We set off for Nisan! But not before Sigurd pondering the presence of Ramsus at Bledavik. He knows that he's not any random general, but the commander in chief of Solaris himself! His existence here meant that the empire had some deeper interest in Aveh beyond his ancestral treasure.
At Nisan's secret dock, Citan finally rejoins the team. He and Sigurd both seem rather familiar with Ramsus and Miang, with the latter in particular making Sigurd concerned. It seems like she has some sort of fearful power that she's hiding from the world. They're both hiding their suspicions from Bart, because they don't want to make him worried, not when he has a kingdom to reclaim!
The residents of Nisan warmly welcome Bart, and inform him of the military situation. It turns out the town has been gaining lots of supporters from people fed up with Shakhan, but at the same time, news of Aveh's armies marching towards them has made them uneasy, and some of the residents are taking refuge in the nearby mountains.
And finally, we arrive at the town itself! It's a small town built around a grand lake, with its main feature, the grand cathedral, located on an island at its center. A very picturesque location indeed!
Margie rushes to the cathedral, where she's received with utmost joy by her sisters. After a rather emotional reunion, she invites Fei and Citan to tour the cathedral with her.
As you might imagine, the cathedral is quite tall indeed.
Quite imposing in its sheer scale, too. Margie lets her playful side shine here, taking a few jabs at Bart for his childishness.
But it's not long before she snaps back to seriousness. She depicts the cathedral's main focus of worship - two angels with a single wing each. According to her, God intentionally made humans imperfect and incomplete, so that they would be forced to aid each other, and these statues were a grand representation of that fact. Citan hilariously ends up overanalyzing them, and Bart complains about God needlessly making things too complicated. Hah.
Finally, Margie takes them to the topmost floor of the cathedral, housing the room dedicated to her religion's founder, Sophia. There, Citan and Fei discover something very curious: not only does Sophia in her portrait look a lot like Elly, the portrait looks a lot like Fei's art! Not only that, the painting was also left unfinished at its bottom edge for some reason. Also, when Fei leaves, he briefly has visions of a past self painting Sophia! Peculiar.
Sadly, neither Margie nor her sisters can help out in this matter - almost all material pertaining to Sophia was lost over the years, her portrait is the only thing they have. Unfortunate, and also rather peculiar. How did a religion around her teachings develop if all of the written material about her was lost? And, for that matter, how did her portrait survive while her writings didn't? Ah well, yet more mysteries to uncover.
Sigurd sets up a private meeting in town to discuss their next course of action. Bart takes this as an opportunity to figure out why he knows so much about Solaris and Gebler. It turns out, both he and Citan are former officers of Solaris seeking refuge on their world. Solaris is a technologically advanced yet evil empire that blatantly discriminates against surface dwellers and flagrantly abuses them as manual labor and experimental subjects.
Despite their abuse, they stuck around because Ramsus had promised them a fair, meritocratic system where they'd be able to excel, despite their low status due to their birth. However, the meritocracy turned out to be little better than Solaris' existing hierarchical system; it was still an exclusionary system meant only to benefit a few people, only instead of using birth, it used "performance" as an arbitrary sorting criteria.
Bart, taken aback by Solaris' atrocities, walks outside to ponder things. Citan thankfully consoles him and points him to his next course of action - reclaiming his kingdom to gain a strong power base to oppose Solaris. Bart, seeing the obvious wisdom in this, immediately accepts, and they then travel to the town hall to plan out their coup.
But that shall be for next time. Until then!
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