There is an invisible ceiling over the sky of Terra. At roughly 6,000 meters altitude, a barrier called the Starshell confines humanity to this narrow strip of land.

Everyone who ever tried to go beyond it failed — like the Wright couple, who lost their lives during a flight experiment. The world mocked them as madmen who'd burned tax money for nothing.

But one night, a massive ring rose into the sky over Trimounts. The military called it a superweapon. Some called it a catastrophe.

But it was, in truth, the answer a daughter had spent twenty years preparing — inheriting her parents' dream.

1. A star fell from the sky

The story begins when a chemical plant in Trimounts' District 13 explodes entirely.

The cause wasn't an accident — it was an object that fell from the sky. A massive ring-shaped machine: the test flight vehicle of 'Project Ark I.'

Rhine Lab's Director-General Christine had vanished two weeks earlier with the machine in tow. Colonel Blake's military believes it to be a superweapon that could shake the continent, and pursues Christine even at the risk of assassinating the Vice President.

Into the middle of this chaos step Rhodes Island's Doctor, Kal'tsit, Ifrit, and Rosmontis. Christine's longtime friend Saria and Rhine Lab researcher Silence also begin to move, each for their own reasons.

The military's assassination attempt on the Vice President is blocked by Ifrit, who throws her own body in the way. She recalls the old tale that if a star falls from the sky, everyone's wish comes true. That star was truly about to fall.

2. A company of madmen

Rhine Lab looks, on the surface, like Columbia's foremost science and technology company. But look inside, and it's a place festering with everyone's private ambitions.

Ferdinand, the jealousy-eaten former Head of Energy, becomes the military's dog to bring Christine down. Head of Rescue Parvis clings to forbidden experiments to transcend his own aging decline.

Banshee Nasti searches the sky for 'permitted land' for the Sarkaz, while Business Head Justin tries to grasp other people's fates with money and connections. Each of them believes the direction they're looking is 'progress' itself.

And then there's Human Resources Investigation Head Yara. Once an actress who lit up the silver screen, she alone sees Christine not as a Director-General, but as a stubborn child — out of guilt over that accident twenty years ago.

I've never once been a mother. But I do have one child.

— Yara

What's more frightening is the state itself. Vice President Jackson, and the President watching over him, already know everything and are simply stalling for time. While Blake's military struggles just to catch Christine, the politicians see Rhine Lab's downfall as nothing more than an acceptable loss.

3. Silence, the earnest scientist

Within this company of madness, the most ordinary researcher, Silence, quietly begins to waver.

Chasing the scene of the accident, she runs into her mentor Parvis. He had been using 'transmitters' to create artificial consciousness, trying to forge a 'superhuman' that would transcend his own ordinariness.

Silence stands directly against her mentor's ambition. She knows all too well how many innocent people have been used up as expendable tools in the name of progress.

Science isn't a god. Science is just a road that people walk on. ...Science looks at everyone in earnest.

— Silence

But Parvis dissolves his own consciousness into the transmitter, turning himself into raw material for the experiment. Unable to stop him, Silence collapses.

That's when Ifrit grabs her by the collar. Why are you trying to carry it all alone, she asks — we're right here with you. With that one line, Silence gets back on her feet.

4. Narcissa's judgment

Meanwhile, a letter arrives for Rosmontis. Prisoner No. 30, who should be locked away in prison, Loken, has summoned her 'home.'

Loken was Rosmontis's lost past — the very man who called her 'Narcissa' and put her on the operating table, and also the gentle old man who visited every week with flowers.

Facing death, Loken opens a trial for himself, hoping Narcissa will resent him and kill him out of that fury. He doesn't want to die alone.

Rosmontis, on the verge of running out of control, is held back by Ifrit — only we ourselves can control who we are. Rosmontis neither forgives Loken, nor becomes his weapon.

I was simply waiting for you to die. ...Now, I've forgotten you.

— Rosmontis

5. A drop's dream

Muelsyse, the Ecology Head who has been helping the Doctor, carries her own sorrow.

She is an elf uniquely vulnerable to Originium — a race that can't survive a month once Oripathy takes hold. Her parents, her village, had already become a graveyard.

So Muelsyse grew her own private garden in Rhine Lab's ecology dome. And Christine made her a promise: if this land isn't your place, maybe there's somewhere beyond the stars where your people can live. So let's leave together.

Dancing with the Doctor and pouring out her past, Muelsyse ultimately sides with Christine — pushing the Doctor out the door, for the sake of her own dream.

I walked such a long road and finally found a small forest... but I'm not a leaf. I'm just a drop of water.

— Muelsyse

6. The woman from yesterday

Ho'olheyak, who betrayed the Mayländer Foundation to help Christine, is Christine's exact mirror opposite.

Where Christine risked her life to see the future, Ho'olheyak inherited centuries of memory chasing only the past — the revival of the ancient Kukulkan bloodline. If she could touch that old glory within her short lifespan, her life meant nothing to her.

Tin Man, leader of the Mayländer, stands in her way. To Ho'olheyak, who inherited 300, 500 years of memory, this Revenant shows what the weight of ten thousand years truly means.

In the end, what Ho'olheyak encounters is the final revelation left by Christine's 'god' — a vast moon, and a tiny Terra floating in the universe. Before that, even her own bloodline and obsession were mere dust.

Having had everything she believed in denied, she realizes for the first time that she wants to fight for 'herself,' not her bloodline. Carrying that obsessive hunger for the future, she sets foot in Rhodes Island.

7. What sleeps beneath the sky

The Doctor and Kal'tsit chase Christine's energy source deep beneath the wasteland, and there they encounter the 'Preserver.'

It was a consciousness that, tens of thousands of years ago, froze hundreds of thousands of its kin to escape some ruin, remaining alone and awake ever since. The Doctor's lost kin were sleeping inside those coffins.

The Preserver challenges the Doctor to a 'debate.' Within that technique of mixing thoughts, the Doctor confronts himself. Who were you before you lost your memory? Do you have the resolve to reclaim the truth? The voices of Amiya and Theresa shake him.

The being Christine called 'god' was this very Preserver. It decides to hand the last blood of its civilization over to Christine — better to offer it to a new heart than to keep guarding a dying lamp.

The Preserver also lets slip a clue tying the Doctor's past to Originium — his memory loss was never mere chance. Still, it says, that answer must be faced by the Doctor himself. And in its final dying moment, it asks to be erased simply as a single human being named 'Trevor Preston.'

Kal'tsit says this land isn't ready to look at the stars yet — that she fears Christine's spark could become the next horn of conquest. Even so, she answers, she is now a member of Rhodes Island, and a person of Terra.

8. Stellaria

'Project Ark I' never actually existed. It was a bundle of scrap paper to fool the military. This flight vehicle's true name is Stellaria — an ark bound for the stars.

Ferdinand clings to his instrument panel, mocking even the military colonel, determined only to record the truth of this moment. Amid people each lost in their own madness, Stellaria keeps rising.

At its heart, Saria finally catches up to Christine. In a planetarium where artificial stars pour down like a galaxy, the two old friends stand face to face.

9. A star that goes alone

Muelsyse first tries to stop Saria to protect Christine, but Christine pushes even Muelsyse — along with her own water — outside. It's a very Christine kind of tenderness, cherishing her fragile friend's true body.

Saria hasn't come to stop Christine. She's come to bring her down. Instead of forcing her way through, she walks step by step through the storm and takes Christine's hand.

A true pioneer should open the way for all of humanity — not be the first to leap into an abyss with no return.

— Saria

But in the final moment, Christine drops Saria alone through an escape route prepared just for her. Stellaria had no return program at all. From the very start, Christine never intended to come back.

Christine says she was never the pioneer leading everyone forward. She says she's simply an eye — a pair of eyes gazing at a sky no one has ever seen, on behalf of everyone on this land.

A scientist never believes a dream is a lie. Because I'm someone who proves to all of humanity that every dream can come true.

— Christine

At last, the false sky tears apart completely, and two ancient moons reveal their true form. That night, humanity glimpses the truth for the very first time.

Epilogue — Those left behind

Saria, having fallen from thousands of meters up, barely survives thanks to the water wall Muelsyse pours out with everything she has, and Silence's own hands.

Silence decides to become a proposer of the 'Trimounts Scientific Ethics Joint Declaration.' Not a genius like Christine, she says — she'll be a buffer and a switch keeping science from running out of control. A bridge connecting dream and reality.

Muelsyse joins hands with Nasti and dreams of a flying city, while Yara, reaching retirement, sets off on a long journey in search of wine. Rosmontis passes judgment on Loken, leaves a single line in her notebook, and lets him go.

Shadows linger deep, too. Ho'olheyak rescues the Preserver's last consciousness from the abyss and flees, while Columbia's President Mark Max, the figure lurking behind the shadows all along, finally reveals himself — his ambition as tyrant, to unite every will into one, seize every truth, and forge Columbia into the sword and shield of Terra.

What he's after is the 'Black Crown' the Doctor's group carried out with them. Kal'tsit answers him like a nail driven home — Preston never once expected a tyrant. Meanwhile, in prison, Ferdinand writes down his own theories until his dying day, believing scholars a hundred years from now will honor his name.

Beyond the Barrier, alone in her life-support capsule, Christine leaves her final record. Only once we understand where we stand in the universe, she writes, do we earn the right to decide where to go.

Goodnight, everyone on Terra. Goodnight, universe.

— Christine

The old tale said that if a star fell from the sky, humanity's conflicts would vanish and everyone's wishes would come true. But Christine didn't become a falling star — she became a star that climbed into the sky on her own.

On a clear night, set up a telescope somewhere with a wide view. A single star will twinkle just for you. It's not a star that grants wishes — it's a pair of eyes, gazing alone at the sky on behalf of everyone on this land.

A thousand, ten thousand years from now, if the day comes when humanity walks among the stars — people will surely sing her name.