Golden Sun Universe
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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.

Background[]

The world of Weyard is a world modeled off the ancient real-world view of the Flat Earth, the view that the shape of the world is a flat disk-like plane where there is a clearly defined edge dropping into the abyss below. 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.

Golden Sun[]

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 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. 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 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. 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. After briefly meeting with the monk Master Nyunpa at Fuchin Temple, they 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 that 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.

Golden Sun: The Lost Age[]

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 at 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 came to be the core catalyst to the return of Alchemy to the world of Weyard.

Golden Sun: Dark Dawn[]

A new generation's rite of passage[]

Thirty years have passed since Alchemy to the world of Weyard. Everyone who was exposed to the eruption of energy at the aerie of Mars Lighthouse has received dramatically increased lifespans, and thus as adults, they appear noticeably younger than anyone else their age - even Kraden is alive and well, and is traveling the world, despite being over a hundred years of age. The Golden Sun has caused the continents to grow in size and expand, and the lands themselves have been changed. For 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 who 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 and blame them as having effectively "destroyed" the world 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. 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. In addition, they are visited by Ivan's strong-willed daughter, the Jupiter Adept Karis, who has brought over Ivan's invention, a hang glider-like device named the soarwing, which Isaac and Garet need in order to reach what remains of Sol Sanctum, for the land around Mount Aleph has only become more uncrossable on foot because Mount Aleph continues to violently erupt. Isaac and Garet also need the soarwing to keep a better watch on occurrences of a phenomenon named Psynergy Vortexes, randomly appearing distortions in space that are believed to be pure anti-Psynergy created by exceptionally dense concentrations of Psynergy in many places. These vortexes suck the elemental energy out of the world and Adepts within their vicinity and are believed to be an after-effect of the Golden Sun event. 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 return from a journey to the nearby Patcher's Place, a settlement that the former Valean refugee Patcher had founded for himself and other refugees of the former village. However, Tyrell suddenly takes the soarwing out for a flight himself, immaturely insisting that the others don't take him seriously, but soon enough, he finds that he is unable to maintain altitude because he had never received flying lessons from Karis. Isaac instructs Tyrell to fly across the Tanglewood forest below and land at the abandoned Psynergy Stone mine at the other side, then has Garet, Matthew, and Karis accompany them on a trip through the forest. Matthew and Karis, who have been trained by their fathers so that they may assume the duty to look after the world in their parents' stead, are brought along so that can obtain necessary experience out in the field.

Isaac and Garet have Matthew and Karis lead the way and fight wild monsters on their own, though the emergence of nightfall causes the energies of darkness permeating Tanglewood to make the resident monsters more dangerous. Upon entering the abandoned mine, they are surprised to find a particularly large Psynergy Vortex pulsating within for the first time in years, and they also find an unconscious Tyrell lying near it. The four are attacked by an enormous, sentient plant monstrosity growing near the vortex, and after it is fought and defeated, 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 and mammoth-sized bird 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 already 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. Isaac arranges to contact Kraden via carrier pigeon so that the scholar will meet them in nearby Carver's Camp, where Kraden can help Matthew 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 set off on their adventure. The three head towards and arrive at Carver's Camp past the road through the Goma Highlands that divides Vale's refugees from the rest of Angara. They arrive just in time to save a small child from a bridge that gets destroyed by another large Psynergy Vortex that has just appeared, but this means that they don't have a route through the kingdom of Bilibin (rulership of which, incidentally, has been taken up by Lord McCoy's son). The workers of the hearty Valean refugee that the lumberjack camp is named after, Carver, pass 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 has a branch north to Bilibin.

The Adepts travel southwest toward the recently discovered Konpa Ruins in what remains of Lamakan Desert. As they explore it, Matthew obtains the exclusive knowledge to read the ancient language of glyphs that are posted on tablets within this and several other ancient dungeons located throughout Angara. They eventually reach its cavernous depths and 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 and unknown device. Just then, Matthew's group is ambushed by a trio of armored scoutmen that drop in by using extensible, rubber arm-like cables, and Matthew's party dispatches 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 men from above: a foreign-looking swordsman introduced as Blados, and who none among Matthew and Kraden's groups recognize as Alex, who survived the Golden Sun event thirty years prior and appearing identical in age. Without disclosing his identity, Alex and Blados show that they have taken Rief hostage, and use this to force Kraden and Nowell to take the north exit out of Konpa Cave and force Matthew's friends out the south exit so that Rief can be saved. Kraden tells Matthew that they will rejoin and resume their quest for the Mountain Roc feather at a later date in the continent's northern half. As soon as Matthew's group exits out of Konpa Cave's south exit, a free Rief joins them, and Blados and his soldiers detonate charges to permanently seal off the cave entrance behind them. Blados 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 Ei-Jei portion of the continent for whatever reason. Before leaving, Blados states that their only chance to make it into the north part of Angara now is to cross the Khiren Mountains, the mountain range that effectively divides Angara into northern and southern halves.

The Alchemy Machines[]

With Rief now part of their group, Matthew passes through the ancient ruins of Harapa, which people have discovered and adopted as a settlement. They then make the journey toward Passaj, a town based on a lower peak at the bottom left end of the Khiren Mountains, in hopes of finding answers about the possible route across the mountains. As soon as they arrive at the mountain settlement, Rief shows the others the mechanical platform at Passaj's mountain peak that Kraden believed holds the key to crossing over. Visible in the distance is the higher peak of the western 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.

The four Adepts inspect the massive Alchemy Forge machine built into the mountain, and use their Psynergy to bring it out of its slumber. The crotchety village elder, Bogho, appreciates what they have achieved, but explains that while this Psynergy-powered machine is now active, the only way the machine can actually be used is by inserting a special object known as 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 to the east. This is unfortunate, as the modern-day enemy of Passaj, the kingdom of Kaocho lorded over by the military-minded King Wo, has been built above the Ouroboros. Within the thirty years since the Golden Sun event, the kingdom of Sana emerged as a predominant Angaran power, and King Wo, a disciple of Sana's previous warlike emperor, founded Kaocho in a motion of imperial expansionism. Wo has sent armies to attack Passaj in a clear attempt to get to its Alchemy Forge, but on the flip side, if the Alchemy Forge can be used and controlled, Passaj would be able to ensure its own safety.

Bogho further explains that the allied nation to the south, Ayuthay, has a similar Alchemy-related machine called the Alchemy Well. Ayuthay experienced explosive growth when the Alchemy Well suddenly started working about twenty years ago, and King Wo is attempting to get to the Alchemy Well as well. The people of Ayuthay have hidden themselves securely underground to protect themselves from Wo's attacks. Bogho's grandson, Baghi, tells Matthew that he has a close friend who might know how to survive the Ouroboros: the prince of Ayuthay himself, Amiti. To reach Ayuthay and Amiti, Baghi gives Matthew the Tree Flute, something he will need to open a secret passage into its castle. Matthew's group departs Passaj and journeys south to Ayuthay, but the Kaochan soldiers occupying the kingdom walls above-ground prevent Matthew from passing. They require Matthew to bear proof from King Wo that he has joined Wo's army to assist in the invasion.

Matthew's party decides to journey east to Kaocho to see about securing the right to enter Ayuthay. Matthew and company are immediately granted an audience with King Wo because he has been expecting "his new Adepts" for a while now, and the advisor in his court who has told him of Matthew's arrival in advance is the voluptuous and foreign-looking Chalis. Tyrell correctly deduces that she is affiliated with Blados. Wo wants the Adepts to both retrieve the Sol Mask from the Ouroboros for him and to help his army conquer Ayuthay and quickly gives Matthew a signed letter of approval that will allow him into Ayuthay. 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 has them dropped into a trap door into the first room of the labyrinth below. Chalis explains to Wo that despite their refusal to comply with Wo on the surface, she is certain the Adepts will end up proving their worth anyway, stating that after realizing that 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 figure out what Wo and Chalis are generally intending of them, but decide anyway to leave and go over to Ayuthay with Wo's letter in hand. The Adepts gain admittance into Ayuthay by presenting the letter to the two Kaochan generals leading the occupation, Ku-Tsung and Ku-Embra, and then use the Tree Flute gave them to find the secret way into the kingdom underground. Prince Amiti and the hiding people of Ayuthay quickly welcome them as friends and bring them to his uncle, King Paithos. Up until now, Paithos had told Amiti that the one who started the Alchemy Well twenty years ago was his late mother, Veriti, and that Amiti was conceived entirely of Veriti's power through miraculous means. But Paithos chooses now to suddenly reveal to Amiti that he did, in fact, have a biological father, and this man, a mysterious and powerful Mercury Adept, was the one who actually started the Well and found the Luna Mask to allow for its operation. Only Veriti knew what he looked like, and they had both fallen in love with each other seemingly at first sight.

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; while right now the Well is feeding water to Ayuthay, it can be made to feed water far beyond, should its counterpart, the Alchemy Forge in Passaj, have its Sol Mask inserted into it. 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, so he 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, hidden within the Barai Temple that is 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 investigate the running Alchemy Well, and in an adjacent room they are addressed by an ancient and legendary entity named the "Sand Prince", whose fire-based powers have the capacity to drink ponds dry. The Adepts are tested by the Sand Prince in battle and earn his power in the form of the Sand Prince Stone, and they subsequently use the power of arid heat on the mechanisms of the Alchemy Well, successfully toggling the Alchemy Well into reverse and lowering Ayuthay's water level. The Adepts move out and enter the now-open Barai Temple, and like with all other ancient ruins Matthew would come to explore over the course of his quest, his ability to read glyphs repeatedly proves invaluable in allowing the group to solve the temple's ancient riddles. The five reach a room where a humanoid face projected onto a waterfall through ancient mechanisms 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 Ayuthay at the surface.

Paithos is impressed that the group found the Insight Glass, but Amiti expresses that because he was chosen to use the Insight Glass, as though the Jenei intended for it to choose someone from Ayuthay, he must accompany his new friends to the Ouroboros and beyond. Paithos is taken aback, but he eventually comes to acknowledge that Amiti has chosen his own path, and grants Amiti and his newfound friends his blessing. After raising back up the water level, the five Adepts depart from Ayuthay's sheltered underground, only to find Ku-Tsung and Ku-Embra waiting for them outside. They attack the Adepts as punishment for their treachery, but the Adepts manage to render the two lying wounded on the ground. Paithos and his advisors appear and announce that with Kaocho's generals defeated and tied up, Ayuthay's superiority in this conflict has been demonstrated. Amiti has Paithos keep the generals hidden so that the standing Kaochan forces remain idle in Ayuthay while the Adepts can enter the Ouroboros without a hassle. Matthew's group departs Ayuthay on this note.

Matthew and his friends return to Kaocho, which is now largely unoccupied because Chalis directed Wo to move his armies north. Completely unimpeded, the Adepts enter the true entrance to the Ouroboros labyrinth with the help of Amiti's newfound power of insight, and it is only a matter of time before the Sol Mask is in their possession. They proceed back to Passaj and insert the Sol Mask into the Alchemy Forge; 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 starts showering and spreading water, turning much of the dry land around it green. 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 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. The Sand Prince suddenly communicates that the other gemstone's eponymous Ice Queen is a demonic female entity that originally waited for a foolish man to free her so as to escape her gemstone prison, and then proceeded to hide in the unreachable part of the ruins at Harapa. The Ice Queen Stone can reverse the fire-based Forge to forge fire into ice, which will bolster the otherwise fluffy zol clouds. The Adepts therefore return to Harapa, which has also been rejuvenated by the water that flowed from Ayuthay, and this gives the Adepts the footing they need to reach the Ice Queen's domain. The creature talks down to them and engages them in battle, but they defeat her and render her into the form of the Ice Queen Stone. The Adepts obtain the capacity to freeze puddles of water with this.

Just then, the man that the Ice Queen had made use of and had turned into a statue is brought back to normal, and reveals himself to be none other than Nyunpa, the monk that Isaac encountered thirty years before - he was lured and ensnared by the Ice Queen while traveling across Angara to help those afflicted by the disasters of the Golden Sun. After Nyunpa gives the Adepts his blessings and leaves, the Adepts stay one last night in Harapa, and then return once more to Passaj. They use their newfound ice powers to put the Alchemy Forge in reverse, and when they stand on the mechanical platform at Passaj's mountain peak, they are supported by a strong, solid zol cloud produced by the forge. The Adepts bid farewell to Bogho and Baghi as they are transported through 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 Morgal Region[]

The five Adepts briefly traverse the Khiren Glacier until they reach a nomadic tent village named Te Rya, founded by Sanans who originally lived up north in Morgal, but were driven out. They have their first encounter with a hotheaded young Sanan man named Ryu Kou, who is accompanied by his elderly master, the calm martial artist Hou Zan. 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, has been captured and held captive in Belinsk. Since the capital of Morgal is where the Adepts are going, Hou Zan directs them toward the Teppe Ruins north of Te Rya, which constitutes a path into the Morgal region.

As the Adepts 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. One of the many effects the Golden Sun event had on the world was to transform several groups of people and animals alike into hybrid beastman forms, and hated by humans for a while. The beastmen founded their own kingdom and took the northeast region of Angara east of Bilibin as their territory, naming it Morgal. As a beastman, Sveta has highly attuned senses, and she is also a Jupiter Adept with the ability to read minds, just like Karis' father (but not Karis herself). Sveta didn't reveal herself to the Adepts in Te Rya earlier because the villagers would attack a beastman on sight. The beastman country of Morgal was originally colonized by the Sanans, but when Morgal's current king, Volechek, came to power, he engaged in a violent civil war that successfully drove the Sanans out. After doing a favor for Sveta, Matthew is temporarily joined by her as they traverse the Teppe Ruins with her animalistic tracking Psynergy and her innate ability to use Psynergy for slapping.

The Adepts and Sveta find their way through to the plains of Morgal, but when she learns 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 view as divinity. She personally cannot help them get their feather, but 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 a somewhat sad note. The five Adepts decide that their next course of action is to find Kraden having hopefully made it to Belinsk through Bilibin.

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, but the troupe does not have the capacity at present to play Arangoa Prelude because their band leader, Vande, is currently out on a trip to find musical inspiration by listening to the cry of the Mountain Roc. 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 and arrive at the small settlement outside Bilibin's borders, the aptly named Border Town, where they are suddenly approached by two Champan pirates. They are here by order of their captain Briggs to seek the help of his old mate Kraden, who Briggs' other old friend, the legendary sailor Captain Piers, told would be in Bilibin; 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 during the next full moon. Since all Matthew and his friends know about the Champa pirates are that they 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. They share the information that Briggs has already attempted a head-on assault at Belinsk's palace with his ship, but was driven back by Belinsk's cannons and retreated to Port Rago at the northeastern end of the continent. The Adepts decide to go east to Port Rago.

Matthew and his friends encounter the elderly and grizzled pirate Briggs amongst the great shipyards of Port Rago, who is having the world-renowned Exathi-descended shipwrights repair his severely damaged ship for sentimental reasons rather than construct a new vessel. Briggs states that the help of Adepts might be the best kind for him, since Kraden is nowhere to be seen, so he proposes that while he remains behind and waits for his vessel to be repaired, the Adepts should seek information from a different elder that Piers told him about, Tret of Kolima Forest, who knows about both the Mountain Roc the Adepts are seeking and about how Belinsk Castle can be attacked by land. 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.

The five Adepts arrive at Saha Town, a Morgal settlement in front of where Kolima and its forest had now shifted as a result of the Golden Sun event. Saha has quarantined Kolima off because one of the four great trees comprising Kolima's habitable quarters, the Dream Tree, has become ill and is causing its residents to have nightmares. The Adepts sneak their way into the quarantined Kolima to find distressed citizens and a forest beyond town that 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. Their discussion with Kolima's mayor eventually leads the Adepts on the task to seek out and kill a wretched lizard monster that is the embodiment of the anger of all the marshland creatures that were killed by the Golden Sun event, Sludge. When they destroy it and cleanse the source of the taint, they 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 notified by a Venus Djinni named Pewter that Laurel has invited them to her domain in Kolima Forest, now that the lizard monster is no longer making Kolima Forest impassable. Pewter guides them through the forest until they meet the giant talking trees Tret and Laurel, who introduce themselves as plant-based beings called the Waelda - beings whose long lives allow them to gather a great degree of the world's knowledge. 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 will make retrieving one of its feathers impossible. Only a slapping Psynergy useable by beastmen Adepts can wake it, but while the Adepts can't find Sveta right now, 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 by small shards of magma power that naturally form within the stomach of the Mountain Roc. The Waelda warn, however, that 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, who listened in on the Adepts' conversation with the Waelda. Sveta gave the two the Slap Glove and told them to wait 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. From Sveta's capacity to give this national treasure, Ryu Kou affirms that Sveta is part of Morgal's royal family, the Czamaral clan, and is thus the sister of King Volechek. Per what Sveta arranged for, Matthew and Ryo Kou's sides accept a partnership and climb Talon Peak until they reach the enormous stone form of the Mountain Roc. They use the Slap Glove's Slap Psynergy on the bird's prominent wattle twice, once to wake it up and once to knock it out cold, and they are finally able to retrieve one of its large feathers.

But just then, Blados and Chalis appear and announce that they have been waiting for the Adepts for a while, and Ryu Kou and Hou Zan deduce that Volechek is in league with these villains. Volechek 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 reveal that they had Eoleo captured as an additional measure to help draw the Adepts into their trap. The duo lay out that they want the Adepts to slay the Mountain Roc and retrieve its Magma Orb, a full jewel-like sphere that 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, or that the Magma Orb 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 activated with the Magma Orb soon, both Hou Ju and Eoleo will suffer. 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 the Roc's 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. The Adepts are appalled, but are unable to do anythign because Ryu Kou threatens 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 tells the Adepts that they 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 and has been inspired for his music, so he goes back to Belinsk to rejoin his band. The Adepts decide to briefly return to Briggs in Port Rago to tell him that Tret didn't have information on how to actually lead an assault on Belinsk. It is discovered that the chances of Briggs being able to use his old and breaking ship to rescue Eoleo from his scheduled execution in time is none. However, he considers himself helpless while his ship's repairs remain incomplete, and the Adepts are not impressed by Briggs' attempt to get the Adepts to do all the work for him when his own son's life is in danger. The Adepts ultimately decide they will need to go to Belinsk anyway, so that the two captives can be saved.

The Grave Eclipse[]

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, and the Adepts enter a newly opened stairwell down into Belinsk Ruins. The magma shards they retrieved from the Mountain Roc allow them to open up doorways through the ancient hallways they couldn't have otherwise, and they soon meet again with Sveta, who apologizes for keeping her blood relation with Volechek a secret. Blados and Chalis are also inside the ruins below and Sveta identifies the duo as commanders of the nation Tuaparang, which 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. The enigmatic nation, naming itself the "Zenith Tribe" and ruled by an individual known only as the "High Empyror", is very clearly focused on all things related to Alchemy, military power, and conquest, without focusing on helping its citizens at all. From her discussion with the Adepts, Sveta learns that Volechek is working with Blados and Chalis as part of their scheme.

Sveta is eager to accept the Adepts' invitation into their group to explore the ruins to get into Belinsk Castle from below, but she and the others quickly find that the path they want has mysteriously disappeared, as though they are being guided down below. They are quickly happened upon by Ryu Kou and Hou Zan, who apologize for their recent actions and illustrate that they seemingly are being guided down into Belinsk Ruins themselves. Everyone discerns that Tuaparang is trying to get them to reach and power the Alchemy Dynamo in the ruins below, and that it has something to do with making ancient civilization a reality, but as they are barred from going back, they must press forward to get closer to saving the two captives. The six Adepts and Ryu Kou once again form an uneasy partnership, and through their exploration of Belinsk Ruins, they eventually find the gate to the core of the Alchemy Dynamo. 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, 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, 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 force them to do so, and Blados and Chalis quickly decide to show the Adepts 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 forcing Ryu Kou to power on the Alchemy Dynamo by conveying that his sister Hou Ju's fate hangs in the balance. Ryu Kou complies, despite all the Adepts' desperate protests, and as the Ward announces the ascension of Luna Tower to the surface and gives the warning message for all personnel to flee, Alex gives 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 this tower's creators never wanted its prison broken. Also, he claims that opening the seal on this machine is "only the beginning". As Matthew's group still doesn't know his name, Alex gives his "Arcanus" codename before leaving, and the Adepts follow suit and exit out of what is now a towering structure that has raised up behind Belinsk castle.

It is now nighttime in Belinsk, and all of its people are amazed by the "miraculous" rising of an ancient tower from the ground. Not only have the scheduled executions at Belinsk Castle been called off, but its front doors are now open because Arcanus, the man king Volechek favors, ordered to let them pass so that the Adepts can go in and retrieve the captives. Matthew's extended group first goes toward Hou Ju's cell, and all of a sudden, King Volechek himself comes in to open the girl's cell to let her and Ryu Kou reunite. Volechek calmly states that he came to thank his little sister, Sveta, for activing "his tower". All of a sudden again, who else should arrive but Kraden, who Volechek recognizes as the scholar that accompanied Isaac on their previous visit to Morgal during the reign of Volechek's father and during their quest to obtain the previous Roc feather.

Kraden gravely states that there are plenty of things that Volechek hasn't been told by those he was working with concerning Eclipse Tower (Luna Tower's original name): activating it was a terrible mistake. Volechek retorts that Morgal has suffered for many years under foreign Sanan 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. After the king leaves, Kraden bears the news that 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. The Sanans take his advice and bid farewell. Kraden and the Adepts rush to rescue Eoleo from his suspended cage, and even though Eoleo was a toddler thirty years ago, he is able to remember Kraden.

Just then, Sol (the sun) rises up to assume a position behind Luna (the moon), and the tower begins generating and maintaining a giant semisphere of purplish dark energy that ends up covering much of the entire northern hemisphere of Weyard, 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 wherever this bizarre darkness reaches, attacking and killing soldiers and civilians alike. Kraden takes everyone to Belinsk's pier, where Briggs has moored a noticeably repaired ship that moves without oars or wind, but Briggs has been mortally wounded by the monsters of the Grave Eclipse. Before dying, Briggs tells his grieving son are 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.

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 realizing until it was too late that the Tuaparang were 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. After a turbulent voyage away from Belinsk, the Adepts and their ship make it outside the shadowy perimeter of the Grave Eclipse, safe from the shadow fiends.

Kraden and the Adepts discuss the various things they know and don't know about the current circumstances, such as the Blue Orb Volechek risked his life to throw to Sveta. Up until now, their enemies, like Arcanus, have been controlling their every step, but the seven Adepts and Kraden resolve to start moving forward for themselves and explore the northern portion of the Great Eastern Sea as they see fit. Kraden suggests that for now, their first step should be to find relevant information of any sort by visiting the villages and cultures of the upper Eastern Sea. Their first stop is a nearby island containing the small settlement Harun Village, which is partially in the perimeter of the shadow and partially out of it.

After helping the village elder and storyteller, Ikan, by saving his grandson Kaba, Ikan explains that Eclipse Tower was originally a light-powered machine built by the Jenei to advance their art of Alchemy, for they had craved power even beyond rulership of Weyard and the four base elements that comprise physical matter by themselves. They had been attempting to control the fundaments of the other two values comprising reality, darkness and light, essentially equating to the desire to attain omnipotence. But it had worked too well and Eclipse Tower had apparently caused a similar calamity in the ancient past as it has now, hence why the ancients sealed it away in hopes that it would not be activated like the Elemental Lighthouses. While not thoroughly knowledgeable about Alchemy-related matters beyond this, Ikan relates a prophecy concerning how a gathering of warriors is predicted to transpire at the nearby zol-based labyrinth Warrior's Hill so that they may combat the dark dawn of Eclipse Tower. As Matthew's party looks the part, Ikan gives them an ancient key, and the Adepts go to Warrior's Hill and find and unlock the chamber. Inside, they are not impressed to find that what supposedly will guide them in their quest to combat the Eclipse is just a peculiar, eyeball-like object that they don't even know how to use, but they take it anyway. They depart Harun island and sail back into the Eastern Sea.

Apollo Sanctum[]

The next island of importance the Adepts touch down on is the island of Nihan, the former location of Izumo - it had been swallowed into the sea by tsunamis set off by the Golden Sun event, and Lady Uzume shepherded its people toward their new home on the island, Yamata City. She died of an illness shortly afterward, leaving Susa and Kushinada to govern Yamata as its king and queen. They have two children: the courageous prince Takeru, who left abroad on a supposedly important mission once the Grave Eclipse began; and the soft-spoken princess Himi, seemingly the embodiment of Yamata's cultural focus on spirituality. When the Adepts come to Susa for information, however, they find that Himi has fallen in a deep state of unconsciousness that began with the Grave Eclipse.

As soon as Matthew approaches Himi, the eyeball-like object from Warrior's Hill suddenly chooses her as its vessel and imprints itself into her, causing a Third Eye-like symbol to manifest on her forehead and causing her to suddenly wake up. Himi explains that the spiritual voices now speaking to her tell her she must accompany Matthew's group of Adepts, because she has gained important knowledge about Eclipse Tower and how it can be stopped. Eclipse Tower is actually absorbing the light that Sol is supposed to be giving to the world, and will release all energy in a cataclysmic burst once it has absorbed enough. Himi also now has the knowledge on how Eclipse Tower can ultimately be stopped: located within the Khiren Mountains is an ancient device called the Apollo Lens, which has the ability to amplify light. In theory, if it is used to surge light into the light-absorbing Eclipse Tower, the tower's machine will be forced to stop. It turns out that Matthew's group of Adepts already supplied power to the Apollo Lens by turning on its power sources, the two Alchemy Machines in the Ei-Jei region, so what remains now is the task of reaching the Apollo Lens and removing its lock in order to actually use it.

Himi continues by explaining that in order to remove the lock on the Apollo Lens, the Adepts will need to collect all the pieces to a set of equipment that has been created by the Jenei to harness the powers of darkness, the Umbra Gear. Each of its five pieces are scattered across the upper Eastern Sea. To find these, there is an ancient map located within Morgal's oldest records, the Umbra Map, which will show them where in the ancient version of Weyard each piece was located. Sveta believes that it would be in the possession of the current emperor of Sana. Himi easily convinces her parents to allow her to accompany Matthew's Adepts on the rest of their journey, and joins as a Venus Adept herself. Before leaving Yamata, Matthew and Himi's group visits the memorial shrine for her aunt Uzume, where Uzume's spirit suddenly manifests and instructs Himi to use her searching Psynergy to search the ruins below the tomb, find the lock located deep within them, then proceed west to Tonfon, the capital of Sana, to get this lock's key from its emperor. The Adepts investigate the ruins, but they do not get far, finding that they need some sort of crimson gem. The eight Adepts and Kraden leave Yamata and resume sailing, intending to come back later.

The Adepts dock at Tonfon, and are allowed entry into the chamber of its modern-day emperor, the scholarly Unan and uncle to Ryu Kou and Hou Ju, because he had been expecting them and Kraden based on what Piers told him earlier. Unan had sent a ship to Morgal to rescue Ryu Kou, Hou Ju, and Hou Zan, but it never returned. Kraden and the Adepts ask to check Unan's royal vaults for the Umbra Map, and Unan is pleased to help them; while they do find one piece of the Umbra gear, the ancient map to the other pieces is nowhere to be seen. Unan figures that Ryu Kou is the only possible person it could be now in the possession of right now, so the Adepts will have to hopefully find him alive somewhere.

While exploring Tonfon's palace, the Adepts learn from Ryu Kou and Hou Ju's despondent mother, Lady Hinechou, that the royal family has been in possession of a matching pair of Echo Gems for generations, each of which shines while its counterpart is in the possession of a living person. In theory, one is always on Hou Ju's person, so the Adepts take the other one currently in the palace so that they can use it to pinpoint her location. Incidentally, just as the Adepts leave Tonfon for their voyage, Rief remembers to ask Kraden whatever happened to Nowell since the last time they encountered each other, and Kraden explains that while Piers was ferrying him and Nowell, Nowell fell in love with Piers and announced that she would stay on his ship. While this is surprising news, fortunately this means that Nowell is not getting caught up in the chaos caused by the Grave Eclipse.

The Echo Gem retrieved from Tonfon's palace acts like an effective compass to Hou Ju, which brings the Adepts all the way to the glacier-ridden sea north of the Mercury Lighthouse. There, they find a makeshift outpost on an iceberg, in which they find all three of the Sanans having had to fend for themselves. Hou Zan has been mortally wounded while fighting off hordes of monsters with his martial arts, and calls on Matthew to bring the siblings back to their homeland with his last breath. Hou Zan is buried, and Ryu Kou gives Matthew the Umbra map. As the Adepts ferry the siblings back to Tonfon, Karis uses the ancient geography of the map to estimate where on modern-day Weyard the remaining four pieces of Umbra gear are located.

The Adepts return to Tonfon and let Ryu Kou and Hou Ju reunite with their mother and uncle at long last. In a later private discussion with Unan, the emperor gives the Adepts something extremely important, a Red Orb that is the counterpart to the Blue Orb. As Unan explains, earlier he was approached by Arcanus and told to give the Adepts this orb, because this is one of three colored orbs that the Adepts will need to get to the Apollo Lens atop the highest peak of the mountains at the center of Angara. They will be needing to traverse a massive stretch of wall lining much of the mountain range, the Endless Wall, which has a gate that the three Orbs serve as the keys for, and the orbs are also necessary to set the device itself up. The Adepts find it inexplicable that Arcanus, the puppeteer who used the Adepts to activate the Grave Eclipse, seems now to be helping them in their effort to end it. While unsure what to make of this, Kraden has become certain who "Arcanus" is, but he plans to wait until the next time they meet the Mercury Adept before telling it to the Adepts. The Adepts know that they now have the two orbs necessary to open their way into the ruins underneath Yamata to obtain the third Orb, so they sail back to Yamata and do just that. The Yellow Orb is soon theirs.

Matthew and his group of Adepts essentially explore every location they have not gone to yet across Angara and the upper half of the Eastern Sea in search of the remaining four pieces of Umbra gear. One by one, they succeed: they find one piece in a volcanic island's cave south of Angara; another piece is found in a hidden cave west of Tonfon; a third piece is found in an islet hanging off the border of Gaia Falls east of Nihan; and the fourth piece is found in a cavernous shrine located in the snowy stretch of land between Imil and the Northern Reaches.

During this exploration, they also have the opportunity to revisit some of the settlements across Ei-Jei they had come across much earlier, including Passaj, which has managed to defend itself from the shadow monsters within its modern fortress-like state; the destroyed remains of Kaocho, whose surviving citizenry have been evacuated into King Wo's palace; and Ayuthay, whose citizenry remains safe underground while the two Kaochan generals from before are now corpses. Amiti has a difficult time accepting that Paithos has since taken on a terminal illness, and gets Paithos to agree to hold on until Amiti returns from his quest to take his rightful position as the new king of Ayuthay. The Adepts also arrive at the temporary camp that the Champans founded outside of the perimeter of the Grave Eclipse, which has overtaken Champa itself, and Eoleo is the bearer of the news of his father's passing to both his countrymen and Obaba herself - somehow still alive after thirty years.

The eight Adepts and Kraden now have everything they need to make the push to the Apollo Lens, the final destination of their journey. Proceeding west of Tonfon, they use the three colored Orbs to gain entry into the Endless Wall, then climb the highest, ruin-dotted peak until they make it to the Apollo Sanctum, which they proceed to explore and climb through. The excessive light flowing through the peak of Apollo Sanctum is powerful enough that the Adepts are unable to survive even momentary exposure as they are. It immediately occurs to them that this is why the Umbra Gear is needed: cloaking themselves in shadow offers the protection they need in order to do their work. The equipment is tailored specifically for a beastman of Morgal to wear; Kraden theorizes that this is because the Apollo Lens is the product of cooperation between the ancient Jenei and beastmen in the ancient past, a relationship in which the beastmen, being the ones doing the physical labor, were wearing the equipment. The Umbra Gear were left by the Jenei for their descendants in the event of another Grave Eclipse. Wearing all five pieces of the darkness-aligned gear, Sveta shields both herself and her friends from the light with an aura of darkness, as they proceed to unlock and set up the Apollo Lens - resembling a huge cannon - by placing the three Orbs where they belong.

Just then, Arcanus appears and thanks them for setting the Apollo Lens up. Kraden addresses him as Alex to inform the young Adepts of his real name, and the Adepts are surprised because they had all thought that Alex was killed when he failed to use the Golden Sun to become immortal. But Alex states that time is no longer on their side; a Tuaparang dropship suddenly flies overhead, and deposits Blados, Chalis, and a large group of soldiers loyal to them from its underside onto the Apollo Lens below, revealing that the Tuaparang Empire's plot all along was to obtain the Apollo Lens, the greatest weapon of the ancient world. The High Empyror's goal is to obtain the Apollo Lens for himself, which he has a plan of his own for, and he was the one who gave his subordinates the order to have Matthew activate the Apollo Lens, but he had let his subordinates choose their own methods to guide Matthew to this point. Blados and Chalis are miffed that Alex is not killing Matthew's group, which they previously agreed on, but Alex explains that the High Empyror ordered Alex personally to make sure the Apollo Lens is used as per what the ruler of Tuaparang intended, and that Blados and Chalis were left out of this because their ruler seems not to trust the duo.

Alex then antagonizes the duo by revealing to Matthew that the Tuaparang are a group descended from what is introduced as the Umbra Clan, a group with the ability to employ Darkness as a strange form of Psynergy, and Blados, Chalis, and the detachment of men that came with them are literally Dark Adepts. He then indicates that because of how they have these powers, they are not really Tuaparang soldiers, and hints at an ulterior motive the Dark Adepts have for taking control of the Apollo Lens, a weapon that can fire a potentially destructive ray of light. Its trajectory apparently encompasses the current location of the Tuaparang Empire itself, as well as the area around Sol Sanctum, which amounts to the possibility that the Umbra Clan soldiers and their commanders intend to use the superweapon against the Empire they are closely associated with. Blados and Chalis say nothing to deny any of these ideas, instead revealing that in order to keep things secret, they plan to eliminate Alex as well as Matthew's group. With this, Alex tells the Adepts that he will buy them time to throw the switch on the Apollo Lens and shoot down Eclipse Tower, and he lets Blados and Chalis go after him, and the three briefly fight off in the distance. As always, the Adepts are unable to figure Alex out, but attempt to make use of the vital opportunity Alex provided them.

Before the Adepts reach the controls to the device, Blados and Chalis suddenly reappear with a wretched, bipedal wolf-like monster as a pet, which they infuse with dark energy to increase its power. Thanking the Adepts for allowing the greatest weapon of the ancient world to be in the duo's hands, Blados and Chalis charge into battle alongside their monster with the intent to kill the Adepts once and for all. A desperate battle ensues, but Matthew's party manages to prove tough enough that the two commanders decide to fall back on their trump card: they use a technique called Dark Binding to merge both of themselves into the body of the monster, making it grow in size and mutate to become a multi-armed monstrosity of horrific power. The eight Adepts charge into their final battle atop Apollo Sanctum, one where the full power of both sides is fully expended, but in the end, the Adepts emerge victorious. Blados, Chalis, and the monster all separate and lie defeated on the ground.

As soon as the battle is over, Sveta sniffs the monster and discovers the awful truth: that it is the twisted form of Volechek. The Dark Adept commanders explain that as Volechek was nobly sacrificing himself in Belinsk at the start of the Grave Eclipse, the duo used their Dark Psynergy to "save" him, as well make a few "improvements" so that they could take over his mind and force him to fight as a living weapon. They state that now that he is a creature of darkness, Volechek will not be able to live in the light-filled world of the Adepts, and it will not be possible for him to survive any attempt to bring him back to his previous self. A mourning Sveta suddenly declares, however, that at the heart of the Grave Eclipse calamity are the people of Morgal, to whom Volechek has a responsibility as a king and therefore Sveta partially has as his sister; accepting that his death in the name of the people is inevitable, Sveta tells Matthew to throw the switch on the Apollo Lens.

When Matthew attempts to climb onto the controls of the Apollo Lens, he is knocked back by the oppressive concentration of light flowing at the top of the sanctum. Blados and Chalis explain that only a lifeform with enough of a dark side can survive up there long enough to do it - not even Sveta in the Umbra Gear is likely to survive. Sveta believes she can do it, though, and through a mysterious process, Matthew successfully wills his spirit and vitality out of his body to empower Sveta's so she can do it. Matthew and Sveta climb up to the controls once more, but just then, the twisted Volechek regains his composure, leaps up onto the controls, and sends them both back down. Seeing Sveta has made Volechek regain his former senses, and he sacrifices himself to save his sister and everyone else by making the Apollo Lens shoot at Eclipse Tower. The tower overloads with light, and the darkness it has expelled is cleared away, heralding the end of the Grave Eclipse.

What happens with Alex, Blados, and Chalis after this point is not known, and it not even known whether the Apollo Lens is left in a state that there is no risk of the High Empyror's Tuaparang Empire using it anymore. Tuaparang presumably remains in the world's skies. Alex, working as the High Empyror's most trusted confidant, had successfully prevented the Umbra Clan Adepts the High Empyror distrusted, Blados and Chalis, from presumably using the Apollo Lens against the ruler's empire, but it is debatable whether Alex ended up causing the Lens to be used differently from what the High Empyror had planned for the weapon, or if the shutting down of Eclipse Tower is in fact what the High Empyror intended.

At a later date, in Belinsk, Sveta has been crowned the new queen of Morgal, and the beastmen that were caught within the light energy of the Apollo Lens' beam have been endowed with the newfound ability to employ Light as an unusual form of Psynergy. Everyone in the kingdom, from Vande's troupe to Queen Sveta herself, thanks Matthew and his group of Adepts for saving them all, and the Adepts say their farewells to each other as well before going their separate ways: Eoleo will shove off on his ship and return to Champa after dropping Himi off at Yamata, Amiti will return to Ayuthay, Kraden will allow Rief to direct the pair's travels from this point onward, and Matthew, Tyrell, and Karis make the long journey back home to Isaac and Garet's cabin to give them the Mountain Roc feather. The most immediately worrisome issue that remains comes to Matthew's attention as he, Tyrell, and Karis finally return to Isaac's cabin at the end of their journey; Isaac and Garet are seemingly nowhere to be found, and a colossal Psynergy Vortex has manifested in the airspace near the cabin.

The End...?
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