By the time Thalia came up from the basement, she realized that the morning was already well underway.
Visitors had begun arriving on the ground floor, and the once-quiet gallery was gradually growing busier.
The staff were sorting through the items scheduled to be sent for authentication that day, while the soft opening and closing of display cases blended with the low murmur of conversation.
Everything looked exactly as it normally did.
If not for the obsidian ring still resting on the fourth finger of her left hand, Thalia might have felt as though everything that had happened the previous night was already far behind her.
Ivan didn’t let her stay downstairs.
He took her straight to the second-floor lounge and asked one of the staff members to bring up some breakfast.
Before long, Thalia had a cup of warm milk, two slices of toast, and a fried egg in front of her.
She picked up a piece of toast but didn’t eat it immediately.
Instead, she looked across the table at Ivan.
“Aren’t you eating?”
“I already ate.”
Thalia clearly didn’t believe him.
The faint shadows beneath his eyes made his answer even less convincing.
“You didn’t sleep at all last night.
When did you have time for breakfast?”
Ivan was looking through the messages on his phone and answered without raising his head.
“I ate something while I was looking for you.”
“When?”
“Four in the morning.”
Thalia paused with the toast halfway to her mouth.
Whatever he had eaten at four in the morning could hardly be called breakfast.
She looked at his tired face but decided not to argue about it.
Instead, she took a bite of her toast and waited until she had swallowed before saying, “You’re going to sleep after this.”
Ivan finally looked up.
“I should be saying that to you.”
“I feel perfectly fine.”
“And?”
“So you’re the one who needs to rest.”
Ivan gave her a brief look but didn’t answer.
He simply returned his attention to his phone.
Thalia knew that reaction well enough to realize he had no intention of listening to her, so she gave up and quietly finished her breakfast.
Once she finally had some food in her stomach, she felt much better.
She took a sip of milk, and her eyes happened to fall on the obsidian ring.
That was when she remembered something she had overlooked until now.
“Ivan, who sent the wooden box yesterday?”
His finger stopped briefly against the phone screen.
“I checked.
I couldn’t find any information about the sender.”
Thalia set down her cup, her expression becoming more serious.
The Leandros Antiquities Gallery received plenty of objects every day for authentication, restoration, or consignment.
Whether an item was brought in personally or delivered by post, there was normally at least some basic information about where it had come from.
An object with no record at all was unusual.
“When was it found?”
“Yesterday afternoon.”
Ivan stood and went to the desk.
He pulled a form from a stack of papers before returning and placing it in front of her.
“When the staff noticed it, the box was already sitting on the receiving counter.
Everyone assumed someone else had registered it.
It wasn’t until they went through the records last night that they realized there was nothing matching it.”
Thalia picked up the form and read through it carefully.
There was very little information on it.
Aside from the time and place it had been found and a brief description of the box, almost every field was blank.
The section for the sender was completely empty.
“You checked the delivery records too?”
“I did.
Seventeen items were delivered to the gallery yesterday, and every one of them was accounted for.
The wooden box wasn’t among them.”
Which meant no one knew who had brought it in or when it had been placed on the counter.
Thalia lowered her eyes to the form and thought for a moment.
When she had first seen the box the previous night, she hadn’t found the situation particularly strange.
Old objects arrived at the gallery every day, and while an item being temporarily left unregistered was unusual, it wasn’t enough to immediately raise suspicion.
Now things were different.
Whatever had been inside that wooden box had taken her to the Underworld, and the obsidian ring on her finger was connected to the records her father had left behind.
It was becoming difficult to believe that the two things had come together by coincidence.
“Where’s the box now?”
“In the restoration room.”
Thalia placed the form back on the table.
“I want to look at it again.”
Ivan glanced at her, then at the breakfast still sitting in front of her.
Thalia followed his gaze and immediately understood.
“I’ve eaten plenty.”
“Finish it.”
“Ivan.”
“Not negotiable.”
Thalia gave him a helpless look before reluctantly picking up her toast again.
Ten minutes later, they went to the restoration room together.
Morning sunlight streamed through the tall windows, filling the long worktables with light.
Restoration tools had been arranged neatly around the room, while shelves along the walls held objects waiting to be worked on.
The faint smell of old paper and wood still lingered in the air.
Thalia walked over to her usual worktable and immediately spotted the wooden box from the previous night.
It looked exactly as she remembered it.
The dark brown wood had very little decoration, and the corners showed obvious signs of wear.
From the outside, there was nothing particularly remarkable about it.
Thalia put on a pair of gloves and carefully pulled the box toward her.
“Did anyone examine the outside yesterday?”
“Only briefly.
We didn’t find a name or anything else that could identify where it came from.”
“What about the inside?”
“We haven’t examined it in detail.”
Thalia nodded and began checking it again.
The previous night, almost all of her attention had been focused on what the box contained.
She hadn’t taken the time to properly examine the box itself.
Now that she could study it carefully, she realized the construction was older than she had first thought.
In addition to the natural wear around the edges, there were numerous fine marks left by years of handling and friction.
She used a soft brush to clear the dust from the seams, then carefully turned the box over.
It didn’t take long for her to notice a small patch on the bottom that was noticeably lighter than the surrounding wood.
Thalia leaned closer.
“Something used to be attached here.”
Ivan bent down to look.
A few tiny paper fibers still clung to the edges of the pale area.
There wasn’t enough left to tell what had once been there, but it certainly looked as though some kind of label had been removed.
“Someone tore it off?”
“Looks like it.”
Thalia examined the area with a magnifying glass.
When it became clear that the remaining traces wouldn’t tell them much for now, she turned the box around again.
This time, she noticed several extremely faint indentations on the inner surface.
“There’s something here too.”
Ivan moved closer.
“What is it?”
“Looks like writing, but it’s too worn to read.”
Thalia pulled the work lamp closer and adjusted the angle.
The marks remained too faint to form any complete words, so she didn’t try to guess.
Instead, she took out a camera and photographed each section from several angles so she could examine them more carefully later.
Once she had finished documenting everything, Ivan asked, “Have you heard the girl’s voice again?”
Thalia shook her head.
“Not since I came back.”
That didn’t surprise her.
The voices left behind in old objects had never appeared whenever she wanted them to.
If anything, the harder she tried to hear them, the more likely she was to get nothing at all.
She set the wooden box upright again and looked at its empty interior.
Another thought occurred to her.
“After I disappeared last night, the box stayed here?”
“Yes.”
Ivan nodded.
“When I came into the restoration room looking for you, the box was still here.
It was just empty.”
Thalia looked at it thoughtfully.
So only the object that had originally been inside the box had disappeared with her.
The box itself had remained in the gallery the entire time.
She didn’t try to draw any conclusions from that.
There still wasn’t enough information.
It would be better to examine the remaining marks properly before making assumptions.
“Let’s leave it here for now.
I’ll work on those marks when I have time.”
Ivan nodded.
Thalia removed her gloves and was about to clear the worktable when someone knocked on the door.
A staff member opened it and stood in the doorway.
“Mr.
Ivan, there’s a customer downstairs with an item she’d like us to examine.”
That was something the gallery dealt with every day, so Ivan didn’t think much of it.
“Have her go through the usual registration process.”
The staff member, however, didn’t leave.
“She specifically asked if Miss Thalia could look at it.”
Thalia stopped what she was doing and turned around.
“Me?”
“Yes.”
“Do I know her?”
The staff member shook her head.
“I don’t think so.
She’s an elderly woman.
I’ve never seen her here before.”
Thalia had been helping at the gallery for years, and regular clients occasionally asked for her by name, so the request itself wasn’t especially unusual.
Ivan checked the time.
“You should rest.
I’ll go downstairs.”
“I’m already back.
What am I supposed to be resting for?”
Thalia returned her gloves to their place.
When Ivan looked as though he was about to argue, she headed for the door first.
“Relax.
I’m only going to look at something.”
Unable to stop her, Ivan followed.
When they reached the ground floor, the elderly woman the staff member had mentioned was sitting in the reception area.
She looked to be in her seventies and wore a dark blue coat.
An old cloth bundle was held tightly against her chest.
The moment she saw Thalia approaching, she stood, looking noticeably nervous.
“Are you Miss Thalia?”
“Yes.”
Thalia sat across from her and softened her tone.
“I was told you have something you’d like me to look at?”
The woman nodded and carefully placed the cloth bundle on the table.
She slowly unwrapped the layers of fabric.
Inside was an old silver pocket watch.
The cover had darkened slightly with oxidation, and the edges showed years of wear.
Other than that, there was nothing obviously unusual about it.
Thalia didn’t reach for it immediately.
“Would you like us to determine its age, or are you hoping to have it restored?”
The elderly woman looked at the pocket watch and was silent for a moment.
“To tell you the truth, I’m not sure.”
Her fingers tightened slightly around the edge of the cloth before she continued.
“This watch has been in our family for many years.
I never thought about bringing it out before, but I found it again recently while clearing out our old house.”
Thalia listened quietly without interrupting.
The woman looked down at the watch, her expression complicated.
“For the past few nights, it starts running by itself.”
Thalia’s eyes settled on the pocket watch.
“By itself?”
“Yes.”
The woman nodded.
“But this watch stopped working thirty years ago.”
Thalia didn’t answer immediately.
At almost the same moment, a faint warmth spread through the obsidian ring on the fourth finger of her left hand.
The sensation was subtle, but there was no mistaking it.
Thalia lowered her eyes briefly to the ring before looking back at the silver pocket watch on the table.
She still made no attempt to touch it.
Instead, she pulled the registration form closer and picked up a pen.
“There’s no need to rush.”
Thalia looked at the elderly woman across from her.
“Start by telling me who this pocket watch originally belonged to.”