kraden hostage, and demanded Isaac hand them the Elemental Stars in exchange for Jenna and Kraden's safety; when Kraden asked what guarantee they had of that, Menardi obliged by showing them two additional companions they had picked up: a powerful Mercury Adept named Alex and, to everyone's complete astonishment, none other than Felix, revealed to have survived the disaster three years prior. Saturos and Menardi explained that the two of them were present in Vale three years ago, and had saved Felix from death after the boulder disaster had transpired. Felix had since accompanied them on their objective, effectively betraying his hometown. With the fact that Felix would never allow Saturos or Menardi to bring harm to his own sister being their guarantee, Isaac and Garet were effectively shocked into submission, and handed the Mars Adepts the three Elemental Stars they had collected. They went to fetch the final star, the Mars Star, for them.

When the final Star was removed off its pedestal, the formerly dormant volcano that was Mt. Aleph instantly began to erupt as though the Elemental Stars were originally set in place to keep the lava repressed. With Isaac, Garet, and the Mars Star in peril, Saturos' group realized they could not get the Mars Star, and were forced to leave matters up to fate; against Felix's wishes, they took Jenna and Kraden as captive members of their group as they fled the quaking chamber and volcano, the purpose of that being that if Isaac and Garet made it out alive, the boys would pursue Saturos' group and bring the Mars Star if they wanted Jenna back.

Isaac and Garet, meanwhile, came face-to-eye with the newly awakened guardian entity of the seal placed on Alchemy, the being spoken of in Valean legend as the Wise One. The all-powerful being explained that the Elemental Stars would be used to light the Elemental Beacons atop four towering structures situated across the world, the Elemental Lighthouses, the execution of which would bring the power of Alchemy back to the world - a power which the Wise One painted as dangerous to unleash because it would be abused by the people of Weyard. Isaac became convinced that the world would be put in danger if the four Lighthouses did not remain unlit, so after the Wise One imbued the Mars Star in his possession with a mysterious property, he teleported Isaac and Garet back outside to safety, and used his godlike power to prevent the flow of Mt. Aleph's lava from seeping down into the direction of Vale. Isaac and Garet returned to Vale and explained everything that transpired in Sol Sanctum to the worried populace. The decision fell to Isaac to decide both for himself and Garet whether to act on the Wise One's warning and set out on a quest to pursue and stop Saturos' group from accomplishing their objective to bring back the apparently destructive power of Alchemy. Isaac selflessly accepted, and he and everyone else decided for Isaac and Garet to spend one last night at home with their families. Thus did Isaac and Garet depart from their hometown the next day to embark on their uncertain and perilous journey.

Mercury Lighthouse
The eruption of Mt. Aleph instantly began to have a profound and radical effect on Weyard; a massive stockpile of Psynergy Stones that resided within Mt. Aleph was expelled by the eruption and showered all across the world. Various individuals across Weyard that would come into sudden contact with these stones would suddenly discover Psynergy powers of their own and unwittingly become Adepts, while lesser lifeforms such as wildlife, unable to mentally handle the spiritual influence the stones exuded, were driven mad and feral, making the countrysides of the world dangerous places. These and other horrors that the stones made manifest, such as Zombies and Ghosts, would become common obstacles that the young warriors Isaac and Garet would have to contend with over the course of their journey.

Furthermore, released into the world by the removal of the Elemental Stars were 72 elementals named Djinn, friendly creatures that proceeded to go in hiding after being freed. Whenever Isaac's group would find a Djinni, defeating it in battle if necessary, it would permanently accompany them on their journey, enhancing their Psynergy powers and combat abilities and granting them the ability to summon powerful elemental spirits to inflict great harm on their foes.

Isaac and Garet's hasty journey quickly brought them to the town of Vault in the heart of Angara. Here, they learned that Saturos' group proceeded northeast through Goma Range, but then Isaac and Garet met Ivan, a mild-mannered young man who was revealed to be a Jupiter Adept with the Psynergy power to read minds. He hailed from the town of Kalay down south and was the servant of Kalay's lord, the world-famous merchant Hammet, and he and Hammet traveled north to Vault, but in the confusion of Mt. Aleph's eruption, an important keepsake formerly in his possession, a rod named the Shaman's Rod, was stolen by thieves. Hammet left Ivan behind at Vault to search for the missing rod, and with Isaac and Garet's help, Ivan cornered and defeated the thieves hiding in Vault and retrieved it. Ivan was then distressed to learn, however, that Hammet was then captured by the empire of thieves based at the closed-off town of Lunpa to the north, and after failing to find a way into Lunpa, Ivan decided to join Isaac and Garet on their journey; he learned about everything that happened to Isaac at Mt. Aleph by reading his mind, and decided he wanted to help prevent terrible things from happening to the world. The three-Adept group proceeded through Goma Range by crossing through the subterranean path that was Goma Cave.

Beyond Goma Range, the next town Isaac's party arrived at was that of Bilibin, lorded over by Lord McCoy and Lady McCoy, and there they learned that Saturos' group headed northwest to the wintry northern portion of Angara, where the Mercury Lighthouse was located. As pressing as the need to follow this lead was, another worrisome issue reared its head: Bilibin was in a state of panic over a curse that McCoy's own lumberjacks had set off, where bringing their axes to a sapient tree spirit named Tret within Kolima Forest to the northeast enraged Tret and prompted him to turn all of the people of Bilibin's sister town Kolima into inanimate trees, as well as some of the people of Bilibin. The original reason for cutting Kolima Forest was for lumber to supply the construction of the haughty Lady McCoy's personal, separate estate. Lord McCoy had sent his own warriors to try to investigate how to undo this curse, but to no avail, so Isaac's group decided to take matters into their own hands and traveled to Kolima. Upon arriving at the motionless town, the Adepts were instantly mentally attacked by Tret from afar, but when Tret attempted to lay his curse on them, the Psynergy within them instinctively manifested to shield their bodies from the glamour, as though there were certain types of Psynergy within Adepts that only manifested when needed.

Immune to the curse thanks to their Adeptness to Psynergy, Isaac's party proceeded into Kolima Forest, and climbed into Tret's wooden interior. There, they battled and successfully downed the enraged aspect of Tret's spirit, allowing Tret's kindlier side to manifest, but Tret was now too weak to undo the effects of his own curse, and was set to gradually wither and die. Fellow tree spirit Laurel advised the Adepts that, were the healing waters of Mercury Lighthouse still around, they would be able to revive Tret and also save all the cursed townspeople. Isaac's group resumed their journey to Mercury Lighthouse with all haste, passing through Bilibin Cave to do so.

Now in the winter-locked northern region of Angara, Isaac's party passed through the village of Imil near Mercury Lighthouse, and briefly crossed paths with the young, kindhearted Mercury Adept who used her healing powers to treat the townspeople ailing from the cold and flu season, Mia. The Mercury Lighthouse suddenly glowed briefly to indicate that an intruder had gained entry into it, to Mia's great concern, since only she and her cousin Alex, the last two known remaining members of the ancient Mercury Clan, had the ability to grant access into the structure, and as such were the bloodline recipients of the responsibility to ensure that the Lighthouse never be lit. Alex, originally the apprentice to Mia's presumably deceased father, had been missing from Imil for some time. Isaac's group accompanied Mia into and up through Mercury Lighthouse, and Mia came to trust Isaac's group as companions.

When Isaac and Mia's party of four Adepts reached the aerie, they were all disheartened to find that the Mercury Beacon was lit atop Mercury Lighthouse because the Mercury Star had been cast into the well at the aerie, a process that could not be reversed by any known means - meaning that Saturos' group had accomplished one of its four objectives. Saturos' group was still there; after ordering Menardi and Felix to take Jenna and Kraden and flee to the next Lighthouse, Saturos pridefully challenged the four young Adepts to battle him four-on-one, certain that they would all die by his hand. Saturos was an extremely powerful and deadly warrior as a Mars Adept who could very well have slain the four Adepts under normal circumstances, but he was shocked to discover that due to his proximity to the now-lit Mercury Beacon, the purified essence of Mercury now exuding a potent Mercury-aligned influence across the world, his own Mars-aligned powers were being weakened, forcing him to fight with an enormous handicap in his opponents' favor. Still confident in his abilities, he engaged Isaac's party, but after a fierce and drawn-out battle, the four Adepts miraculously bested Saturos and left him lying defeated on the ground.

Alex chose then to reveal himself to the Adepts, and Mia was horrified to learn that Alex had broken their shared bloodline oath. Alex, stalling for time so that Saturos would recover, simply chose to explain that power such as what has been released atop Mercury Lighthouse, which he obviously admired, should not remain locked away, and that this was the reason he had allied with Saturos. He complimented Isaac's party for having become such great fighters within the short amount of time that had elapsed since Mt. Aleph, and confirmed that they still had the Mars Star in their possession. After Saturos recovered and proclaimed that he had lost to the Lighthouse rather than to the Adepts themselves, Alex fled Mercury Lighthouse with Saturos using a Warping Psynergy, representative of an extremely high degree of Psynergy proficiency which even Mia was shocked to see Alex having apparently attained.

Mia was despondent over these events, but quickly resolved to join Isaac's group and beat Saturos and Alex at the next Lighthouse. Mia was no longer bound to a responsibility as a caretaker of Imil's populace, for now that Mercury Lighthouse was activated, the fountain at its base now flowed with enchanted healing water that would ensure optimum health and safety from disease for all of the townspeople - the Hermes' Water. After bottling some of the fountain water, and after Mia bid goodbye to her two young apprentices Justin and Megan, Isaac's group resumed their pursuit of Saturos across Angara, and traveled back southeast to Bilibin, and from there, east.

The bottled healing water they carried from Mercury Lighthouse was exactly what Isaac's four-Adept party needed to save Tret, so they stopped back at Kolima Forest and poured it into Tret's roots. Life flowed within Tret once again, and in gratitude to the Adepts, he lifted his curse from all the people of Kolima and Bilibin. Isaac thus did a great service to Bilibin and Kolima, a deed which Lord McCoy would recognize and reward. After receiving more guidance from Tret and Laurel, Isaac's party resumed their pursuit of Saturos across Angara.

To Gondowan
Isaac, Garet, Ivan, and Mia continued to pursue Saturos, Menardi, Felix, and Alex, and their two captives Jenna and Kraden, as both groups traveled clockwise through the entire continent. They first briefly met and received sage advice from the monk Master Nyunpa at the pilgrimage site Fuchin Temple, who also had the Psynergy-based ability to read minds. They then traveled through what was originally Mogall Prairie but was now a dangerous forest, one that was made to grow out of the prairie literally overnight by the presence of the fallen Psynergy Stones.

Isaac's next stop was at the oriental village of Xian, where he briefly met Feizhi, a young woman who had gained the Psynergy power of foresight from having been hit on the head by a Psynergy stone that had fallen from the sky. However, the path west through Alpine Crossing, known as part of the merchant caravan route Silk Road, was blocked off by a landslide set off by Saturos to slow Isaac's pursuit, so Isaac was forced to detour to another village named Altin, whose mines were said to provide an alternate route west. Psynergy Stones had aggrieved this town as well, for a series of guardian statues originating from deep within the mines were brought to life and began spouting enough water to flood the town and the mines. It was up to Isaac's group to individually slay each one and allow the floodwaters to recede, saving the town and clearing their way through to the west.

The group came across one more temple, Lama Temple, headed by an oracle named Master Hama, who was in truth an experienced Jupiter Adept like Ivan. She expected their arrival because she had the power of foresight and the ability to see events from afar with her mind. Speaking as though somehow she knew Ivan from before, Hama was content to teach Ivan the Jupiter-aligned Psynergy power of perception of hidden truths within environments. Though Ivan was unsure why Hama would care so warmly for him, Isaac's group decided to put that question on hold as they resumed their journey. After they used Ivan's new Revealing Psynergy to help Feizhi and to allow for the rockslide at Alpine Crossing to be cleared away, they proceeded west through the region of Silk Road known as Lamakan Desert. The desert's scorching heat had been driven up to unbearably high levels by the presence of Psynergy Stones that had fallen into the desert, so they were only able to successfully pass through because the Psynergy taught by Hama allowed them to find oases otherwise veiled by heat mirages.

Isaac's party eventually made it to Kalay, Ivan's hometown, and they sought counsel with Hammet's wife ruling in his absence, Lady Layana. Layana, of course, was deeply concerned over Hammet's incarceration in Lunpa and the likelihood tha the current leader of the empire of thieves at Lunpa, Dodonpa, planned on using Hammet to extort money from Kalay, but she urged Ivan and Isaac to continue on their own journey nonetheless. Layana chose then to reveal to Ivan that his true heritage lied not in Kalay, but in a society at a land at the southwest part of the world, where Hammet had been made to swear an oath to a Jupiter Adept to take in a baby Ivan as an adoptive son. A prophecy had been handed down by the Adepts at this society that Ivan would go on a journey three years after the thunderstorm that hit Mt. Aleph, and that it was imperative for an undisclosed reason that the Shaman's Rod that was also handed down to Hammet be used to find a particular object. Hammet had traveled up north to Vault in pursuit of a lead concerning the Rod and the object it was supposed to lead to, which was why Ivan was in Vault at the time Isaac's party passed through there.

Since Isaac's party had completed one full loop across Angara, Isaac and Garet decided to stop back in Vale to temporarily reunite with their families; though the reunions were heartfelt, Isaac was dismayed to find that his mother had developed a cold from worry over her son's fate since Isaac first departed for his journey. Resuming their quest, they found that the direction Saturos' band took was west across the enclosed Karagol Sea via a ferry service, so they used the same ferry service to cross the sea in pursuit. The voyage was not pleasant; several times, recently awakened sea monsters in the Karagol, including a mighty Kraken, attacked the ship and forced Isaac's group to battle them off while protecting the passengers. Through their efforts, the ferry made it to the western side, arriving at the continental landmass conjoined with Angara's main landmass that was officially recognized as "Gondowan" for the most part, except for its northern region, which was recognized as Angaran territory.

Babi
Having touched down on Gondowan, Isaac's party arrived at the sole Angaran town on the continent, the bustling town of Tolbi. Tolbi was easily the most prosperous town in Weyard, and a critical contributor to this status was that it held an annual festival, central to which was a prestigious tournament of warriors known across the world as Colosso, and it was entirely incidental that this year's festival and tournament was in full swing by the time of Isaac's arrival. However, the imposing lord of Tolbi and the originator of Colosso, Lord Babi, had been missing since the previous day, privately sending Tolbi's ruling house into a state of alarm. Hearing from Babi's chief minister and de facto vice lord, Iodem, that Babi was last seen entering the foreboding Altmiller Cave to the north, Isaac's party once again decided to briefly deviate from their quest and investigate.

In Altmiller Cave, Isaac and his friends found Babi and helped him by fetching for him what he originally entered the cave for, a lone bottle of mysterious fluid. Babi's life was dependent on drinking this draught, and he said he now owed his life to Isaac. When Babi saw that Isaac and his friends were Psynergy-wielding Adepts, he briefly mistook them as a people named "Lemurians", but decided anyway that he wanted to see Isaac's full capacity as a warrior and an Adept. Babi returned to Tolbi and had Isaac entered into the Colosso Finals as a dark horse contender to serve this purpose. Isaac had no choice but to compete, so he gave it his all against the powerful gladiators that were qualified to be Colosso's finalists, and would fight brilliantly to the end.

Following Colosso, Isaac and his friends convened with Babi and Iodem in Babi's throne room. Babi revealed a great secret to Isaac: because of having drunk this draught, Babi was 150 years old. He originally gained this stockpile long ago when, during a great flood, the ship Babi and his close friend, Lunpa the Righteous Thief (the one who founded the town named after him), was sailing was driven into the fog-shrouded heart of the world's Great Eastern Sea, whereupon he happened upon a society of Adepts hidden from the outside world named Lemuria. Seemingly the only place on Weyard where the power of Alchemy remained unbound, the people of Lemuria had lifespans lasting centuries, and consuming the draught they bottled could allow someone from the outside world to extend their own lifespan far beyond what was human. Babi left Lemuria on one of Lemuria's own Psynergy-powered ships with a large stockpile of the draught, and had stored it in Altmiller Cave when he returned to Tolbi to govern it for the next century.

However, Babi knew from since a long time back that his draught was limited, and thus was how long he could extend his life. Having learned from the Lemurians about the legend of the Stone of Sages as a bestower of immortality, Babi sought to continue extending his life beyond his normal years - it was he who had sent Kraden, his favorite scholar originally from Tolbi, up north to Vale to study the Alchemy-related secrets of Sol Sanctum up close. Babi needed more Lemurian Draught, but since Lemuria was hidden from the outside world within a fog-shrouded area of sea whose entire perimeter was enclosed by an impassable labyrinth of whirlpools and stone crags, all of his previous attempts to send ships out to find Lemuria and bring back Draught were futile.

Babi had been preparing for one ultimate attempt to reach Lemuria by decreeing the construction of a great tower named Babi Lighthouse at the easternmost point of Gondowan, the point of known land closest in proximity to Lemuria's believed coordinates in the Eastern Sea. The bright light he planned to have shining upon its aerie would serve to solve the issue of ships failing to keep a straight course into Lemuria because of the fog and whirlpools surrounding it. Furthermore, only a ship as strong Babi's Lemurian Ship could be relied on to sail into Lemuria safely, and such a ship could only be helmed by Adepts. This is why Babi needed Isaac to go on an additional quest for him; after Isaac would deal with his own business with Saturos and Felix at Venus Lighthouse, he would be loaned Babi's Lemurian Ship, and would use it to find Lemuria and retrieve more of its Draught for Babi before it was too late. Isaac and his friends agreed to Babi's terms and earned the authorization to travel southeast, and it was agreed that Iodem would accompany Isaac to Babi Lighthouse and Venus Lighthouse.

From Tolbi to Lalivero
Despite being burdened now with two separate objectives on their journey, Isaac's traveling band did not neglect the emotional burden that Hammet's continued incarceration in Lunpa continued to have on Ivan. Responding to Ivan's concern, the group searched along the southern coast of the Karagol and discovered an underground cave trail that provided an effective bridge between Angara and Gondowan, and used it to return to the Angaran mainland up north. They arrived at the town of Lunpa, and used a concealing Psynergy that Babi had passed down to them to sneak stealthily into the thieves' fortress, intent on freeing Hammet.

No sooner did Isaac's Adepts locate Hammet then when Dodonpa himself appeared to taunt them all. Having had no intention to release Hammet after accepting Layana's ransom money, Dodonpa declared the Adepts' luck to have run out and let loose a hulking monster named after himself to kill the Adepts, but Isaac and his friends managed to survive and win the battle. Dodonpa's own father Donpa, an elderly man who had previously been rendered bedridden from despair over his son's evil, stepped in to thank Isaac and Ivan for helping put Dodonpa in his place, and helped them covertly escort Hammet out of Lunpa and back into Kalay without either the people of Lunpa or Kalay knowing what had happened. Though both Hammet and Layana were grateful to Ivan and his friends for what they did, Layana admonished Ivan for putting his and Isaac's own important quest on hold. Isaac and Ivan resumed their quest posthaste, and crossed back into Gondowan.

Rejoining with Iodem, Isaac's party began their journey southeast through the upper region of Gondowan. When they passed by a tiny desert village named Suhalla, however, Iodem was alarmed to see Tolbian soldiers resting wounded in the Suhallans' care. To summarize: Located at the easternmost region of Gondowan in the immediate vicinity of both Babi Lighthouse and Venus Lighthouse was the Gondowan town of Lalivero, which had been under Tolbi's control for a while. Babi Lighthouse's construction was being carried out by workmen from Lalivero as well as Tolbi, and Babi had press-ganged the Laliverans into laboring for him by keeping Lalivero's most popular resident, a young girl named Sheba, in his palace as his guest in Tolbi. Once Isaac's party came along, though, Babi had allowed Sheba to return to Lalivero to encourage her people, and had tasked the solders now resting in Suhalla to be her escort.

Located in between Suhalla and Lalivero was the blustery Suhalla Desert, which Sheba and the soldiers serving as her escort were attempting to pass through. The desert, however, had become much more dangerous since the eruption of Mt. Aleph, for the fall of the Psynergy Stones had driven the whirlwind-generating lizard monsters local to the desert violent. As the soldiers explained to Iodem, the monsters of the desert separated them from Sheba and drove them off, leaving Sheba lost in the desert. However, the soldiers had then seen the group Isaac was pursuing pass through the desert and defeat the monsters safely. Isaac and Iodem's group urgently traveled through Suhalla Desert themselves, and the Adepts successfully fought off the enraged tornado lizards that got in their way, but Sheba was nowhere to be found. After clearing the desert, the group decided to carry on to Lalivero.

Isaac and Iodem proceeded through the Tolbi-owned checkpoint of Suhalla Gate, and then arrived at what appeared to be the main entrance to the main structure of Venus Lighthouse itself. Iodem was shocked to find that the Lighthouse, which had long been sealed off from the outside world, now had its front doors opened up; as wounded Tolbian scholars unlucky enough to have crossed Saturos' path explained, Saturos' group successfully gained access into the structure with the help of Felix as a Venus Adept (just like how Alex as a Mercury Adept allowed Saturos into Mercury Lighthouse; a Lighthouse could only be opened by a group that includes at least one Adept of a Lighthouse's corresponding element), but then they came back out and determined that this was actually a one-way exit out of Venus Lighthouse, and that the true entrance into Venus Lighthouse lied within the ancient ruins north of Lalivero that Babi Lighthouse was being constructed on. Isaac and Iodem traced Saturos' path north to Lalivero.

The townspeople of Lalivero were especially distressed because Saturos and his group passed through the town with none other than Sheba accompanying them as yet another one of his captives. Isaac and Iodem entered the half-completed structure of Babi Lighthouse, where Lalivero's mayor and Sheba's adoptive father Faran had been unable to open an ancient door that Saturos' group somehow passed through. This door was an entrance into Venus Lighthouse that only a party of Adepts that included at least one Venus Adept could enter, so both Iodem and Faran agreed to let Isaac and his friends continue the pursuit of Saturos and Sheba in their stead. Determined to rescue both Jenna and Sheba and stop Saturos' scheme to break Alchemy's seal for good, Isaac, Garet, Ivan, and Mia descended into the subterranean path that connected the ruins under Babi Lighthouse into the true lighthouse portion of Venus Lighthouse.

Venus Lighthouse
While Isaac and his friends climbed up through Venus Lighthouse in pursuit of Saturos' group, Saturos and Menardi ordered Felix, Alex, Jenna, and Kraden to exit out of the Lighthouse's frontal exit portion and group and wait at a peninsula near Suhalla Gate named Idejima, where the Mars Adepts had previously moored a Lemurian Ship of their own a long time back, while the pair took Sheba with them up to the aerie of Venus Lighthouse. Soon afterward, however, Felix decided to follow Saturos back up to the aerie by himself to confront him over having taken yet another previously uninvolved party captive. Felix arrived just as Saturos was about to light the Venus Beacon to demand that Sheba go back down with Felix to safety; a falling out between them occured, in which Saturos and Menardi declared that they could no longer trust him and that he would pay dearly for his rebellious attitude.

It was at that exact point when Isaac's party arrived. Saturos immediately seized control by threatening that Sheba would come to harm if they did not yield the Shaman's Rod, also known as the "Rod of Hesperia", but craftily worded his proposition to give the impression that they were making an exchange, as if he was trading Sheba for the Shaman's Rod. So naturally, Isaac's group was appalled when Saturos only clarified after Ivan deigned to give Felix the rod that he never said he would let Sheba go. As Saturos explained, Sheba was actually a Jupiter Adept just like Ivan, and he knew long in advance that both her and the Shaman's Rod, for whatever reason, were necessary for the eventual, successful activation of Jupiter Lighthouse in the future. Proclaiming Isaac's party to have meddled in their affairs long enough, Saturos and Menardi engaged Isaac's party with the intent to kill. They were both fierce combatants, and they were not fighting with an elemental handicap like Saturos had on Mercury Lighthouse, but Isaac's party won a surprising victory and rendered the pair unable to stand.

Isaac then attempted to invite Felix to leave Saturos, believing that his former friend had no choice but to submit to Saturos' will ever since Saturos saved his life three years ago. All of Isaac's group was horrified, however, when Felix declared his full intention to continue lighting the Lighthouses even after Saturos and Menardi were taken out of the picture, forcing Isaac's side to declare him their enemy. But Saturos, weakened by his defeat but not out of the picture yet, shocked everyone by tossing the Venus Star into the well at the aerie of Venus Lighthouse, starting the process that would establish the Venus Beacon. The energy that began flowing out of the Venus Lighthouse recharged the pair's bodies and Psynergy power - the Venus-aligned energy benefited the Mars Adepts because the elements of Venus and Mars share a symbiotic relationship - and Saturos and Menardi executed a terrifying ability: they merged their two bodies into a single, massive, two-headed dragon of awesome power. Isaac's party engaged in their most harrowing battle yet, but through tactics and will they miraculously slew the beast. Saturos and Menardi fell to their shared demise. All of a sudden, Venus Lighthouse wracked itself with a violent earthquake as part of the process that established the Venus Beacon atop Venus Lighthouse. This caused Sheba to lose her footing and fall off Venus Lighthouse, and Felix, beside himself, jumped clean off the tower after her, and both appeared to fall to their deaths. The quaking subsided, and Isaac's group, though shaken, quickly resolved to leave the Lighthouse and search for Jenna. But despite a long and tiring search, Jenna was nowhere to be found.

When Isaac's group returned to Lalivero to convene with Faran and Iodem, they learned that witnesses saw Sheba and Felix being "caught" by the ocean as though the ocean had a mind of its own; the Laliverans attested this to be another example of an unexplainable phenomenon of coincidental miracles that would always seem to follow Sheba, just like how Sheba, as a baby, appeared many years ago by falling out of the sky in the form of a shooting star and crashing into the ground without sustaining any bruises or injuries whatsoever. Isaac and his friends believed that Felix and Sheba were alive and resolved to find them and Jenna.

Iodem lead them to a harbor in Lalivero where Babi had long ago hidden his Lemurian Ship, and gave Isaac ownership and control of the ship by giving Isaac the ship's Black Orb; all Lemurian Ships were designed so that one could be piloted by Psynergy-wielding Adepts while the ship's corresponding Black Orb was present. Reminded of his other objective to discover Lemuria and retrieve Lemurian Draught in time to stave off Babi's eventual death, Isaac, Garet, Ivan, and Mia set out on their ship to explore the Great Eastern Sea and seek out their multiple goals.

The Tidal Wave and Felix's journey
After Felix had gone back up to confront Saturos atop Venus Lighthouse's aerie, Jenna, Kraden, and Alex were forced to fight their way through large groups of Laliveran workmen and Tolbian soldiers waiting outside Venus Lighthouse that demanded the group give back Sheba, and the three waited at Idejima for Saturos and Menardi to arrive later. When the Venus Lighthouse wracked itself and the surrounding lands with a violent earthquake, Idejima was torn away and became its own buoyant island floating east out into the Great Eastern Sea, with Alex, Jenna, and Kraden on it. At the same time, the area of ground at the base of the Lighthouse broke away and filled with water from the ocean, which safely caught Sheba and Felix and saved both of their lives. Seeing the floating island, Felix swam with all his might and successfully brought himself and Sheba onto it, rejoining the other three.

Felix, Jenna, Sheba, Alex, and Kraden were now marooned on an island that floated east out into the sea. After Felix and Sheba fully explained what had happened, everyone determined that they could not use Saturos and Menardi's Lemurian Ship, being carried along with the island, since the ship's Black Orb was lost along with Saturos. But then, all of a sudden, an enormous tidal wave originating from the Great Eastern Sea approached the island and proceeded to wash over it, as well as impact much of the lower right portion of the world of Weyard. Idejima was driven into a small island continent named Indra to the south.

When Felix, Jenna, Sheba, and Kraden regained consciousness, they noticed that Alex had gone off on his own, and that they could now explore a new continent. Felix and the others determined that his objective to light the two remaining Lighthouses could only be continued once they found themselves a boat they could use. Jenna wholeheartedly supported her brother in his quest because, in truth, their parents were alive - they had also been rescued by Saturos and Menardi on the night of the disaster at Vale, but they had been kept at Saturos' hometown ever since so as to coerce Felix into joining Saturos on his journey to unseal Alchemy. Felix and Jenna's ultimate motivation in lighting the Lighthouses was to win their parents' freedom.

Sheba, on the other hand, insisted that she stay with Felix over the course of his journey for a reason she did not disclose, instead passing it off as her "destiny" to do so. Having her as the Jupiter Adept of his group, as well as having the newly acquired Shaman's Rod in his possession, Felix's capacity to successfully enter and climb Jupiter Lighthouse was now assured, and thus would no longer be a concern on his journey until much later when they would eventually reach the Great Western Sea. As for Kraden, though he was an old man who could not fight, he nonetheless was eager to accompany Felix on his travels, for he wanted to continue sating his curiosity by exploring the world, as well as potentially delve further into the secrets of Alchemy partially for his master Babi's sake. With Felix's new group of travelers assembled, he began their search for a ship by stepping down into Indra.

While Felix accompanied Saturos on his journey, he was never allowed to fight, and Jenna and Sheba had no combat experience either, so the development of their current Psynergy abilities to hold their own in an increasingly dangerous world was as much a priority as finding a ship. Therefore, after passing through the washed-up town of Daila on the northernmost part of the continent, Felix detoured to the Kandorean Temple, where his group trained and developed their rudimentary Psynergy abilities under the head monk Master Poi. They flexed their newly acquired Psynergy at a shrine dedicated to a sea god east of Daila, where they helped free a pair of Dailan children that were stuck because of the Tidal Wave. Also, similar to Isaac's group, Felix's group began to discover and amass Djinn of their own.

Felix and his party decided to briefly stop in Daila one more time for information before they continued south along the continent. By coincidence, they bumped into none other than Alex, who had been searching for a boat himself. Alex reported that Daila did not have any boats all, for sale or otherwise, but the town mayor told him to try the town at the southern end of the continent, Madra. When Felix offered for Alex to accompany his group, though, Alex seemed eager to turn him down, stating that he simply preferred to work alone, and then left Felix and the town in a visible haste. Having to let Alex be, the remaining four travelers proceeded to cross through the rocky Dehkan Plateau, and they arrived at Madra down south.

Piers and the Lemurian Ship
It became evident to Felix from gossip in Madra that the tidal wave had managed to shift the entire continent southwest until it made physical contact with both the lower tip of Gondowan to the west and the upper right region of the continent of Osenia to the east. Prior to the tidal wave, a dread pirate named Briggs, who hailed from the seafaring town of Champa across the sea, had been pillaging towns and settlements across the Great Eastern Sea for food, but Madra managed to capture him and temporarily jail him. The rest of his crew soon invaded Madra and busted him out of the prison, and Briggs and his crew looted the town's gold before fleeing.

At the same time that Briggs made his escape to Osenia, a strange ship washed up on Indra's eastern shore near Madra, with its lone captain having been knocked unconscious by the tidal wave. The Madrans held him to be one of the Champa in league with Briggs and imprisoned him in their jail without any reliable basis. The Elder of Madra and his son, the Mayor of Madra, did not sit well with having a likely innocent man languishing in their prison, so they had taken it upon themselves to leave Madra and pursue Briggs into Osenia personally. Upon investigation, Felix and his friends found that the man being wrongfully jailed was a Mercury Adept named Piers, and that his ship was yet another Lemurian Ship. Interested in Piers as both an Adept and the owner of a ship they could possibly use, Felix's party decided to trace the Elder and Mayor's path into Osenia to help them put Briggs in his place and secure his vow that Piers was not one of his men.

Both Felix's group and the group of Madrans made it through the Yampi Desert to reach the Osenian town that Madra traded with, the port town of Alhafra, ruled by a mayor known for being a greedy oaf. The town had recently completed a design of sailing ship that was radical for its time: an especially massive vessel that derived its propulsion not from the rowing of oars, but entirely from catching the wind with its sails, but the tidal wave had damaged it. Briggs used the gold he stole from Madra to purchase the ship and use it as a hideout. Felix's group went into the ship and defeated Briggs and his Sea Fighters in battle, and Briggs was jailed in Alhafra's prison while the proof of Piers' innocence was secured for the Madrans. As Briggs and his family confessed, he stole from towns in the Great Eastern Sea because the oceans of the world had been heating up, which was having a serious impact on Champa's fishing trade and way of life. Before leaving the town, Felix attempted to fix the sailing ship to help out, but the group's Psynergy proved insufficient to remove the enormous rock that was pinning the broken mast out of place.

While Felix's group was exploring Osenia, they continued to pursue their interests in developing their Psynergy, so when they heard about Air's Rock - an enormous lone mountain in a desert said to have been present on Weyard since the world's beginning and containing an expansive, riddle-filled complex - they tried their hand at its challenge and eventually earned the Jupiter Psynergy it contained. Then, the group traveled south of Air's Rock and discovered what Kraden was astounded to see was more than the mere legend he had heard about: Garoh, a society of people that turned into werewolves when they looked up at the moon at night. They convened with the village leader, the elderly werewolf Maha, himself every bit as much a theorist and philosopher as Kraden, and discussed with him principles of Psynergy and how they applied to the world, as well as how the people of Garoh came to be werewolves to begin with. Maha hypothesized that their transformation into shape-shifters over the ages was a natural defensive that had come about by the course of evolution, but they determined that the limited Jupiter Psynergy the werewolves could use had been acquired due to the town's relative geographic proximity to Air's Rock. Maha and the people of Garoh thanked Felix's group for not being terrified of them, since their race had long been considered accursed and were once burned at the stake as abominations in the name of "purification".

Felix and his companions returned to Madra hoping to find Piers, but only to find that another woe had befallen the town while they were gone: warriors of the tribal Kibombo society from the heart of lower Gondowan had ransacked the town while they were gone. They only took a single item before retreating back into Gondowan, however: none other than the Black Orb to Piers' ship. After the invasion, when Madra had received notice that Piers was innocent and had let him free, Piers immediately followed the Kibombo west into Gondowan to retrieve his Orb. Felix's party traced his steps west and crossed into lower Gondowan themselves, and headed north through the village of Naribwe, then successfully snuck their way through the Kibombo Mountains, a mountain pass that the Kibombo had stationed warriors at to drive back intruders.

Nighttime had fallen when Felix arrived at the core village of Kibombo, and the entirety of the village populace was in attendance at a ceremonial ritual that the aspiring witch doctor, Akafubu, was attempting to perform to earn his title as the figurehead of the Kibombo: he was attempting to offer Piers' Black Orb, which he had his warriors retrieve because he needed a jewel, to a giant statue named the Great Gabomba. Felix and his partners found Piers spying on Akafubu's ritual and introduced themselves as Adepts, and Piers shocked Kraden when he introduced himself as a Lemurian - an individual who had lived in the legendary society hidden in the center of the Great Eastern Sea until recently, when the tidal wave had driven him out. Piers sought to regain control of his Orb, and therefore his ship, so that he could find a way back into his home.

When Kraden, excited about the prospect of seeing Lemuria for himself, offered to help Piers so that Piers would take them with him to Lemuria, Piers claimed he could not permit it because Kraden was acting in Babi's interest; Babi was a figure resented by the Lemurians because the Lemurian Ship Babi used to flee the isle, as well as the entirety of Lemuria's stockpile of life-extending draught that Babi brought with him, were both stolen by him. Kraden assured that he wanted to see Lemuria for more than just Babi's sake, that he wanted his own long-standing questions on Alchemy answered, and he and Felix's group resolved to help him retrieve his orb. Piers told them he would save his answer on Kraden's offer for later before accepting their help. Ultimately, they retrieved the orb by climbing into the mechanical Gabomba statue and fixing the mechanism that was preventing Akafubu's ceremony from completing successfully. The four Adepts and Kraden proceeded to travel all the way back down to Indra to return to Piers' ship.

Upon returning to Indra, Piers announced to his newfound companions that he had decided he would take them with him on his journey back into Lemuria; impressed by Felix and Kraden's willingness to help someone whose affairs needed not concern them, he saw they truly were good people. Before they boarded Piers' ship, they briefly returned to Madra to put the minds of the Elder and the Mayor at ease about Piers' circumstances.

It was at that point in Madra, however, when Felix's group first encountered Karst, the younger sister of Menardi, who had arrived from the Mars Adepts' hometown in search of Menardi and Saturos. The news of the Mars Adepts' demise at the hands of Isaac came out quickly, and Karst, consumed by rage and a driven sense of vengeance against the one who murdered her dear sister, swore that she would hunt Isaac down. Karst made it clear that she expected Felix to focus on his duty to reach and light Jupiter Lighthouse, and find his own way into the Great Western Sea to do so, even though the tidal wave had effectively blocked naval access into the Western Sea by sandwiching Indra between Gondowan and Osenia. After Karst left in a huff, Felix's party considered whether they should seek out Isaac's party to protect them from Karst's wrath, but everyone knew full well that Isaac was actively trying to stop Felix from lighting Jupiter Lighthouse and would fight to do so.

Felix and Piers returned to the Lemurian Ship beached at Indra's eastern shore, and after they cleared out all the sea monsters that had taken up residence, they employed the Black Orb to propel the semi-automated ship out into the ocean. Roughly the entire eastern half of the world opened up for the adventurers to explore at their leisure, and with a working ship now at their disposal, Piers allowed Felix to take the tiller and direct their new journey across the world's waters. They would not be able to revisit Vale, however, due to the steep mountains across Angara blocking off much of the continent's inner landmass from anywhere accessible from the sea itself, and they made sure to avoid Lalivero as well.

The Great Eastern Sea
Felix, Jenna, Sheba, Piers, and Kraden, upon Piers' Lemurian Ship, began an extremely lengthy exploration of all the waters, landmasses, and continents accessible throughout the Great Eastern Sea. The primary cause for this was the fact that Indra had corked up the naval passage between itself and lower Gondowan that previously would have been taken to travel between the Eastern Sea and the Western Sea, and the newly formed rock barriers between the two continents blocking the Lemurian Ship could not be removed with the Psynergy abilities they currently had. Their aim for the time being was to continue developing their powers and abilities as Adepts and warriors, leading them to explore whatever great sanctums, caves, and ancient ruins they came across for their treasure and opportunities to further their training. Even though they were sharing the same ocean with Isaac's group, who was actively searching the ocean to find and stop Felix, the two groups of Adepts would never cross paths in the Eastern Sea.

Of course, it was still Felix's ultimate priority to find a way into the Great Western Sea to accomplish his quest objective, and he would be reminded of this. When the party first entered Champa, located on the southern coast of Angara, Alex was there to greet him, where he revealed himself to have joined the company of Karst and her partner, the imposing warrior Agatio. Alex admitted that following Saturos' death, he thought Felix would hardly be capable of his quest and felt fit to abandon him after the tidal wave, but later he came to see that Felix was competent for the job after all. So, rather than let Karst and Agatio relieve Felix of the Jupiter Star so that they could light Jupiter Lighthouse themselves, he let Karst and Agatio put pressure on Felix via threats so that Felix would hurry up in his responsibility. Alex stated in very blunt terms, however, that he did not consider Karst and Agatio terribly useful or intelligent either, and reclarified that his ultimate position in all this was as a neutral party whose aim was to see all four Lighthouses lit and Alchemy restored to the world.

After Karst and Agatio left and before Alex followed suit, Alex broke the news to Kraden that he had gotten hold of the news that Babi, the lord of Tolbi, had finally passed away. Kraden, of course, was deeply taken aback by the passing of his former master, but everyone else wondered if this meant that Kraden was now relieved of his responsibility to seek out the secrets of Alchemy for Babi's sake and would no longer need to continue putting himself in harm's way to do so. But Kraden insisted he wanted to continue accompanying Felix and see Lemuria for himself, especially because by now he was starting to form a theory about the state of the world from all the travels he had been on. Piers surprised Kraden by claiming he suspected Kraden's theory as well, and that it would likely be confirmed once they arrived to Lemuria.

During their expedition throughout the Eastern Sea, Felix's group attempted to sail into the fog-shrouded area of the Eastern Sea that Lemuria was hidden within, which was known abroad as the Sea of Time, but they were turned back by the labyrinth of whirlpools and stone crags that surrounded the sea's perimeter. They would eventually come to learn the secrets of successful navigation into the Sea of Time by listening to childrens' songs written by the late master sailor Yepp at the downtrodden town of Yallam in eastern Osenia, but other gossip they heard at other places alerted them to something far more disconcerting about the Sea: recently awakened within the Sea of Time was a monster of mythic proportions known as Poseidon, who was painted by folklore as once being the true, rightful king of the seas in ages past before he became feral. Poseidon would ensure that any attempt made into the Sea of Time would ultimately end in doom.

Nautical folklore held that Poseidon could not be assailed by any offense, except for one weapon: a legendary weapon named the Trident of Ankohl. This trident would allow the wielder to fear nothing from the sea, but it was not known to be present anywhere on Weyard. As fate would have it, Felix's continued journey to increase his Psynergy and combat abilities would lead him to discover the three individual prongs of the Trident in locations connected to the world's ancient past: he discovered one prong sealed in the mysterious, lone tower in Tundaria, the glacial, uninhabited, southernmost continent of the world; another prong was found in the tower ruins of the ancient Ankohl culture a short ways east of Champa on Angara; and the third prong was contained within, as it turned out, the Shrine of the Sea God just east of Daila. The matter of having the three prongs reforged into a coherent weapon would have to wait until later.

The party's continued interest in the development of their Psynergy had previously prompted them to climb and solve the riddles of Air's Rock, and two more Elemental Rocks just like it were present in the Great Eastern Sea as well: Aqua Rock, located amongst the Apojii Islands at the eastern edge of the world, where they acquired new Mercury Psynergy; and Gaia Rock, located at a small island northeast of the Sea of Time inhabited by a people and culture named Izumo. A dragon-like monster that had previously slumbered within Gaia Rock, known simply as the Serpent, had awoken when the eruption of Mt. Aleph showered Psynergy Stones across the world, and had been terrorizing Izumo village since.

The people of Izumo had been forced to believe that offering a young female to the Serpent as a sacrifice was necessary to their survival, and the offering was a young woman named Kushinada. Her lover, former wild man Susa and younger brother to Izumo's leader, Lady Uzume, selflessly went into Gaia Rock to confront and try to defeat the monster on his own. Felix's party entered and explored Gaia Rock on their own, and eventually found Susa having fed the monster enormous amounts of a fluid that put it into a drunken stupor. With Susa's help, Felix and his companions battled the Serpent at length and ultimately slew it, saving Izumo and granting themselves new Venus Psynergy from Gaia Rock. Thanking Felix's group for their help, Susa and Uzume revealed that they were Adepts as well.

Eventually, the Psynergy capabilities of Felix and his companions had become strong enough that they decided to return to Alhafra and finish their original attempt to help matters by destroying the rock pinning down the mast of the sailing ship. As soon as the ship's repairs were completed, however, Briggs chose then to make his escape: with the help of his wife Chaucha and his young son Eoleo, who happened to have the powers of an Adept, Briggs and his crew busted out of their jail, stole the ship from under everyone's noses, and headed back to Champa. After the enraged mayor of Alhafra chastised Felix for letting this happen, Felix decided to pursue Briggs to make him answer for his piracy. It was not at all an errand for Alhafra's mayor.

Briggs returned to Champa bearing the fruits of his expedition: an enormous stockpile of food to save his town's starving people, and for this he was viewed as the town's savior. Felix arrived at Champa and chased Briggs into his mountainside home, and soon encountered him in a hall with a great, circular pit leading into the depths of the earth, accompanied by his grandmother, the town matriarch Obaba. Briggs convinced her that Felix had come to take him away, so she employed the powers of the pit - in reality an ancient forge that had its historical roots in the Ankohl - to empower a lizard monster to destroy Felix. She was shocked to see her monster fall at the hands of Felix's group, however. Obaba was even more taken aback when she learned from Felix afterward that all the food Briggs back for the town was stolen from the other towns across the Eastern Seas, and she let loose the fullest extent of her wrath and contempt upon Briggs for a moment. But Briggs had always intended to pay back the towns he stole from after having saved his own town from starvation, and Felix agreed that all would be well once Briggs lived up to his promise.

Following the Briggs family dispute, Obaba offered to serve Felix counsel on subjects related to smithing. She had long been considered the foremost smith on Weyard due to her seemingly magical mastery over the powers and processes of the forge of Ankohl, so when Felix showed Obaba the prongs to the Trident of Ankohl, Obaba was astounded; all of the experience with the forge she had amassed was ultimately so that the Trident could be reconstructed. The three prongs were dropped into the pit, the forge worked its magic, and Obaba was content to bestow the completed trident upon Felix. With the trident, Felix and his companions had everything they needed to make a legitimate attempt to enter the Sea of Time and search for Lemuria within.

Lemuria
Taking heed of the knowledge they gained from the childrens' songs in Yallam, Felix and his companions successfully navigated their way through the whirlpools that surrounded the perimeter to the Sea of Time. As though on cue, Poseidon emerged from the deeps and attacked the Adepts on their ship; it was indeed impervious to their attacks and Psynergy at first, but the Trident did indeed allow true harm to be dealt, and thus was Poseidon eventually defeated at the end of a difficult battle. The victors sailed into the Sea of Time and discovered the island that Lemuria was situated upon, and sailed into its harbor.

After Piers convinced the guardsmen at the front entrance to grant him and his companions admittance into their city, Kraden marveled at its abundance of culture and detailed architecture, but Piers told him that Lemuria was once a far grander and lovelier city in the past. The reason for this would be brought to light once they convened with the Lemurian king, Hydros, but when they came to Lemuria's palace, Piers was frustrated to hear that the head of Lemuria's senate, Conservato, was currently in discussion with Hydros. So they stopped by the house of Piers' uncle, who was happy to see that Piers was alive, but Piers was devastated to learn that his mother had passed away while he was gone. While Piers went to Lemuria's cemetery to be by himself for the time being, Piers' uncle was confused to learn that Piers had not told Felix's group anything about his true mission, handed down to him by Hydros; Piers would have left Lemuria to explore the outside world even had the tidal wave not forced him out. Piers' uncle then granted Felix and his companions an audience with another resident of Lemuria, Lunpa.

Lunpa, the one and only Righteous Thief from history and founder of the town named after him, had indeed been left behind by Babi after the two men originally ended up at Lemuria during the Great Flood a century beforehand, and he had aged beyond his natural years while still maintaining a relatively youthful appearance - more youthful than that of his own son Donpa, certainly - thanks to the enchanted springwaters of Lemuria from which Lemurian Draught had once been distilled from. Their discussion quickly turned to the theory that Kraden had formulated and had promised to tell the others once he had come to confirm Lemuria's modern-day state for himself, a theory of the world which Lunpa and the king also suspected: Lemuria's culture was advanced because of the presence of Alchemy's influence, unlike any of the towns and cultures that laid across modern-day Weyard, who couldn't have possibly created the great sanctums and lighthouses Felix and Kraden had come across. These were constructed in an age long-past when cultures all across Weyard were similarly advanced - this meant that the sealing of Alchemy in the past had caused civilization to gradually wane over the ages, rather than develop. Lunpa shocked Kraden by explaining that there was the possibility of another form of decay that came to be as a direct result of the absence of Alchemy...

Lunpa brought Felix, Kraden, and their companions to Lemuria palace to obtain an audience with Hydros in his throne chamber, where he was accompanied by both Piers and Conservato. It first came to light that Hydros had tasked Piers to leave Lemuria and explore the entirety of the Great Eastern Sea, in direct violation of the will of Conservato and the Lemurian senate, but that he would probably not have done so had he known that the tidal wave would have forced Piers out of the sea in a way that reentry into the Sea of Time would have been so difficult. It then came to light that it was the return of Poseidon from within the Sea of Time that generated the tidal wave to begin with, and that the reason for the monster's arousal from its slumber was none other than the fact that the Mercury and Venus Lighthouses had been lit - the combined influence of their respective beacons had begun having an effect on the world of Weyard at large. Conservato was appalled at Felix, for he believed that Alchemy was a force that would doom the world to destruction and war if its seal were ever broken, and not even Felix was certain that Alchemy wouldn't destroy the world the moment it would be released.

Hydros displayed a map of Weyard as it was in its ancient past, when all of civilization thrived, Lemuria traded with many nations, and Alchemy reigned supreme. The arrangement of the world's landmasses was much more uniform on Hydros' map, in stark contrast to the world map that Lunpa had brought with him when he came to Lemuria a century ago, where the original landmass had clearly divided itself into separate continents that did not even appear to have enough mass to comprise what they had originally. Piers confirmed from his mission that Lunpa's 100-year-old map was more accurate, but that the continents of the present day world had become even smaller than before. An incredible revelation came to light: it was not just human civilization that was waning, the physical being of Weyard itself was also declining, and would certainly wither toward an eventual doom if Alchemy was not restored. Weyard itself was analogous to a living being that had been deprived of its sustenance, the combined influence of the four lit Elemental Beacons and the power of Alchemy they provided.

Felix’s objective to light the remaining Elemental Lighthouses was shown to be more important than anyone had ever imagined. Since the world was now shown to have a limit to its existence brought about by Alchemy's sealed status, chances would have to be taken with Alchemy's release, and so Hydros called upon Felix's group to light Jupiter and Mars, and for Piers to accompany him on the remainder of his journey. Lunpa bestowed upon Felix the rock-grinding Psynergy that would allow his group the means to make their way through the Great Western Sea. Conservato was outraged at all of this, perceiving their hypothesizing and what they planned to do to be folly, and remained insistent that the world was going to be fine the way it always had been, free from the inherent dangers Alchemy entailed. He assured Piers that the latter would be forever banished from Lemuria if he left to join Felix, but Piers stuck true to his conviction and accompanied Felix and his party out of Lemuria and the Sea of Time. Using Lunpa's Psynergy to clear the rock barriers that had formed from the collision between Indra and lower Gondowan, the Adepts entered the Great Western Sea, where the remaining two Lighthouses awaited.

Jupiter Lighthouse
Two island continents were present in the Great Western Sea: Hesperia, to the north, and Atteka, to the south, which contained Jupiter Lighthouse. Because the Shaman's Rod that had remained in Felix's possession all this time was also known as the "Rod of Hesperia", the Adepts touched down upon Hesperia first, and discovered a secluded village named Shaman Village. They came before the village leader, Moapa, and presented him the Shaman's Rod; Moapa was astounded, for the rod was a national treasure that Shaman Village had originally traded to the settlement of Contigo in Atteka down south as an act of mutual goodwill, long ago in the ancient past, after the war between the two nations subsided when Alchemy was sealed.

The hero of the equivalent to Shaman Village in the ancient past, Hoabna, had exchanged the Shaman's Rod with the hero of the ancient past equivalent to modern-day Contigo, Yegelos, and received Contigo's national treasure, an object that bestowed the Jupiter-aligned Psynergy power of hovering, the Hover Jade. The two heroes agreed that should a descendant of Contigo come to Shaman Village in the modern day and age to return the Shaman's Rod, the Shamans would return to them the Hover Jade. This was the object that Hammet had taken upon himself to search for, and this was the reason the Shaman's Rod was necessary to obtain it, as well as the reason why the Shaman's Rod was effectively necessary to be able to successfully climb through Jupiter Lighthouse - mastery of the Hover Psynergy was what the Lighthouse's riddles demanded of those who would attempt to climb it.

Obviously, though, none of Felix's group were from Contigo, and Moapa initially refused to hand over the Hover Jade on that basis. But Sheba was a Jupiter Adept herself, much like those of Contigo that figured in the ancient past, and she used her Psynergy to pretend that she actually was. Moapa was perturbed that the one who had come to fulfill Hoaba and Yegelos' ancient vow was a young girl, though, so it still took some effort to convince him to allow them to compete against Moapa in a race and competition of skill and power known as Trial Road to earn the Hover Jade. They successfully defeated him in battle and earned the Hover Jade, and Moapa declared Yegelos' vow to Hoabna fulfilled. The Adepts departed from Shaman Village and sailed down to Atteka.

Felix and his group docked their ships on Atteka and went to Contigo, whose residents were currently constructing what appeared to be a pair of giant, metallic wings that were to be attached to a ship. Contigo was the true hometown of Ivan, the place where Hammet was entrusted with Ivan as a baby by Ivan's now-deceased mother. Though the people of Contigo were not Jupiter Adepts, for the most part, their ancestors were the legendary tribe of Jupiter Adepts known as the Anemos, a people who could employ Psynergy to achieve flight. It was their power that the Hover Jade contained and provided to a limited degree, and it was those living in Contigo years ago that entrusted Hammet with the Shaman's Rod and the objective to use it to discover the Jade and thus satisfy an important requirement of the prophecies of the Anemos.

The Anemos, who presumably had the Jupiter-aligned abilities of foresight and precognition, had handed down several different prophecies over the generations, chief among them being that in the modern day and age, a pair of siblings directly descended from the Anemos that would have previously left Contigo would return, and that the Jupiter Lighthouse would once again be lit, the facilitation of which would be helped by the power of the Anemos represented by the Jade. Another prophecy also called for the creation of a pair of wings attachable to a specific design of ship to be completed by the time the siblings' return and Jupiter's ignition were predicted to have transpired. The fate of the Anemos themselves, according to modern-day Contigan folklore, was reflected in the enormous crater just east of Contigo; this was once the location of the ancient city of the Anemos, but when Alchemy was sealed and the Elemental Beacons had been put out, the city and the land beneath it, as legend would have it, rose up off the ground and into the sky, becoming what was now Weyard's moon.

Felix, Jenna, Sheba, Piers, and Kraden entered Jupiter Lighthouse, just northwest of Contigo, and began their climb up through it, assisted by the Hover Jade's hovering Psynergy that simulated the power of the Anemos. Late in their exploration, however, they were shocked by what they were able to watch from afar: Isaac and his companions Garet, Ivan, and Mia had entered the tower in pursuit of them, but Garet and Mia had fallen into a trap set up by none other than Karst and Agatio, who were also in the tower. The Mars Adepts traded thorns with Isaac and Ivan, during which Karst introduced herself as the younger sister of Menardi out to satisfy her personal grudge against Isaac, and that like Menardi, she was also of the Fire Clan hailing from the world's frozen northlands, whose home settlement was named Prox. In response to Isaac and Ivan saying that they never heard of such a place, the Mars Adepts decided to let slip that it was because Prox had lied on the brink of extinction for a long time, and that the seal placed on Alchemy was responsible. They then gloated that once the Lighthouses were ignited and Alchemy was released, Prox would regain its standing and be able to establish dominance over all the other peoples of the world.

Isaac, of course, swore he would stop that motive in its tracks by preventing the activation of Jupiter, even if it meant fighting them two-on-two, but Karst declared that they had a third Adept on their side, Alex. It was only then that the Mars Adepts noticed that Alex had disappeared as though to abandon them. Labeling him a traitor, they swore to exact their vengeance on him later, as they began dueling Isaac and Ivan to the death. Having watched all this, Felix rushed up through the Lighthouse intending to save Isaac's life, despite the fact that they had been at odds on their respective quests up until now. Alex approached him along the way, saying that he knew that Felix would not light Jupiter while Isaac's life was in danger because Felix lacked, in Alex's own words, Alex's ability to "discard" people who were no longer "of use" to him. Therefore, Alex healed and empowered Felix's group with his Psynergy to help him save Isaac from Karst, so that Felix would light Jupiter later.

Karst and Agatio defeated Isaac and Ivan and left them unable to move or stand, and the Mars Adepts were about to kill them when Felix and his companions stepped in. They forced Karst and Agatio to spare Isaac and his party lest the pair fight all of Felix's party, and Karst had no choice but to concede, since they were weakened by their fight with Isaac. The deal was made that Felix's group could do what they wanted with Isaac's group if Felix took the Mars Star that was in Isaac's possession, and then went on to ignite Jupiter Lighthouse with the Jupiter Star. Isaac, despite his prior antagonism with Felix and despite his objective to prevent what Felix was trying to achieve, announced he would place his faith in Felix's actions and judgements, and willingly handed over the Mars Star. Felix and Piers accompanied Karst and Agatio to the Lighthouse's aerie while the others remained behind to treat all of Isaac's party.

At the aerie of Jupiter Lighthouse, Felix cast the Jupiter Star into the well of Jupiter Lighthouse, and the Jupiter Beacon was established in a spectacular display. But then, Karst suddenly stole the Mars Star from Felix, and declared that she and Agatio would be able to ignite the final lighthouse themselves, since it was located right next to Prox. In other words, they had no further use for him, and because he had betrayed them earlier... it was now time for him to die, even though his parents would be allowed free by the people of Prox once all four Lighthouses were lit. Karst and Agatio attempted to kill Felix and Piers, but both Jenna and Sheba arrived to help Felix, and it became a desperate fight for both sides.

When one side in the conflict was about to finish off the other side, Alex stepped in to prevent blood from being spilled. Even though Karst and Agatio painted him a traitor because of his abandonment of them earlier, Alex was able to convince them that their petty grudge should be permanently set aside and that they should flee with him while they had both the opportunity and the Mars Star in their possession, because Isaac's party had regained their strength and was also headed toward the aerie. Karst and Agatio fled Jupiter Lighthouse with Alex on this note, and the Mars Adepts would part ways with Alex as they headed up to Mars Lighthouse to finish Saturos and Menardi's original objective. Isaac and his group arrived just as Felix's antagonists had left, and a brief but tense standoff ensued between the two, during which Isaac demanded an explanation from Felix about his actions. It was quickly agreed that the circumstances warranted a formal meeting between the two groups of Adepts, so everyone left Jupiter Lighthouse to convene back in Contigo.

The Reunion
In a lone, abandoned house in Contigo, Felix and Isaac's respective parties held their meeting. First, Isaac learned that Felix had not been able to face Isaac because of how Felix had betrayed his hometown, Vale, when he was in league with Saturos and had conspired to steal the Elemental Stars from Sol Sanctum, as well as how that betrayal ended up causing Jenna and Kraden to be captured by Saturos. Isaac was shocked when he heard that the reason Felix wanted to help Saturos was because both of his and Jenna's parents, as well as Isaac's father Kyle, were alive and well at Saturos' hometown of Prox to the north, but would only be freed by Prox's denizens once the Lighthouses were ignited. Isaac learned that the disaster at Vale three years ago had indeed been caused by Saturos and Menardi attempting to raid Sol Sanctum for the Stars but triggering a trap that generated a thunderstorm, and that after the pair knocked young Isaac and Garet out to make them forget witnessing the pair's secretive presence in the town at the time, they rescued all four people believed killed by the boulder - Felix, his two parents, and Kyle - and brought them back with them to Prox, which was why their bodies were never found by Vale.

Then Felix and Kraden proceeded to recite what they had learned at Lemuria about the true relation of Alchemy to the world of Weyard - that its sealed state since the ancient past had gradually caused both the civilizations and cultures of the world and the physical state of the world itself to wither and wane over the ages, and that the world would gradually but certainly reach a premature end in the future if Alchemy was not restored in time to re-sustain it. Isaac, of course, was enormously taken aback by this revelation, since he had been lead to believe that Alchemy would destroy the world anyway, a possibility Felix and Kraden could not deny. But despite having been tasked long ago to retrieve the Stars and stop Alchemy from being unleashed, Isaac emphatically agreed that the chance and risk Alchemy's release entailed should be taken over the certainty of the world ending on its own, a decision he certainly would have not made long ago, since it entailed violating the sacred teachings of Vale.

Just then, Hama, who Isaac had previously met in Lama Temple, arrived and joined in on the conversation. She introduced herself as none other than Ivan's elder sister, and that the two of them were the siblings of the Anemos described by the prophecies handed down by their ancestors - the prophecy that Ivan and Hama would return to Contigo when Jupiter Lighthouse was lit had come to pass. More importantly, Hama had come to announce that a new threat to Weyard had suddenly appeared: Because the elemental beacons of Mercury, Venus, and Jupiter were alight, the element of Mars (fire and heat) was being suppressed on a global scale, and the temperatures of the world were suddenly and rapidly dropping. If Mars Lighthouse was not lit soon, Weyard would continue to grow colder until the entire world would eventually be plunged into ice.

Hama used her power of distant foresight and precognition to sense that even though Karst and Agatio were attempting to climb Mars Lighthouse themselves, they were certain to fall short of their goal, for a powerful force and will was present at the Lighthouse that did not want to see Mars ignited. She deemed it necessary for both groups of Adepts to pool their strengths together, travel north to Mars Lighthouse, and finish the job themselves. Felix and Isaac, having sorted out all of their differences and come to a true understanding, joined forces to form a final traveling party of eight Adepts - Felix, Isaac, Jenna, Garet, Ivan, Sheba, Mia, and Piers, and Kraden continued to accompany the newly formed group for the remainder of their journey.

Felix and Isaac's group returned to Piers' ship, where they had found that the metallic wings the people of Contigo were working on had been built onto it. This was the culmination of yet another prophecy handed down by the Anemos - that once the wings were to be completed by the time Jupiter Lighthouse was lit, they would be built onto the Lemurian Ship that Ivan would be using to depart from Contigo and contribute to the final effort to bring Alchemy back to the world. Hama introduced the wings as the Wings of Anemos, which would allow the ship to hover above the surface of the ocean should every Adept on board the ship channel their Psynergy into them, and presented them as her gift to the Adepts. The Adepts boarded their ship and successfully hovered over the newly-formed rocks that would have blocked their way back out into the Great Western Sea.

While a new sense of camaraderie was apparent among everyone now that they were all working together, Sheba was melancholy for a moment. She finally explained why she was adamant about joining Felix on his quest after Venus Lighthouse had been lit: she knew from her life in Lalivero that she had a spectacular origin, allegedly dropping out of the sky and landing safely, whereupon she had been adopted by Faran. As a Jupiter Adept, she believed that if she accompanied Felix to Jupiter Lighthouse, there she would have found some sort of clue about her place of birth, her true parentage, or why she had apparently been abandoned, but did not find answers for any of these questions. Kraden consoled Sheba by explaining that he had never known the true comforts of a home or his parents either, because Babi had taken him away from the village of his birth when he was only four years of age to live the entirety of his life in Tolbi as a scholar. Unlike Kraden's case, Faran was at least like a father to Sheba.

At some point in the remainder of their journey, the Adepts would return to Contigo, where they found that Hama had since taken residence in the house where Felix and Isaac had their meeting. Ivan was surprised to learn that this was the very house he had been born and raised in, and questioned why Hama had not revealed that she was his sister back when they had previously met in Lama Temple, but Hama told him he was too sentimental; Ivan played an important role in events that had transpired up until now, and the course of fate would have been adversely affected if Ivan had found out about Contigo, because he would have put his journey with Isaac on hold to come to Contigo too soon. The conversation returned to how and why the world was going to be plunged into ice because Mars Lighthouse was the only Lighthouse that remained unlit, and it was additionally theorized that the world had been fine while Mercury and Venus were the only two Lighthouses that were lit because those two elements - the nurturing warmth of the earth and the cold of the ocean - were able to appropriately balance each other out. Since Jupiter Lighthouse, the lighthouse of Wind, was also of an element that cooled things down, the balance had been disturbed, and now the element of Mars had to be ignited to bring back warmth to the world. Hama bid her younger brother farewell and good luck as the Adepts resumed their quest toward Mars Lighthouse.

Mars Lighthouse
The oceanic route to the world's northern reaches above the Great Western Sea had been overtaken by glaciers, causing the Adepts to find a more-or-less literal wall of ice blocking them and their ship from progressing toward Mars Lighthouse, so they had no choice but to explore the Western Sea for help. When they discovered an excavation of ancient ruins at Angara's western coast being carried out by dwarves who had christened the site Loho, they got to see a relic of the ancient past that the dwarves had managed to unearth: an authentic cannon, which was a weapon employed by the civilizations of the past in their wars. The Adepts had no more clue as to how to operate it than the dwarves who had discovered it, though.

The Adepts had also heard about the one Elemental Rock that Felix had not yet explored and solved: the volcanic Magma Rock, at the western central region of Angara, which gossip claimed routinely generated uniquely handlable Magma Balls within itself. Putting two and two together, the Adepts decided to explore Magma Rock to empower themselves with new Mars Psynergy and retrieved one of these ball-like objects for themselves, then went back to Loho and used the Magma Ball on the cannon. The cannon discharged and pulverized a large wall in Loho - a clear demonstration of the awesome and destructive power that a developed civilization like those of the past could achieve with their military weaponry. The dwarves, thankful for opening up a new area to dig, placed the cannon onto the Adepts' ship. The Adepts returned to the glacial wall and destroyed it with the cannon, thus opening up the northern reaches and allowing them to proceed on the last legs of their journey.

Felix and Isaac made it to Prox, the hometown of Saturos, Menardi, Karst, and Agatio. The people of Prox were as warm and welcoming as those of any other town the Adepts had come across before, and were certainly different from the vengeful and combative warriors Isaac and Felix had to deal with in their journey even though they were of the same humanlike race, but the people were on the verge of despair themselves; the weather had become bleak and blizzard-ridden because of the phenomenon Hama described, and they knew that Prox would likely be destroyed in the future by the growing abyss to the north, the edge of the world beyond Mars Lighthouse.

As Isaac came to learn, it was the chieftain of Prox, Puelle, who first discovered that the edge of the world was gradually but continually eating away into the land in the direction of Prox, and suspected that the seal placed on Alchemy was the culprit. Prox originally sent emissaries to the town nested at the foot of Mt. Aleph, Vale, to tell them of Prox's plight and try to convince them that Alchemy had to be restored to the world, but Vale's elders refused to listen to them and drove them out by force. Puelle and the Elder of Prox had to take it upon themselves to send Prox's two finest warriors, Saturos and Menardi, to raid Sol Sanctum, take the Elemental Stars they contained, and go on a journey to light the Lighthouses themselves. This was the reason behind the Mars Adepts' two separate, subsequent raids of Sol Sanctum, the first being the one that triggered the Mt. Aleph boulder disaster, and the second being the one that started Isaac off on his journey, and this was also the pair's true motivation for releasing Alchemy into the world - the survival and well-being of their hometown.

Because Karst and Agatio had gone off to light the last Lighthouse themselves, Puelle had given the order that Kyle and the parents of Felix were to be let free should Felix return to Prox. So the people of Prox were just as distressed as the Adepts were when it was found that none of the three adults were anywhere in the village, as though they had gone to Mars Lighthouse themselves. The Adepts met with Puelle and the Elder, where it was immediately brought out how Isaac was the one that killed Saturos and Menardi, but the people of Prox quickly found it within themselves to forgive Isaac on the basis that he proved stronger than them and was now laboring to accomplish their original goal. It had become apparent to everyone that Karst and Agatio were not going to achieve Mars Lighthouse's activation, so Prox called upon Felix and Isaac's party of Adepts to enter the Lighthouse, retrieve the Mars Star, and finish the job for Prox and for the future of Weyard.

The group of Adepts proceeded to enter and begin climbing Mars Lighthouse. Along the way, they encountered and fought a pair of lumbering Flame Dragons. When the dragons were dispatched, they suddenly transformed back into the defeated forms of Karst and Agatio, both near death and having had no recollection of the battle. Karst recalled that while they were exploring Mars Lighthouse, a mysterious force materialized before them, gauged their souls, and determined that they lacked the will to go any farther before turning them into dragons, preventing them from activating the Mars Lighthouse with the Mars Star. When they became aware of Felix's group, Karst and Agatio willingly handed the Mars Star to him and entrusted him with the remainder of their mission, in spite of their prior antagonism with Felix. Felix and the rest of the Adepts were forced to leave the dying pair behind to head toward the aerie of Mars Lighthouse, even as Karst and Agatio swore to themselves to stave off the embrace of death until they could see the light of the Mars Beacon.

At the aerie of Mars Lighthouse, Felix and Isaac's party encountered something that they could not have expected: the Wise One, the guardian of Alchemy's seal and the entity that originally tasked Isaac and Garet with the recovery of the Elemental Stars. The Wise One demanded to know why Isaac disobeyed his command and came to light the Mars Beacon, and Isaac and the rest of the Adepts responded with all that they had found out about how the world would eventually be eroded away by Gaia Falls if Alchemy was not released in time. The Wise One simply countered that if Alchemy was unleashed, mankind may well become the harbingers of Weyard's destruction themselves. Even after the Adepts proclaimed that they would take it upon themselves to ensure that Alchemy not be used for evil, the Wise One simply stated that it was an unshakable facet of human nature that one man would seek dominion over all, and then said that this was going to happen sooner than any of the Adepts could have expected.

The Wise One proceeded to notify the Adepts that Alex was currently climbing the peak of Mt. Aleph even as they spoke; Alex knew far more than any of them, knowing that once the four Elemental Beacons were alight, their lights would gather at Mt. Aleph and merge into a golden beam that would bathe Mt. Aleph's peak. This light, which the Wise One described as the Golden Sun, was the beam of pure, realized Alchemy that would give shape to the Stone of Sages and herald the return of the power of Alchemy to the world. The limitless power that Alex was set to obtain by standing in the path of the Golden Sun had been his one true desire from the very start. The incredible truth came out for the Adepts: Alex had used them all. Even though the Adepts were enormously taken aback by this revelation - Mia felt outright sick with disgust that her own clanmate could do such a thing - Isaac nonetheless remained steadfast in his conviction that the Mars Lighthouse would have to be lit to save the world, even if doing so did satisfy Alex's goal for ultimate power.

The Adepts were ready to light Mars Lighthouse, but though the Wise One claimed he could not stop them, he stated that a "miracle" might happen that could, and proclaimed that only by defeating a miracle could the Adepts be allowed to ignite the beacon's flame before he disappeared and summoned a monster for them to battle: a colossal three-headed dragon of immense power. As the Adepts steeled themselves for the battle, Kraden realized what the dragon truly was, and desperately called for the Adepts not to kill it, but the Adepts charged into their final battle nonetheless. The clash was the longest, most intense, and most harrowing the Adepts had ever experienced, but they were victorious in the end.

Like what had happened with Karst and Agatio earlier, the defeated form of the dragon then transformed into the defeated forms of three separate people, and Jenna broke down when she and her friends discovered who they were: Jenna and Felix's parents and Isaac's father Kyle, the very people their children had hoped to reunite with at the end of their quest. The Adepts were aggrieved to find that they had been tricked into killing their own parents, in an act Kraden described as the Wise One's final trap, a cruel, wretched trick he played because he knew he could not stop the Adepts from lighting the beacon. The Adepts tried to heal the adults with their Psynergy but were too tapped from the battle, and as they mourned, Garet, Sheba, and Piers yelled out into the open air as though to address the Wise One, calling him evil and unable to understand the pain he had caused.

Isaac called for his companions to collect themselves; he revealed that he had already known what he was about to do before he even raised his sword, but went through with the incredibly difficult decision to slay his own father so that the world would be saved. Everyone else, even Jenna, found it within themselves to agree that what they did was for all of Weyard, not themselves, and their parents would understand their decision to defy the Wise One in order to prevent the world's destruction and save millions. And so, Felix cast the Mars Star into the well of Mars Lighthouse, and the Mars Beacon was established.

All of a sudden, the Adepts received a form of long-distance telepathic communication from Mia's young apprentices from Imil, Justin and Megan, who were at Mercury Lighthouse. The children were told by the Wise One that they would be able to talk to them this way, and that they were to pass on the message that now that all of the Lighthouses were lit, the four towers and Mt. Aleph were going to begin the automated process that would give rise to the Golden Sun and shape to the Stone of Sages. All of the lighthouses and Mt. Aleph were going to expel a lot of energy, making them dangerous for people to be near, which is why the Wise One was appearing to people in their dreams and warning them to take refuge; obviously, the Adepts wondered why he would do that considering what he did to them, but then Hama telepathically communicated with them in a similar fashion from Jupiter Lighthouse, where she announced that one's actions did not always reflect one's true intentions, and that the Wise One had a caring heart. She warned them to evacuate Mars Lighthouse immediately, and the Adepts had to instantly decide whether to take their parents' bodies with them or leave them behind, but it made little difference, for the Mars Beacon quickly engulfed the entire aerie in its energy.

Epilogue: The Golden Sun
The beacons of the Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, and Mars Lighthouses had been lit, and the automated process that heralded the forming of the Stone of Sages and the return of Alchemy to all of Weyard played out in earnest. Balance to the elements was restored with the activation of Mars, bringing back warmth and heat to the world and ending the blizzard that had plagued Prox, and the combined influence of the four beacons had resustained the world's life force, allowing for the landmasses of the world to grow back in size over time. The wave of energy that the Mars Beacon expelled during the process had infused the bodies of everyone on the aerie because they were all Adepts, and this included the bodies of the three parents, whose life forces were miraculously renewed by the energy. The Adepts brought themselves and the three adults out of Mars Lighthouse and back to Prox, where the people of Prox proceeded to nurse the adults back to health.

Felix, Isaac, Kraden, and the rest of the Adepts were thanked by Puelle, the Elder, and the rest of Prox for saving their town, for saving all of Weyard, and for effectively bringing about a new age where Alchemy may once again drive the advancement of civilization. Even though it was sad that Karst and Agatio were now gone just like Saturos and Menardi, spirits were high. Isaac was personally concerned, though, about what may have happened to Vale due to all the energy that was being released at Mt. Aleph during the return of Alchemy, and was especially concerned about his mother, Dora, who was ill the last time Isaac saw her. The Adepts, the adults, and Kraden boarded the Lemurian Ship to return home to Vale.

As everyone was boarding the Lemurian Ship, Isaac also pondered why the Wise One did everything he did - lying to Isaac about Alchemy's true relevance to the world at the start of his quest, and trying to stop them from lighting the Mars Beacon by transforming them into a dragon that the Adepts nearly killed, but then saving everyone near the Lighthouses by having them evacuate, etc. Kraden was certain that the Wise One also knew in advance that the parents would be revived by the Mars Beacon. These led him to hazard a guess with great implications: The Wise One's true intention was to test Isaac and his friends as individuals capable of making difficult decisions. Alchemy was a power that could allow for great deeds, but also for great evils, so the release of Alchemy into the world entailed a great new responsibility for Isaac and the Adepts to take upon themselves: to try to stand steadfast against the likely case that the world would now go down the path of war and strife. Because Isaac was willing to sacrifice what was most dear to his heart to complete his quest for the greater good, he had risen to the Wise One's challenge.

When the Golden Sun had temporarily formed from the merging of the energies of the four beacons to bathe the peak of Mt. Aleph in a beam that was the purest manifestation of Alchemy's power, Alex had made it to the peak in time to stand in the center of the beam of light. As the power of the Golden Sun passed through his body to infuse Mt. Aleph below, he gained great power and near-limitless life. Standing triumphant over the success of his grand plan to obtain the ultimate power, Alex eagerly attempted to test his newfound mastery over the elements by calling out to the sky to summon storms to unleash their might upon Vale below... but to his puzzlement, no storm appeared. All of a sudden, the Wise One materialized before him, where he announced that though Alex did indeed receive nearly limitless life and a great increase in his Psynergy power, it was imperfect, and he did not command full mastery of the building blocks of reality. Alex thought the Wise One was trying to anger him, so he used his newfound power to telekinetically push the Wise One back and gloat, but the Wise One drove Alex into the ground and rendered him immobile with a single, powerful telekinetic burst.

Alex could not believe that he was not all-powerful as he should have been, and demanded to know who had robbed him of his dream. The Wise One proceeded to explain that this was set up long ago; when the Wise One awoke from his slumber during Saturos and Alex's invasion of the Elemental Star Chamber, he predicted Alex's plan and set up a precautionary measure against it. The Wise One had imbued the Mars Star that was in Isaac's possession at the time with a mysterious property, which in the present had ended up causing the Mars Beacon to imbue some of the power it would have contributed to the forming Golden Sun into Isaac's body rather than Alex's.

Now that Mt. Aleph had been infused with the Golden Sun, it and all of the landscape surrounding it began to change and collapse, as part of the final phase of Alchemy's reestablishment on the world of Weyard. The Wise One announced that the heavens and earth were changing, and that Alex would be drawn into the earth along with the mountain forever if he did not flee. But alas, Alex could not even move, and the Wise One concluded that Alex now saw the limits of his power and may not survive what was coming up. The Wise One's final statement to Alex before the mountain was drawn into the heart of the earth was that, if Alex survived, they may meet again someday...

Isaac and Felix's companions, Kyle, Felix and Jenna's parents, and Kraden finally reached the last destination on their trip back to Vale, but were horrified by what they saw: Mt. Aleph and the surrounding it were effectively gone, and Vale was completely erased. Despair quickly overtook everyone, who presumed that all of Vale's residents had perished when Alchemy was released, and Isaac and Garet were hit the hardest emotionally, since they believed that Dora and all of Garet's family were now gone forever. But all of a sudden, the townspeople of Vale revealed themselves to be okay; Garet's family explained that the Wise One had evacuated them out of Vale before the town and everything around Mt. Aleph were destroyed. Dora welcomed both Isaac and Kyle home; as they embraced, everyone celebrated in front of where Vale used to be.

And so ended the story of how Isaac and his companions, heretofore known as the Warriors of Vale, came to unleash the "Golden Sun effect" on the world of Weyard.

The Adepts' rite of passage
Thirty years have passed since the Golden Sun effect returned Alchemy to the world of Weyard. The world has changed; the Golden Sun has caused the continents to grow in size and expand, and the landscape has been changed. As an example, what was once the Goma mountain range has now been upheaved to become a crevice-filled highland called the Goma Plateau. The explosive event that was the Golden Sun, however, had caused mass destruction and heralded a new age of unrest and military maneuvers, and the Warriors of Vale, the eight Adepts that set the Golden Sun event off, have been the subject of great controversy across Weyard - some praise them for having saved the world, while others outright resent them and Adepts in general as those that effectively "destroyed" it by letting loose a force that is now out of control. Even under this pressure, the Warriors of Vale would bear offspring.

Upon one of the outcroppings on Goma Plateau, Isaac had constructed a cabin that would allow him to monitor the area around what remains of Mount Aleph over the years. Isaac and his son, the Venus Adept Matthew, live here along with Garet and his son, the hot-headed Mars Adept Tyrell, who is Matthew's closest friend. Visiting today is Ivan's strong-willed daughter, the Jupiter Adept Karis, who has brought over Ivan's invention, a hang glider-like device named the soarwing - this is something that Isaac and Garet need in order to both reach what remains of Sol Sanctum (the land around Mount Aleph has only become more uncrossable on foot over the past three decades because it continues to violently erupt) and keep a more effective watch on occurrences of a phenomenon named Psynergy Vortexes. Having emerged as though they are an aftereffect caused by the Golden Sun event, these distortions in space suck the elemental energy out of the world and Adepts within their vicinity. One enormous Psynergy Vortex in particular once unleashed unimaginable destruction and misery in the center of Angara, such that it was subsequently known as the Mourning Moon.

Isaac and Matthew seemingly have returned from a journey just in time to catch a commotion between Tyrell and Karis on the roof, however, in which Tyrell insists that he takes the soarwing out for a flight. Despite Karis, Isaac, and Garet's objections that flying it without proper instruction and Psynergy-using ability as an Adept is too dangerous, Tyrell takes off, and sure enough he finds that he is gliding downward and unable to maintain altitude. Isaac quickly figures out that for Tyrell to survive, he has to fly across the forest below and land at a small peak at the other side, where he can take cover inside a cave so that they can retrieve him later. After instructing Tyrell as much, Isaac tells the others that they will all accompany him - as he explains to a troubled Garet, they have been training their children so that they may assume the duty to look after the world in their parents' stead, so braving the forest along with the adults will be a good experience.

Isaac and Garet let Matthew and Karis lead the way and fight wild monsters on their own as they cross into a cave trail in the Goma Plateau that leads out into the forest, and the two young Adepts receive their first combat experience. Along the way, the adults instruct the young Adepts in the ways of using Psynergy to both clear obstacles and assist them in their battles (in one instance, it comes out that Isaac and Garet had set up a boulder in advance to test Matthew's ability to recognize when using Psynergy is needed to proceed). Once they reach the forest known as the Tanglewood, though, the adults become concerned; it is now nightfall, which means more monsters will be on the prowl, so Isaac and Garet temporarily lend them some of their Djinn and begin assisting them in combat. They find that due to the darkness and extreme cold permeating the area, many trees within the infamous forest have been corrupted by negative energy, so using Fire Psynergy is sufficient to clear their way through.

Once the four enter the abandoned Psynergy Stone mine at the base of the peak where Tyrell landed on, though, they are surprised to find a particularly large Psynergy Vortex within; not once in all these years had a vortex appeared within the cave itself. They see Tyrell lying unconscious near it too, clearly having had all his Psynergy sucked out. Isaac restates what is theorized about vortexes; these are pure anti-Psynergy that are created by exceptionally dense concentrations of Psynergy in many places, and it is speculated that when they appear, they foreshow the reappearance of the Mourning Moon. The four try to get over to Tyrell, but they are attacked by an enormous, sentient plant monstrosity growing near the vortex. After dispatching it through a long battle, Isaac and Garet transfer some of their Psynergy reserves into Tyrell so that he may recover. While the others are glad Tyrell is uninjured, the soarwing has been destroyed.

Back at Isaac's cabin, Isaac and Garet lay out for the three young Adepts that the soarwing needs to be repaired. The critical material needed to rebuild it is the feather of a Mountain Roc, a rare bird mammoth in size that roosts far across the continent in the country of Morgal. The original quest Isaac and Garet took to find the previous feather was long and difficult because Angara had radically changed, and as they need to stay behind to monitor Mount Aleph and study the aftereffects of the Golden Sun with Ivan, they task Matthew, Tyrell, and Karis to go on the same long journey to find a Mountain Roc feather. This comes across as abrupt, but to Isaac that is the point: thirty years beforehand, they were catapulted into their own quest when they met Kraden, and a tough quest such as this is the perfect rite of passage for Matthew and his friends to undergo as Adepts. On the subject of Kraden, despite what one may have assumed from how old he was thirty years ago, Kraden is still alive and traveling as an Alchemist on research; Ivan believes that because Kraden and all the rest of the Warriors of Vale had been directly exposed to the power of the Golden Sun, all nine of their aging processes have been slowed. Isaac arranges to contact Kraden via carrier pigeon so that the scholar will meet them in nearby Carver's Camp, where he can help them in all matters involving charting a course into the unknown.

Despite having something so big set upon them so suddenly, all three of the young Adepts are eager to go on this quest. Isaac is conspicuously absent while Garet sees the three off, though. Matthew, Tyrell, and Karis set off on their adventure, and head toward Carver's Camp. Along the way, they stop by Patcher's Place, a general store-turned-settlement headed by one Patcher, one of the refugees from the original Vale who had since founded a store and settlement for fellow Valean refugees. Tyrell is not welcome because he nearly burned down the store on his previous stay with his reckless fire Psynergy; nonetheless, he, Matthew, and Karis are allowed to stock up on supplies for their journey and hone their skills as Adepts in the settlement's Psynergy Training Grounds.

Past the road through the Goma Highlands that divides Vale's refugees from the rest of Angara, the Adepts arrive at Carver's Camp just in time to save a small child from falling off a bridge, which was broken by the presence of a Psynergy Vortex. This means, though, that their journey will not be crossing through to the kingdom of Bilibin (rulership of which, incidentally, has been taken up by Lord McCoy's son). The hearty Valean refugee that the lumberjack camp is named after, Carver, passes on an earlier message from Kraden that the Adepts are to find an alternate route to Bilibin by passing through the cave trail underneath the Konpa Ruins, which branches north to Bilibin and south to Angara.

New menaces
The Adepts travel southwest toward the Konpa Ruins, stone ruins that are thought to have once been a spectacular temple covered in gold, the substance held to be the ultimate symbol of Alchemy itself. Having become known in what remains of Lamakan Desert following the Golden Sun event, these mysterious ruins are thought to have been a major center where ancient Adepts could share ideas with visitors. After exploring it and gaining the exclusive knowledge to read the ancient language of glyphs, they reach its cavernous depths to find Kraden and his two pupils, the Mercury Adepts Rief and Nowell - the son and daughter of Mia, respectively - observing a large Psynergy Vortex inside, which is positioned underneath a strange device they have never seen before. Just then, Matthew's group is ambushed by a trio of armored scoutmen that drop in by using extensible, rubber arm-like cables. Matthew's party dispatch the well-trained men after much difficulty.

Kraden and his pupils do not have much time to exchange pleasantries with Matthew, for they are suddenly taunted by two menacing men from above: a foreign-looking swordsman introduced as Blados, and what would appear to anyone that took part in the quest to light the Elemental Lighthouses as Alex revealing himself to be alive after the explosive Golden Sun event thirty years prior, now stylistically adorning half his face with an opera mask. However, none of the children of the Warriors of Vale had encountered Alex before, and Kraden does not make the connection that he is Alex - despite Alex's playful taunt that they know each other from long ago - because Alex had been presumed killed in the Golden Sun event. Therefore, from their perspective, Alex is for the time being a mysterious stranger.

After verifying that Matthew has the ability to read ancient glyphs, Alex and Blados show that they have taken Rief hostage, and lay it out for the Adepts before departing: they will be dropping Rief bound and vulnerable at either the north or south exit of the Konpa Cave, and everyone had better find him before his life is endangered by wild monsters. Knowing perfectly well that the villains are splitting them up, Kraden advises Matthew and his two companions to go out the south exit toward the southern Ei-Jei region of the continent while he and Nowell go through the north exit, and that at a later date they will rejoin and resume their quest for the Mountain Roc feather. In order for Matthew to meet with Kraden in Belinsk, the capital of Morgal and the place they will most likely find clues about the whereabouts of the Mountain Roc, he will have to scale north across the Khiren Mountains that effectively divides Angara into north and south halves.

As soon as Matthew's group exits out of Konpa Cave's south exit, Blados and his soldiers detonate charges to permanently seal off the cave entrance behind them, then taunts that they are all now free to go on their quest and that they are lucky he was granted orders to let them live. Clearly, Blados and his ilk intend for them to be "trapped" in the south portion of the continent for whatever reason, for shortly after the three companions leave they find and extract Rief out of a crate. Before leaving, Blados reminds them that their only chance to make it into the north part of Angara is indeed to cross the Khiren Mountains, which will not be a straightforward affair at all. Rief suggests they follow their path along to the town of Harapa immediately to the southeast so that they can get their bearings.

The Alchemy Machines
Matthew's four-Adept party arrives at Harapa, which Rief, having come here before with Kraden, introduces as a city that has based itself upon ancient ruins, and elemental energy now flows through it. Shortly after the disasters thirty years prior, the well-known monk Nyunpa came to help volunteers build Harapa, but one day he vanished, perhaps into the unreachable ruins north of town. Upon leaving the town, the Adepts decide that their next destination is the mountain town of Passaj at the Khiren Mountains, where they hope to find answers about the possible but difficult route to the other side (it is theorized that the name "Passaj" is meant to evoke the term "passage").

After climbing the mountain trail to Passaj and entering the mountain settlement, Rief immediately takes the others to the mechanical platform at Passaj's mountain peak where Kraden believed lied the key to crossing over. Visible in the distance is the higher peak of the Khiren Mountains, what is now called Craggy Peak, which Kraden said was once one of the homes of the ancient ancestors of Adepts, the Jenei. The particular Jenei that lived on Craggy Peak and looked over this part of Weyard were known as the Neox. Kraden believed that the Neox could travel between these peaks with their powers and the cooperation of the ancient ancestors of the people of Passaj, the master craftsmen known as the Exathi, who helped create a machine that could manipulate the clouds and allow for the construction of a cloudy "sky passage" of sorts. Such machines are based on Alchemy principles, and the machine Passaj contains is called the Alchemy Forge. Kraden couldn't figure out how the machine could be powered the last time he and Rief were here on their travels, however, but that was likely because the only Adepts with him at the time were Mercury Adepts. But since the four Adepts cover all four elements of Psynergy, perhaps they can start it up themselves.

Upon inspecting the massive Alchemy Forge machine built into the mountain, Matthew's group reconnect its conduit portions and use their Psynergy to bring it out of its slumber. In response, the crotchety village elder, Bogho, runs in assuming that Matthew's group is an invader tampering with the forge, but quickly comes to appreciate what it is that they have achieved. The machine is powered by Psynergy; when the ancients originally sealed Alchemy away, the forge stopped, and the Exathi begin its slow decline through the ages to come. However, while it is now active, Bogho points out that the only way the machine can actually be used is by inserting a special object named the Sol Mask; presumably, this is a safety measure was made to ensure that only the Neox's allies could get to the Neox city on Craggy Peak.

The Sol Mask is presently believed to be in a legendary, serpentine labyrinth named the Ouroboros, which like Harapa and the former Exathi nations of Passaj and Ayuthay was built with the help of the Neox. This is unfortunate, as the modern-day enemy of Passaj, the kingdom of Kaocho lorded over by the military-minded King Wo, had built itself above the Ouroboros. In blunt terms, the only similarity the south-to-south-eastern Ei-Jei region of Angara now bears to its equivalent region thirty years before is that its cultures are oriental; Xian has long been lost, for now there are several kingdoms at war. Kaocho has been founded by King Wo, originally from the eastern kingdom of Sana, in a motion of imperial expansion, and he has sent armies to attack Passaj in a clear attempt to get to its Alchemy Forge - which seems strange, since the Alchemy Forge has clearly demonstrated itself to be extremely difficult to start up and use. On the flip side, if the Alchemy Forge can be used and controlled, Passaj would be able to ensure its own safety.

It is now established that retrieving the Sol Mask is just as important for Passaj as it is for the Adepts' own quest. Bogho remarks that this should come across as highly fascinating to the king of the allied nation of Ayuthay to the south, Paithos: being another nation descended from the Exathi, they have a similar Alchemy-related machine, one called the Alchemy Well. Ayuthay's explosive growth over the past two decades can be attributed to how the Alchemy Well suddenly started working about twenty years ago. Bogho's grandson, Baghi, tells Matthew that he has a close friend might know how to survive the Ouroboros: the nephew of Paithos and the prince of Ayuthay himself, Amiti. Baghi also knows how Amiti can be reached, which is extremely important because King Wo is also attempting to take over Ayuthay for its Alchemy Well. The people of Ayuthay have hidden themselves securely underground in their kingdom, so Baghi gives Matthew something he will need to open a secret passage into its castle.

When Matthew's group travels south and attempts to get into Ayuthay, however, the Kaochan soldiers occupying the kingdom walls state clearly that they cannot let Matthew pass unless he bears proof from King Wo that he has joined Wo's army to assist in the invasion. The Adepts decide to pay a visit to Kaocho in the east to see about securing this position. While in town, they learn about Kaocho's motherland, Sana, located at the east end of Angara: legend holds that the Sanans lived even as far back as the ancient times, when they were allied with the ancient peoples. Years ago, Sana was under the iron rule of the warmongering tyrant Emperor Ko, infamous as the "Dread Emperor" for his aggressive expansionism. Ko sought the secret to eternal life, much like how Tolbi's former ruler Babi apparently knew its secret and took it with him to the grave. On Ko's death, a civil war in Sana eventually crowned the scholarly Unan as the new emperor, bringing much-needed peace to the region. Ruling Sana from his capital of Tonfon, Unan successfully repelled Wo's later military attempt to take Sana back. Nonetheless, Ko's example and original goal is what Wo tries to live up to.

At Kaocho's palace gates, Matthew and company are immediately granted entrance because they are Adepts. King Wo, in his throne chamber, has been expecting his "new Adepts" for a while now, and the advisor in his court that has told him of Matthew's arrival in advance is the foreign-looking Chalis, a voluptuous woman with very non-humanlike horns on her head - clearly, she is not a Kaocho native like Wo's other advisors, Kan-Shuku and Meisa. Tyrell correctly deduces from her name that she is affiliated with Blados. Chalis presents Matthew's group as the Adepts that will help Wo fulfill his ambitions, which are to both retrieve the Sol Mask from the Ouroboros and to help his army conquer Ayuthay. Wo describes the Sol Mask as the key to the power that can help him wage war to a greater degree, but decides that the campaign to take over Ayuthay is the more urgent issue for Matthew to contribute to, so he has Matthew take Wo's signed letter of approval.

The Adepts' obvious displeasure with what is happening quickly sours the mood, but Chalis invites the four to act on their intentions to try to take the Sol Mask from the Ouroboros for themselves, and the advisors drop them into the first room of the labyrinth below via a trap door. Chalis explains to Wo that despite their refusal to comply with Wo on the surface, she is certain they will end up proving their worth anyway - in that they will see they can't truly enter the labyrinth yet, will then go to Ayuthay, and later return to enter the dungeon and retrieve the Sol Mask. Down in the first part of the Ouroboros, the Adepts, figuring out what Wo and Chalis are generally intending of them, decide anyway to leave and go over to Ayuthay with Wo's letter in hand.

Amiti and the Alchemy Well
Matthew's group arrives at Ayuthay and presents Wo's letter to the two Kaochan generals leading the occupation, Ku-Tsung and Ku-Embra, who are not impressed by their appearances as inexperienced teenagers. The two have been driven paranoid by what appears to be disembodied laughter, which they perceive as evil spirits, so they task Matthew to find a way into the palace and clear out all of the apparent evil fiends. As soon as the generals leave, the Adepts search the water kingdom's external architecture until they find their way into the kingdom underground using what Baghi gave them.

Underground, the Adepts wake up and are welcomed by Amiti and the hiding people of Ayuthay, and it quickly comes out that the disembodied laughter was merely coming from some of the children from underground. Amiti brings the four Adepts to his uncle, king Paithos, who had been anticipating the arrival of any group of Adepts for some time because of something to do with the Alchemy Well in Ayuthay, which had been started years ago by the alleged miraculous powers of Amiti's late mother, Veriti. Just then, Paithos decides to reveal to Amiti that his conception was not purely of Veriti's power, contrary to what Amiti and the rest of the kingdom had been led to believe all his life.

Paithos reveals to Amiti that he originally told the Ayuthay people that Veriti was the one who started the Alchemy Well, when in fact she had no Psynergy. Starting the water-producing Alchemy Well and finding and placing its respective mask to allow for its operation, the Luna Mask, was the work of the one who truly fathered Amiti, an exceedingly powerful Mercury Adept who came to save Ayuthay and then left before ever disclosing his identity - not even Paithos had ever seen his face. Only Veriti, who seemingly fell in love with the Adept at first sight, knew what he looked like, and it seemed the romance was mutual - and she took it hard when he later left. It was only afterward that she bore Amiti, and shortly after that she passed away from an illness. There is a prophecy that Adepts would come to restore an ancient civilization that included much more than Ayuthay, but the mysterious Adept said he was not the one it was referring to, and he left his work only half-complete; twenty years ago, his restarting of the Alchemy Well indeed turned the desertlike area around Ayuthay lush and green, but it can be made to feed water far beyond Ayuthay, even as far as Harapa. Once, in the golden age of the ancient past, the Alchemy Well and Passaj's Alchemy Forge worked in harmony as a pair to benefit this entire region of Weyard. Paithos is confident that Matthew's group is the group of Adepts prophesied to unite the two Alchemy Machines and bring ancient civilization back to life.

The Adepts report that they have started the Alchemy Forge, but need its respective mask so that it can be operated. Delighted that the Adepts are already well on their way to fulfilling the prophecy, Paithos reveals the existence of one of Ayuthay's guarded treasures, which the Adepts will require to enter the true dungeon of the Ouroboros: the ancient Jenei artifact known as the Insight Glass, which lets the user perceive the inner truths of any environment to show the way forward. This object is within the Barai Temple, currently submerged within Ayuthay's man-made Barai Pond. As Barai Pond serves as a reservoir for runoff water from the Alchemy Well, the temple can only be accessed once all the water is sucked out somehow, and Paithos has heard that it is possible that the Alchemy Well can be put in reverse to achieve this. Amiti is willing to accompany the Adepts in their search.

The five Adepts first investigate the running Alchemy Well, which blends the elements of earth and wind to create water. Suddenly, Amiti hears a telepathic voice in his head from an entity he labels the "Sand Prince", which instructs the Adepts to release him from his bonds so that he will drink the pond dry. The Sand Prince was formerly a legendary man whose powers were based in fire and had been sealed in the Sand Prince Stone since the ancient past, and has waited below Ayuthay for someone worthy enough to claim the gemstone and therefore share his power. The Adepts find the room in question, and the spiritual entity manifests in physical form to test their worth through battle. The Adepts win, and the Sand Prince is content to give itself in gemstone form to them so that Mars Adepts like Tyrell can employ the powers of arid heat to evaporate small concentrations of standing water.

Returning to the Alchemy Well, the Adepts use their power of arid heat to evaporate the water from the small mechanism that determines whether the Alchemy Well is producing water or not, successfully toggling the Alchemy Well into reverse and lowering Ayuthay's water level. The Adepts move to find and enter the now-open Barai Temple in haste, since the people of Ayuthay are temporarily deprived of their water. Like with all ancient ruins Matthew would come to explore over the course of his quest, his ability to read glyphs repeatedly proves invaluable in allowing him to solve the temple's ancient riddles. The five reach a room where a humanoid face projected onto a waterfall through ancient mechanisms warns that though they will gain the Insight Glass, Alchemy must never be returned to the world, and the one who possesses the Glass must help fight its return. It explains that the Glass has a consciousness of its own and chooses who shall possess it, and Amiti is chosen. While unsure what exactly this all implies, the five return to the surface and leave Barai Temple.

Paithos is impressed that they found the Insight Glass, and Amiti expresses his pleasure over having accompanied fellow Adepts on an adventure. The other four say they must go, but Amiti expresses that he was chosen to use the Insight Glass as though the Jenei from long ago wanted it to choose someone from Ayuthay (that the Barai Temple was founded in Ayuthay to begin with seems to corroborate this), so he must accompany the others to the Ouroboros. Paithos is taken aback, but Amiti states bluntly that they can't rely on the kindness of Paithos and his men to fix the problems plaguing the Ei-Jei region, and that he must join the other Adepts. Despite having treated him as his own son for the longest time, Paithos comes to accept that Amiti has chosen his own path, and grants Amiti and his newfound friends his blessing.

After filling the Alchemy Well's small mechanism with water so that Ayuthay's water level rises back up, the five Adepts depart from Ayuthay's sheltered underground. Right on cue, however, they are suddenly confronted by Ku-Tsung and Ku-Embra, who label the Adepts traitors for abandoning their mission to stop the "evil spirits" from laughing. Ready to punish the Adepts with death for toying with Kaocho's two greatest generals, the pair attack, and a skirmish ensues. The Adepts manage to render the two lying wounded on the ground, and just then Paithos and his advisors appear to announce that with Kaocho's generals defeated and tied up, Ayuthay's superiority in this conflict has been demonstrated. The Adepts warn him that these are dangerous times to brag about such a thing, lest Kaocho be prompted to cause more trouble and hinder their quest. Amiti proposes to Paithos to keep the generals hidden, which will cause the standing Kaochan forces to remain idle in Ayuthay and allow the Adepts to enter the Ouroboros without a hassle, and Paithos is eager to agree. Matthew's group departs Ayuthay on this note.

The passage north
Matthew's group of Adepts arrives at Kaocho and enters the true entrance to the Ouroboros labyrinth with the help of Amiti's newfound power of insight. It is only a matter of time before the Sol Mask is in their possession, and they proceed to leave Kaocho and head back to Passaj. Upon returning to the Alchemy Forge, they insert the Sol Mask; rather amazingly, all of the ancient architecture throughout and outside the entire town lights up and rises, seemingly transforming Passaj from a slumlike settlement into an armored fortress. In direct response, the palace in Ayuthay automatically begins to sprinkle and shower water from its top, and the dry land surrounding the kingdom is turned green in a very short amount of time.

The astounded Bogho and Baghi congratulate the Adepts for reforging both Passaj and Ayuthay in one fell swoop and reviving their shared Exathi civilization. Bogho and Baghi also meet their friend Amiti and surprise him with the revelation that his friends are the children of the Warriors of Vale. When the Adepts stand on the mechanical platform at Passaj's mountain peak that is supposed to create a passage of clouds to Craggy Peak, however, the forge's attempt at making a cloud from the floating, lighter-than-air mineral called zol is disappointing to say the least; Baghi is perplexed, and does not know what it is that the clouds might need to be more substantial, but Bogho once again has helpful legends to relate. Just as the Alchemy Well in Passaj needed the Sand Prince Stone to be reversed, the Alchemy Forge has a gemstone of its own that can alter its function, one known as the Ice Queen Stone. This was one of Passaj's greatest treasures; however, a monk stole it from Passaj many years ago.

At that moment, Amiti receives one more telepathic communique from the Sand Prince, who reports that the other gemstone's eponymous Ice Queen is an alluring woman demonic in nature that originally waited for a foolish man to free her so as to escape her gemstone prison. When this was successful, she proceeded to hide in seemingly unreachable ruins relatively nearby, and the passive flow of elemental energy from her powers seeped out from the ruins and allowed the modern-day settlement based around those ruins to thrive. Bogho and the Adepts realize together that this means the Ice Queen is hiding in the ruins at Harapa. The logic behind how the powers of ice she embodies are useful to the issue with the Alchemy Forge is that with the Ice Queen Stone in play, the fire-based Forge can be reversed to forge fire into ice, which bolsters the otherwise fluffy zol clouds that go to Craggy Peak. Agreeing that they need to find this Ice Queen creature in order to finally open the route from Passaj to the north end of the continent.

The Adepts return to Harapa, which has also been rejuvenated by the water that flowed from Ayuthay when both Alchemy Machines were activated. The flowing water allows them to enter the ruins they couldn't before, and after exploring the frozen-over locale they find the "home" of the Ice Queen, where what appears to be a human statue is held prisoner. At first taunting them in spirit form, the entity is aware that Matthew's group restarted the Alchemy Forge and now seeks to use her powers to put the forge in reverse so they can travel to the peak of the Neox. Announcing that it took her an eternity to trick a man like the monk Nyunpa into taking her gemstone away from Passaj, and declaring that she will not go back into a lifetime of servitude, the Ice Queen manifests into physical form and attacks. She is a more powerful and vengeful opponent than the Sand Prince was, but in the end the Adepts best her and render her into harmless gemstone form. Her despair over her fate momentarily makes the Adepts reflect on their actions, but now Mercury Adepts like Rief and Amiti have the capacity to freeze small bodies of water with Psynergy.

Just then, Nyunpa emerges from his statue-like form and stands up rejuvenated to telepathically thank the warriors for freeing him from the Ice Queen's clutches. He introduces himself as having been the head of the former pilgrimage site Fuchin Temple far away, which was when he met the original Warriors of Vale thirty years ago. He had long been on a quest for enlightenment, and after meeting Isaac's group he sank into a deep meditation, one in which he had nearly reached his goal, but then came the Golden Sun event, and the earthquakes and typhoons it entailed. Deciding to put people's lives over his own enlightenment, Nyunpa proceeded to travel the world to help those in need, and his work brought him to Passaj, where people suffered greatly. That was where he beheld the Ice Queen Stone; that his mind was open enough to read other's thoughts was what allowed the Ice Queen to mentally flood it with her forceful will. Nyunpa was externally willed to steal the stone from Passaj, flee to Harapa, and free her from her prison, and he was forced to serve as her puppet for many years because she had found that she was still bound to the stone and unable to stray far from it.

Since the Ice Queen's defeat, the elementally energized water flowing through Harapa from the twin Alchemy Machines is no longer impeded, and now Harapa's ancient architecture glows with an impressive radiance in the night. Nyunpa gives the Adepts his blessings before leaving. When the Adepts try to leave Harapa's main gate, however, they find that it has been sealed shut by a barrier; since even before the Ice Queen's defeat, the power from the ruins regularly causes the barrier gate to shut itself via automated processes every night, which is the reason no enemy has ever successfully launched an attack on Harapa, in ancient times or modern. The Adepts have no choice but to enjoy the evening lights and rest up so they can return to Passaj in the morning.

Having essentially restored all of ancient civilization throughout the southern region of Angara, the Adepts are finally ready to make and utilize the sky passage from Passaj to Craggy Peak so that they can cross into Angara's northern half and meet Kraden in Belinsk. They use their newfound ice powers to put the Alchemy Forge in reverse, once again impressing Bogho and Baghi. Standing once more on the mechanical platform at Passaj's mountain peak, Matthew, Tyrell, Karis, Rief, and Amiti are supported by a strong, solid zol cloud produced by the forge. Seemingly on cue, a large gust of wind blows to the north to send them on their trip across the sky, and Bogho attributes this as a "gift" from the Ei-Jei. The Adepts bid farewell to Bogho and Baghi.

The Adepts find themselves deposited onto an area of the sky named the Clouds of Passaj, where cubes of zol suspended in the air by the winds allow them firm footing far above the ground to walk to Craggy Peak. Having solved the many riddles of the Exathi, they proceed to solve the riddles of the Neox within their former labyrinth in the mountain. They eventually touch back down onto the snow-covered flat regions surrounded within the peaks of the Khiren Mountains.

The realm of the beastmen
When the five Adepts reach a nomadic tent village named Te Rya, a young man on the lookout, the hotheaded Sanan Ryu Kou, immediately takes a hostile stance and labels them intruders and spies befor being told off (with a punch to the stomach) by his elderly master, the calm Hou Zan. As the Adepts learn from the villagefolk, the two are visitors that are being pursued by soldiers of Belinsk, and the reason for Ryu Kou's obvious bitterness is that his younger sister, Hou Ju, is being held captive in Belinsk. Since the capital of Morgal is where the Adepts are going, Hou Zan advises that if they intend to avoid scaling down a sheer cliff to reach the northern region of Angara, as Adepts they may be able to traverse the Teppe Ruins north of Te Rya. This ancient home of the Jenei Adepts was built into the northern face of the Khiren Mountains, but was severely damaged by the Golden Sun event. Incidentally, an important bag belonging to Hou Ju was lost in these ruins.

As the five trek through Teppe Ruins, they catch up to what appears to be a girl with animalistic features, who introduces herself as Sveta, one of the beastmen from Morgal. She has highly attuned senses and is a Jupiter Adept with the ability to read minds, just like Karis' father (but not Karis herself), and has found a bag that the Adepts immediately identify as the one the people in Te Rya were seeking. The reason she didn't return it herself is because Te Rya would attack a beastman on sight: The beastman country of Morgal was originally colonized by the Sanans, but when Morgal's king, Volechek, came to power, he engaged in a violent civil war that successfully drove the Sanans out. Te Rya was founded by Sanans who were chased out of Morgal by Volechek, and bad blood remains on both sides. Matthew's group agree to risk getting involved in the dispute with Te Rya by returning Hou Ju's bag to Ryu Kou, and in return Sveta offers to be their guide into Morgal.

Matthew returns Hou Ju's bag to Ryu Kou, who reservedly expresses his gratitude and relates his secrets. Hou Ju went to Belinsk and was immediately taken captive, even though she had done nothing. Ryu Kou had previously gone back to Belinsk hoping to free her or at least get Hou Ju's bag of things to her. Ryu Kou, Hou Zan, and their Sanan entourage leave Te Rya to cross over back into Morgal. Matthew's group returns to Teppe Ruins and rejoins Sveta; with her animalistic tracking Psynergy and her innate ability to use Psynergy for slapping, they find their way through to the plains of the northern half of Angara.

When it comes out that the rest of the Adepts intend to retrieve a feather from the Mountain Roc, though, Sveta flinches, explaining that to do that would require physically plucking a feather off the creature that Morgal's beastmen views as divinity. She personally cannot help them get their feather for this reason, so she proposes that she will wait in Belinsk while they do what they must, and gives them the following instructions on how to reestablish contact with her when they are done: they are to find a band of minstrels in Belinsk and request they play the piece known as the Arangoa Prelude. Sveta leaves the party on this note. The Adepts' discussion turns to the Mountain Roc itself, during which Amiti reveals that he saw the Mountain Roc in the sky once while he was taking a hunting lesson as a child. It was enormous beyond belief, causing windstorms with every flap of its wings. Isaac would probably have fought it, so the five Adepts decide that their next course of action is to find Kraden having hopefully made it to Belinsk through Bilibin.

One of the many effects the Golden Sun event had on the world was to mutate many of its denizens into part-man, part-beasts. Not only were groups of humans caused to mutate fur and fang, but wild animals were also transformed into anthropomorphic forms and were granted sapiency and the ability to speak the human tongue. Despite this amounting to two distinctive varieties of beastmen in Weyard and being initially hated by humans for a while, they seamlessly coalesced into their own society and territory spanning Weyard's upper half east of the Bilibin region. Emperor Ko of Sana originally invaded Morgal because he thought blood from the Mountain Roc would make him immortal, and Volechek's parents were killed in the war. Bilibin refused to lend help, but Morgal was able to fight back the Sanans, kill the Sanan royal Lord Kuan, and win their independence nonetheless. Understandably, this is why nowadays Volechek won't establish friendly relations with Bilibin and Sana.

The five Adepts arrive at the city of Belinsk, located in the midway point between Bilibin to the west and Kolima Forest to the east. They speak with the five-strong minstrel troupe of former-animal beastmen, who find joy in traveling throughout Morgal to spread their music, but they do not have the capacity at present to play Arangoa Prelude; their band leader, Vande, is currently out on a trip to find musical inspiration by listening to the cry of the Mountain Roc, and several other members are about to depart for their own inspiration. Arangoa Prelude is an ancient musical incantation that has no sheet music - each of the six parts is given by a master musician to one apprentice, and all six must be gathered and in the right state of mind in order to play the extremely demanding piece. It is said that properly performing the piece can cause miracles. Noting that they won't be signaling Sveta to be their guide anytime soon, the Adepts also find that Kraden is nowhere to be found, and leave town to search for him.

Matthew and company decide to head west to Bilibin, presuming Kraden simply didn't arrive in Belinsk yet. They arrive at the small settlement outside Bilibin's borders, the aptly named Border Town; before, it has sustained itself on trade with Belinsk, but its trade routes have been cut off by Bilibin's war against Morgal, which is no doubt the doing of Lady McCoy. The Adepts are suddenly approached by two Champan pirates, who explain that they are here by their captain Briggs' order to seek the help of Kraden, Briggs' old mate, by giving him Briggs' letter. Briggs's son, Eoleo - who had taken his father's place as the prince of Champa and scourge of the Eastern Sea - has been captured by Belinsk and slated for execution by boiling by the next full moon, but Briggs' other old friend from thirty years back, Piers, told him that Kraden was in Bilibin, and that Matthew's group was in the Ei-Jei region at the time. The two Champan pirates haven't been able to get into Bilibin because the only viable naval passage has been blocked by ice, which means there is no conceivable way to get into Bilibin at all.

Since all Matthew and his friends know about these men are that they are pirates that fought Felix and his compatriots thirty years before, they are apprehensive at first about helping. But the two Champan pirates relate that they know the Warriors of Vale would have helped, and share the information that Briggs has probably already attempted a head-on assault at Belinsk's palace with his ship. He probably won't stand up to Belinsk's cannons - which were heard firing earlier - so hopefully he would end up going back to Port Rago at the northeastern end of the continent. It is another former Exathi settlement whose modern-day descendants are talented shipwrights. After the Champan pirates leave, though, Amiti expresses a rather severe degree of contempt toward Champa and pirates in general, calling them roving sea thugs, but the others state that there probably are not absolutes of right and wrong in the world, and they don't know for sure if Eoleo is really what his norotiety makes him out to be. Besides, Ryu Kou's sister is also being held captive in Belinsk, and there is no argument that she warrants saving, so the Adepts proceed west to Port Rago.

The Mountain Roc
Matthew and his friends encounter the elderly and grizzled pirate Briggs amongst the great shipyards of Port Rago, and Briggs is able to instantly identify the Venus Adept as Isaac's son because of how he has the eyes of his mother, Jenna (who incidentally is living at the Kalay region). His ship had been heavily damaged in his earlier attack on Belinsk's palace, but for sentimental regions he is having the shipwrights at Rago repair it rather than construct a new vessel. While it was Kraden's help he originally hoped for, Briggs states that the help of Adepts might be the best kind for him. Since Kraden is nowhere to be seen, Briggs proposes that while he will remain behind and wait for his vessel to be repaired, the Adepts should seek information from a different elder that Piers told him about. Briggs wasn't listening all that intently at the time, so all he remembers was that this elder was named Tret and that he lived in Kolima Forest, and that this Tret knows about both the Mountain Roc the Adepts are seeking and about how Belinsk Castle can be attacked by land. Since it is known that Tret owes a great debt to Isaac, Briggs is certain that Tret will answer Matthew's questions. The Adepts decide that they are curious about this Tret and that they will volunteer for Briggs' favor, and Briggs rewards them with something else that Piers gave him - some Hermes' Water, which can cure any kind of disease. Once again, at the time Briggs wasn't listening as well as he should to Piers' story, because all he remembers is that Isaac had apparently used it on a tree or forest.

The five Adepts arrive at Saha, a Morgal settlement in front of Kolima and its forest. Originally, Kolima was closer to Bilibin, while Saha was a small settlement hidden deeper in the Saha marshlands of the forest. A great earthquake triggered by the Golden Sun event literally buried the Saha Marshlands underground, along with many of its wildlife, but while much of the rest of upper Angara was destroyed by the Golden Sun event, Kolima was miraculously spared and actually shifted east so that it now lies just beyond Saha where the marshlands were originally located. The removal of the swampwater allowed fertile lands to take their place, allowing Saha to become a thriving settlement while letting Kolima retain its image as a fairy tale settlement. At present, though, one of the four great trees comprising Kolima's habitable quarters has taken on an illness, and the superstitious Sahans believe the residents have been subjected to yet another curse. The tree in question, the Dream Tree, is the one that grows a rare leaf called Dream Leaf, popular as an edible commodity that lets the user have pleasant dreams, and before it fell ill the merchants came from all over to gather Dream Leaves to sell. But in response to the alleged curse, Saha has closed off its north gate leading to Kolima in an attempt to quarantine it.

The Adepts sneak their way into the quarantined Kolima, where they find that though its denizens are certainly distressed, they are not under the effects of a curse themselves. However, the Dream Leaves from the ill Dream Tree in town now cause nightmares instead of dreams. Also, Kolima Forest beyond town has become infinitely more perplexing, causing those attempting to traverse it to walk in circles. The Adepts incidentally find Vande in town, who explains that he won't be going back to rejoin his band in Belinsk until he sees the Mountain Roc. The Adepts approach Kolima's mayor and offer to help out, and it comes out that in order to determine how the Dream Tree needs to be healed, the Adepts will have to consume the tainted Dream Leaves and sleep in the Dream Tree themselves. They agree.

The five Adepts seem to share a dream in which they are all pulled through the ground into a metaphysical plane representing the Saha marshlands that were buried underground by the Golden Sun event. They are attacked by the embodiment of the anger of all the marshland creatures that were killed by the Golden Sun event, a wretched lizard monster. When they destroy it, the five suddenly wake up from their dream trip and find the monster's body lying dead next to them, and it leaves behind a tusk that grants Mars Adepts like Tyrell the Psynergy ability to crush rocks. With the source of the taint cleansed, the Adepts then use Hermes' Water on the Dream Tree, restoring it to full vitality and ensuring that Kolima's residents have nightmares no longer.

Matthew and the Adepts are suddenly congratulated by a Venus Djinni named Pewter, who serves as an emissary of Laurel. He brings the Adepts the message that Laurel invites them to her domain in Kolima Forest, and explains that it was the lizard monster that was originally making Kolima Forest impassable. Pewter guides them through the forest until they meet Tret and Laurel and see for themselves that they are giant, talking trees. The two introduce themselves as plant-based beings called the Waelda, whose long lives allow them to gather a great degree of the world's knowledge, and they thank the Adepts for healing the Dream Tree. Though the Waelda are seemingly divine guardians of the forest, they have remained injured since the Golden Sun event thirty years prior, which is why they weren't able to take care of the Dream Tree issue themselves. But now, Tret is content to look into their auras to recognize them as the children of the Warriors of Vale that saved him before; mysteriously, however, Tret identifies Amiti as another relative of Mia. This leaves the Adepts confused, but the Waelda quickly determine this line of conversation to be a triviality.

Tret and Laurel give information about the Mountain Roc feather they seek; the Mountain Roc roosts on the mountain just north of Kolima Forest, Talon Peak, but it is in such a deep sleep that its physical composition is more akin to stone, which would make retrieving one of its feathers impossible. Only a slapping Psynergy useable by beastmen Adepts can wake it; the Adepts immediately think Sveta will be needed, but they know they won't be able to reach her until later. But Tret explains that this particular Psynergy power is also bound within a national treasure of Belinsk called the Slap Glove. Speaking of Belinsk, when the Adepts ask if there is a way to break into Belinsk's prison to free its captives, the Waelda explain that there is a hidden door into ruins underneath Belinsk's castle, but it can't be used without being powered somehow, and Belinsk's energy was depleted some time back. The power source they will be seeking to gain entry comes in the form of small shards of magma power that naturally form within the stomach of the Mountain Roc.

Nonetheless, the Waelda warn that there was a good reason why power to Belinsk's ruins was originally cut: lying dormant within these ruins is an ancient machine called an Alchemy Dynamo, which they insist must not be powered. To this end, they refuse to even share the method of how it can be powered up in theory. While the Adepts are not happy to be left out of potentially important information, they figure that they wouldn't intentionally turn on some dangerous machine while rescuing the captives in Belinsk's palace anyway, so they promise Laurel this and set off toward Talon Peak.

Before reaching Talon Peak, the Adepts encounter Ryu Kou and Hou Zan again, and it is revealed they were listening in on the Adepts' conversation with the Waelda. Knowing that the Adepts' goal is the Mountain Roc, Ryu Kou presents to them the Slap Glove they will need, which he explains was given to him by Sveta. Sveta told him and Hou Zan to wait at the base of Talon Peak for the Adepts so that they could accompany the Adepts in both their quest for the Mountain Roc and their planned rescue of the hostages in Belinsk castle, Eoleo and Hou Ju. Karis deduces from Sveta's capacity to grant the Adepts this national treasure of Morgal that she is a figure of high ranking, and Ryu Kou affirms that Sveta is the sister of King Volechek and thus of Morgal's royal family, the Czamaral clan. Per what Sveta arranged for, Matthew and Ryo Kou's sides accept a partnership.

The five Adepts and their two guests climb Talon Peak until they reach the enormous stone form of the Mountain Roc. They use the Slap Psynergy bound within the Slap Glove to slap the bird's prominent wattle and wake it up, and they slap its wattle again to knock it out cold, allowing them to finally retrieve one of its large and dazzling feathers. But just then, Blados and Chalis appear and announce that they have been waiting for the Adepts for a while. That they are familiar with the Czamaral clan and have waited in ambush for the Adepts and their two guests at the top of Talon Peak tells Ryu Kou and Hou Zan a lot: Volechek is in league with these villains. Morgal's king originally let Ryu Kou and Hou Zan escape Belinsk's palace, knowing that Sveta would come after the two, give them the Slap Glove, and point them to Talon Peak, and so this trap could be prepared in advance. Blados and Chalis are impressed by this deduction.

Blados and Chalis state that they had Eoleo captured just to help draw the Adepts into their trap: They want the Adepts to slay the Mountain Roc and retrieve its Magma Orb. Tret and Laurel did not tell the Adepts that the shards of magma energy that naturally form within the giant bird's stomach coalesce into a full jewel-like sphere, or that a Magma Orb sphere is precisely what the Alchemy Dynamo in the ruins underneath Belinsk is powered by. Blados and Chalis won't disclose why they want this machine started, but before they leave, they threaten that if the machine is not activate with the Magma Orb soon, both Hou Ju and Eoleo will regret it. Just then, the Mountain Roc regains its composure and attacks the Adepts, and a fierce battle ensues, but they ultimately slay the beast.

The seven enter its insides to find a full Magma Orb inside, as well as several lesser Magma shards; however, the Adepts figure that if they are to honor their promise to Tret and Laurel not to power the Alcehmy Dynamo, they should leave it behind. But just then, Ryu Kou steps forward to claim the Magma Orb for himself, and makes known his full intention to use it to do what it is that Blados and Chalis want and what the Waelda don't want, to power up the allegedly dangerous machine under Belinsk. After all, if he doesn't, his innocent sister will be boiled alive. While most of the Adepts are appalled, Karis think she knows how Ryu Kou means; it was the Adepts that promised the Waelda not to use the Orb, so to prevent the Adepts from being the ones to break their own promise he took the Orb and the burden for himself. But Ryu Kou brusquely tells her off and retorts that it's not like that at all; he's simply tired of not taking the obvious solution to the big problem. Threatening that he will smash the Orb and kill everyone with the resultant explosion of energy if he is not allowed to do what he must, Ryu Kou demands and receives the Slap Glove, then states that the Adepts can have the Magma shards for if they want to follow Ryu Kou and Hou Zan into Belinsk's underground. A regretful Hou Zan leaves with Ryu Kou on this note, and after expressing their anger and disappointment, the Adepts leave Talon Peak as well.

On their way back through Kolima, the five Adepts encounter Vande again, who exclaims that he has seen and heard the Mountain Roc from his vantage point; inspired for his music, Vande goes back to Belinsk to rejoin his band.

The Grave Eclipse
The Adepts decide to return to Briggs in Port Rago to give him an update, where they tell him that Tret didn't have information on how to actually lead an assault on Belinsk; however, the Adepts will be needing to go into Belinsk's secret passage themselves and find Ryu Kou again. Briggs knows Ryu Kou as the prince of the country that Volechek destroyed and who was forced to escape while leaving his little sister behind, and it makes sense that he is probably back in Belinsk now. Naturally, Briggs is only interested in rescuing his own son, but the chances of him being able to do so with his old and breaking ship in time for Eoleo's scheduled execution is none; he considers himself helpless while his ship's repairs remain incomplete. The Adepts are not impressed by Briggs using his broken ship as an excuse not to rescue his son and to have the Adepts do the work for him, but Briggs swears that he will sail for Belinsk as soon as he is ready. Amiti is the most appalled about helping Briggs in any way, but the Adepts ultimately decide they will need to go to Belinsk anyway, so that the two very different captives can be saved.

Matthew and his friends return to Belinsk and request Vande's minstrel troupe to play Arangoa Prelude; when the music starts, every beastman in Belinsk is put in a deep state of mesmerization. The Adepts receive remote telepathic messages from Sveta made possible by the Prelude, who apologizes for hiding her blood relation with King Volechek. She instructs the Adepts to take advantage of the cover the music grants them to enter a newly opened stairwell down into Belinsk Ruins. The magma shards they retained from the Mountain Roc allow them to open up doorways through the ancient hallways they couldn't have otherwise.

Inside Belinsk Ruins, Sveta thanks the Adepts for keeping their promise, and tells them that Blados and Chalis are also inside the ruins. Sveta identifies the duo as commanders of the nation Tuaparang, which the Adepts have heard of before in name only and whose soldiers they have fought before. In truth, Tuaparang is not so much a nation as it is a gigantic fortress-like airship that flies across the world and styles itself as a nation, and as such it is also named the "Zenith Tribe". The enigmatic nation, ruled by an individual known only as the "High Empyror", has great scientific and military prowess, and is very clearly focused on all things related to Alchemy, military power, and conquest, without focusing on helping its citizens at all. Sveta also confesses that she never wanted to mislead the Adepts, but when she had seen Hou Ju imprisoned after losing her parents, she thought to help her brother Ryu Kou; the Adepts break it to her that Blados used Sveta, and it quickly dawns on her that Volechek is working with Blados as part of his scheme. Though distressed, Sveta is eager to accept the Adepts' invitation into their group to explore the ruins to get into Belinsk Castle from below.

While invaluable to their ability to explore the area, Sveta, despite being of Morgal's royal family, is not familiar with much of it. She and the others quickly find that the path she took from inside Belinsk Castle to meet the Adepts has mysteriously disappeared, though, and she can sense that some sort of mechanical process has been activated in the dungeon below. The six Adepts are distressed to realize it may have been Ryu Kou using the Magma Orb, so they decide to put their attempt to figure out how to get into Belinsk Castle above on hold and descend into the ruins.

When they get to a gate-like edifice leading deeper into the ruins, Karis and Sveta both get the feeling that they are being guided downward, but they get the strangest sensation that it is not the Tuaparang - though they have no idea who else it could be. Suddenly, Ryu Kou and Hou Zan enter behind them, evidently having followed them through the ruins' passages for some time. The two allay the others' suspicions by reporting that just now they entered Belinsk Ruins entirely on their own, and that the simple path they took had suddenly disappeared to prevent them from going back; clearly, the cuprit also wants Ryu Kou and Hou Zan to go downward. Karis also finds it very fishy that if the Tuaparang wanted the Magma Orb to power the Alchemy Dynamo in the ruins below, they could just take it and do it themselves, but it is as though the Adepts and the two Sanans are being guided to be the ones to do it.

It occurs to Sveta that tonight is the night of the full moon, which is an important cultural observance for the beastmen of Morgal above in which they pray for the revival of ancient civilization. That all of their guided exploration of Belinsk Ruins is coinciding with this event seems to imply that Volechek and Blados intend to use the Alchemy Dynamo to perhaps make the revival of ancient civilization a reality. Everyone knows full well that their enemies want them down at the Dynamo, yet that they are barred from going back and that they must press forward to get closer to saving the two captives, so the six Adepts and Ryu Kou once again form an uneasy partnership, and pass the gate into the deeper ruins. As they progress, they get the impression from evidence left behind that whoever passed through the ruins before them and is guiding them downward is a tremendously powerful Adept.

Near the end of the dungeon, everyone finds the gate to the core of the Alchemy Dynamo, which projects a humanoid face through ancient mechanisms much like what the Adepts had encountered at the bottom of the Barai Temple. It introduces itself as a Ward, which is an ancient system that protects the Dynamo by replicating the will of a Jenei official once known as the Warden of the North, and describes what lies beyond as the heart of Luna Tower, waiting to be unsealed. Everyone gets the feeling that Luna Tower may not be a good thing to unseal, based on what the Waelda warned and how difficult the ancient security measures they have had to bypass have been, but head in anyway. At the core of the Alchemy Dynamo, the Ward instructs for the Magma Orb to be placed into the machine.

Alex, Blados, and Chalis choose this moment to make their reappearance and reveal that they are the ones that have been guiding everyone down to the Alchemy Dynamo core. Alex commands them to place the Magma Orb into the machine, and Blados and Chalis decide to show them in advance what will happen if they don't cooperate by launching an attack on the Adepts. A fierce battle ensues, but the Adepts eventually manage to render the powerful duo immobile. While Blados and Chalis commend them, they state that they won the war nonetheless; the Adepts find Alex about to make Ryu Kou place the Magma Orb inside the machine, and he flexes his extreme power to keep the Adepts at bay. Sveta calls the Mercury Adept out as a Tuaparang, but he surprises the Adepts by stating he isn't really one.

After Alex tells Ryu Kou that the latter has a choice, but that his sister Hou Ju's face hangs in the balance, Ryu Kou complies with Alex's order to start the machine, despite all the Adepts' desperate protests. Alex assures that Ryu Kou's sister will now be safe. Enraged at Alex's manipulation of Ryu Kou despite Alex's claim that Ryu Kou did this of his own free will, Hou Zan attempts to attack Alex, but he simply warps away and picks up Blados and Chalis. Alex gives everyone the reason for wanting to activate Luna Tower: like the Elemental Lighthouses, Luna Tower also contains a power that has been sealed away for eons, the only difference here being that the tower's creators never wanted its prison broken. Also, he claims that opening the seal on this machine is "only the beginning". The Ward announces the powering of the Alchemy Dynamo and recites an emergency warning for all personnel inside Luna Tower to evacuate, so Alex evacuates the core's chamber by warping away with Blados and Chalis, but not before granting his current codename as part of the duo's unit, "Arcanus". This is the name Matthew's group will use to refer to the Mercury Adept, since they are still unaware of his true identity.

Taking "Arcanus'" hint to flee posthaste, the Adepts start to climb out of the core just as the Ward announces that Luna Tower is ascending to the surface. By the time they find an exit outside, they find that they have come out of a towering structure that has raised up behind Belinsk castle from under where Belinsk's museum has previously been located. The people and musicians of Belinsk are amazed because this appears to be the restoration of ancient civilization they have customarily prayed and played the Arangoa Prelude for all these years. It is now nighttime, but not only have the scheduled executions at Belinsk Castle been called off, now its front doors are open. The palace guards explain to the Adepts and their two guests that it was Arcanus, the man king Volechek favors, who ordered them to let the Adepts pass.

Matthew's extended group is allowed to explore Belinsk Castle and free the two separately-held captives without any resistance. They immediately go toward Hou Ju's cell, and all of a sudden, Sveta's brother, King Volechek himself, comes in to open the girl's cell. He calmly states that he came to thank his little sister for activing his tower. All of a sudden again, who else should arrive but Kraden, greeting the Adepts for the first time since Konpa Cave. Volechek is intrigued, because the last time he saw the elderly scholar was when Kraden and the Warriors of Vale visited Belinsk during the reign of Volechek's father. Volechek's father was a great help in Isaac's original effort to obtain a Roc feather. Volechek is also impressed to hear that the Adepts are the offspring of the legendary Warriors of Vale, since he wasn't told that by his contacts. But Kraden states that there are plenty of things that Volechek hasn't been told by those he was working with, such as the Eclipse Tower (Luna Tower's original name).

Kraden gravely states that activating Eclipse Tower was a terrible mistake. Volechek retorts that Morgal has suffered for ten long years under foreign rule, and that it has no choice but to arm itself with the power of the ancients so that Sana and Bilibin can be subjugated before they return the beastmen to slavery. When asked by Sveta why ally himself with the Tuaparang, Volechek angrily calls the meeting over and walks off. Kraden bears the following bad news about the tower: Volechek has been deceived by the Tuaparang into believing that Eclipse Tower is a weapon that can be used as a deterrent, when in fact its real function is something else that will likely bring calamity to the world. Kraden advises the three Sanans that they must flee Belinsk as fast as they can, because as non-Adepts they may not survive what's to come, despite Ryu Kou's proclamation that he ought to stick with Matthew to repay him for helping reunite Ryu Kou with his sister. The Sanans take his advice and bid farewell.

Kraden has long suspected that the Adepts' actions have been manipulated, and when he hears from the Adepts that the manipulator nowadays calls himself "Arcanus", Kraden deduces that he would have needed that name to associate with the Tuaparang. But with calamity imminent, Kraden and the Adepts rush to rescue Eoleo, and drop him out of his suspended cage. An awkward moment between him and the Adepts ends when Eoleo sees Kraden, who he remembers visiting Champa when he was a toddler.

Just then, Sol (the sun) rises up to assume a position behind Luna (the moon) while the tower looses much energy, causing the great calamity that would come to be known as the Grave Eclipse. Eoleo accompanies Kraden and the Adepts out of Belinsk Castle to find that dark monsters are now manifesting from the great shadow cast upon on much of the entire northern hemisphere of Weyard, attacking and killing soldiers and civilians alike. Kraden theorizes that evil energy concentrates much more strongly in this particular darkness than in normal darkness and prevents light from dispelling the fell energies, creating monsters that are both no longer confined to their usual haunts and are bolstered in strength. It is a dark dawn indeed.

Kraden takes everyone to Belinsk's pier, where he had previously arrived with Briggs on a noticeably repaired ship. Eoleo is aghast to find that the ship has some of the shadow monsters on it, and he and Matthew clear them out. But Briggs has been mortally wounded, having stayed behind on his ship to protect it when the dark dawn began. Briggs' last words to his grieving son is to tell Chaucha that he is sorry to leave her alone, and to take care of Champa. Later, after Briggs is given a memorial in which his body is shoved out to sea in a coffin, Eoleo swears he will make the true culprits of the plot to set up the eclipse pay, and swears his loyalty to Matthew's group of Adepts. He himself is a Mars Adept, and the ship itself is actually not the one that Briggs was trying to get repaired - the shipwrights of Port Rago had given up on it, but the next time they looked they found it repaired almost to the point of being replaced by an entirely separate ship, and it moves without oars or wind.

As the Adepts shove off on Eoleo's new ship, Sveta receives telepathic communication from Volechek at Eclipse Tower, who expresses great remorse for not seeing until it was too late that the Tuaparang was using him. He spirits to Sveta a Blue Orb that he stole from Blados, hoping that it will in some form amount to a weapon her companions can use against the Tuaparang. He refuses Sveta's offer to join them on their boat on the basis that he cannot leave his kingdom's capital when he was the one who may have destroyed it, and he commands her to live as the last of the Czamaral line. Volechek and Sveta bid a sad farewell to each other before he meets his fate.