It had been a few days since Cyrus had left Azrael’s mansion and they were back wandering around unknown roads and forests. Since they didn’t have any belongings from the beginning meant that they didn’t have any coins to spend or food to nourish themselves. Food however was not a problem for Cyrus, because they always resorted to finding fruits and funguses to eat from nature. 

It was all good until they had been caught by random adventurers on multiple occasions, they had thought Cyrus was a wild beast and started attacking them. Which deeply discouraged Cyrus from hunting food any further and decided to instead buy food like ‘real’ people, but the only missing thing was the money. Cyrus thought about that whilst walking aimlessly without a map and a clear destination. The area Cyrus was in was quite open with forests surrounding the place... reminded them of the place they woke up in.. 

They walked a good while until stopping. There were two roads each leading to a different place, and in the middle was a tall pole with three signs all pointing to different directions. Two of them pointing to the two roads and one pointing to the road behind Cyrus.

On the first one was written: To the Kingdom Of Eristal

on the second one: To Avia village.

and on the third one: To The Kingdom of Solis

The third sign was pointing to where Cyrus originally came from. 

‘Huh.. So I was in The Kingdom of Solis..’

Cyrus continued staring at the signs, carefully reading both signs, not sure which path would prove to be good. They let out a sigh, “This is so hard!! How am I supposed to decide!!?” Cyrus was so focused on their own thoughts, they didn’t notice the merchant couple that had arrived behind them. 

“Excuse me..?”

Startled by the voice Cyrus let out a loud scream, backed off ready to fight.

“Wait..! We’re just ordinary merchants..!” The man on the carriage said out of panic.

“T-that’s right, there is no need to fight!” Said the other person on the carriage, they seemed to be a pregnant woman. Upon realizing that they were just normal people, Cyrus put their guard down. 

“I.. Am deeply sorry, I didn’t notice that you guys.. uh.. were harmless..?” Cyrus replied back with an awkward laugh.

“It’s fine, anyhow we noticed that you’ve been here for a while.. staring intently at the signs.. is everything okay..?” The man in the carriage asks.

‘Ah’ How embarrassing Cyrus thought, they didn’t even notice they had been there for a while, “I.. um was just trying to decide which route I should take, haha..”

Both of the merchants look at each other and then the pregnant woman speaks up, “I see, why not go to Eristal then? They’re going to hold a festival soon so it’ll be worth visiting.” 

“A festival? What’s the festival for?” Cyrus asks.

“Every year Eristal’s Royal Knights host a festival to thank their God Aria for protecting them for years. The festival contains various activities such as food booths with shops selling various rare items, dances and even friendly fights to show off one's talents and strengths. Even if you’re not planning to participate in the festival it is still worth seeing the breathtaking scenery of Eristal at this time of the year.” The man tells enthusiastically.

“That’s right, this is our third year going to sell at the festival and as we’ve been there a few times I can guarantee it’s worth going there for a visit.” the woman continues. 

The merchant couple were really selling the idea of going to Eristal to Cyrus and thus they started to become tempted to go. The festival sounded really fun to Cyrus, besides they hadn’t seen one ever since starting their trip.

“Haha you guys made it sound so interesting so I suppose I’ll visit it then, thank you.” Cyrus replies as they give the merchants a happy smile.

“You're welcome. Say lad, would you like a ride?” the man asks.

“Oh.. Yes please!”

And so Cyrus gets on the back of the carriage filled with boxes of various goods and the man leading signs to the horse pulling the carriage to start going again. As Cyrus made themselves comfortable in the back they remembered that they hadn’t introduced themselves yet. Cyrus tells them happily their name and so do the two merchants. The man's name was Jean and the lady’s name was Vivianne, the trip with the couple took them about four days. 

During the trip, Cyrus also learnt a lot from the couple as both of them were very talkative. Cyrus got to know more about Eristal’s God Aria themselves and more about their dispute between The Kingdom of Solis’ queen, Lynier. 

It was around a few hundred years ago that Aria, Eristal’s God landed upon their current world, Arun and settled in Eristal. At first the area known now as Eristal was full of forests, empty fields and no living beings in the area. Aria settled there and started building small structures and started changing the surrounding landscapes by adding more mountains, lakes and much more.

Overtime people started to catch on to these changes and being curious, they started to visit Eristal. Seeing that Eristal had a God who was kind and who provided the visitors with food and gifts, people of different races started immigrating to Eristal. Becoming a diverse kingdom, welcome for all races. Back then it was common to see their God but as years started progressing they started to see less and less of their dear God.

As for Aria’s dispute with Solis’ current queen, it all started when Solis’ ruler started noticing more of her own people moving away from Solis to accommodate themselves to Eristal instead. That infuriated her to the point of directly going to Eristal and went to declare war with the God. As childish and embarrassing it was, Solis’ queen was still very young at that time. So the God Aria didn’t pay a big deal to the situation and laughed it off.

As Eristal was known as The Kingdom of Crystals, upon their arrival to the kingdom they could see shimmering crystals all over the grassy fields and the long crystal coated building from behind the capital’s walls. The long crystal looking building was Eristal’s castle on top of a hill with three floating crystal towers around it, like watchtowers. Cyrus was able to see the long white sturdy looking border that was encircling The City of Eristal itself. 

The caravan where the couple and Cyrus were in finally arrived. In front of the gates there was a long line of people trying to enter the city and in front of the line was a group of guards checking something. 

As the queue was pretty long, the merchant Jean spoke up in annoyance, “Tsk. This is going to take hours for us to get in.”

Cyrus tried to look in front to see what exactly was delaying the line like this. 

“I don’t get it, is there always a long line like this?” Cyrus asks.

“Oh you bet.” Vivianne replied as her face started to frown, “During the time of the festival, people from all over want to come and visit Eristal. And when a bunch of people come, you bet there’s going to be the ‘troublemakers’ who want to ruin things. So they are basically checking for potential threats among the things that these people are bringing.” She tells Cyrus.

“I see..” Cyrus replied, but as they looked far into the gate doors they said with a surprised tone, “But I guess the inspection is going faster now, since it seems we’re going to be next.” Cyrus points forward.

The couple looks forward, and Jean signals his horse to also move that way.  

“Next!” One of the guards shouted.

The next in line was indeed Cyrus and the merchant couple and so the horse led them in front of the guards. The guards were polite and asked a few questions such as the reason why we were visiting and how long we were planning on staying, then they inspected their belongings and let them go.

And so the large gates that were protecting the city from harm opened. What was behind them was beyond breathtaking. Though Cyrus was currently amnesiac, they knew that it was like nothing they’ve seen before, the sight was a complete first for Cyrus.