One of the primary goals in near-field cosmology is understanding the nature of the first generation of stars and their contribution to the chemical enrichment of the early universe and galactic formation. The very first stars are thought to have formed a few million years after the Big Bang, were short-lived, and enriched the surrounding pristine gas. The signature of the first stars is imprinted in their direct descendants, CEMP-no stars, a sub-class of carbon-enhanced metal-poor (CEMP) stars without enhancement of heavy neutron-capture elements. The CEMP-no stars are thought to have been born in the first galaxies and were accreted into the Milky Way halo. In this talk, I will review near-field cosmology and discuss the current understanding of the chemodynamical nature of the CEMP-no stars and its implication for the nature of the first stars, the first galaxies, and the hierarchical assembly of the Milky Way halo.