Mrs.
Bennett answered the phone almost immediately.
Thalia briefly explained what they had discovered inside the hidden compartment of the pocket watch.
She told her about the tiny brass key, the letter E engraved on the back, and how both the photograph and the floor plan they had found pointed toward Eremon Estate.
The other end of the line was quiet for a moment before Mrs.
Bennett finally asked, somewhat hesitantly, “So you think the key has something to do with Eremon Estate?”
“We can’t be completely certain yet, but there’s a good chance it does.” Thalia glanced at the black-and-white photograph and floor plan on the table.
“Everything Mr.
Bennett left behind seems to point there.
If you’re comfortable with it, my brother and I would like to go there ourselves.
We might be able to find what the key was meant to open.”
Mrs.
Bennett didn’t answer immediately.
Thalia didn’t rush her.
The pocket watch, the key, and Eremon Estate were all pieces of Adrian’s past.
Mrs.
Bennett had spent so many years with him, only to suddenly discover that there was an entire part of his life she had never known about.
It was understandable that she might need time to decide.
After a while, a soft sigh came through the phone.
“Go ahead.
If Adrian went to the trouble of leaving all these things behind, then I want to know what he was trying to leave for us.”
“All right.
If we find anything, I’ll let you know right away.”
After ending the call, Thalia set her phone on the table.
Ivan had already finished organizing most of the information he had found.
When she looked over, he closed the laptop and stood.
“If we leave now, we should have enough time to make the round trip today.”
“Then let’s go today.”
Thalia answered without hesitation.
Ivan looked at her as though he had expected exactly that response.
“Pack everything properly first.”
“I know.”
They decided not to take the silver pocket watch with them.
Instead, they brought the brass key from its hidden compartment, Adrian’s black-and-white photograph, and the old floor plan of the estate’s ground floor.
The photograph and floor plan were placed in separate protective sleeves, while the key remained inside its small protective case.
Once they were certain they had everything, they left the gallery.
The drive from the city to Eremon Estate took roughly two hours.
The first part of the journey passed through familiar, busy streets.
As they gradually left the city behind, however, the buildings became fewer, replaced by stretches of farmland and woodland.
Thalia sat in the passenger seat with the black-and-white photograph in her hands.
She had already looked at it countless times, but now that they were actually traveling toward the place shown in the picture, it somehow felt different.
Ivan kept his eyes on the road.
“Still thinking about the key?”
“I’m wondering why Adrian hid it inside the pocket watch.” Thalia turned the photograph over and looked at the faded date on the back.
“If he only wanted to keep a key somewhere safe, there were plenty of easier places to hide it.
He wouldn’t have needed to build it into a hidden compartment.”
“Maybe he didn’t want anyone to find it.”
“Maybe.
But if the watch hadn’t suddenly started running again a few days ago, we never would have discovered the compartment.
We wouldn’t even know the key existed.”
Ivan didn’t disagree.
The photograph and floor plan had remained inside that drawer for decades, while the key had been hidden inside the pocket watch for thirty years.
Adrian had never told his wife about any of them while he was alive.
Yet decades after his death, a broken pocket watch had somehow begun leading them from one clue to the next.
Why it had started happening now was still something neither of them could explain.
Thalia didn’t continue speculating.
She slipped the photograph back into its protective sleeve and put it away.
About two hours later, the navigation system showed that they were approaching their destination.
The paved road gradually narrowed until it became an old lane cutting through the woods.
It clearly hadn’t been properly maintained in years.
Every so often, the tires passed over an uneven patch and the car gave a slight jolt.
Ivan slowed down.
After driving a little farther, they finally saw a rusted iron gate at the end of the trees.
Two weathered stone pillars stood on either side, both leaning slightly with age.
Faded lettering remained on one of them, most of it worn away by years of rain and wind.
Only the last few letters could still be made out.
EREMON
“We’re here.”
Ivan parked beside the road.
After getting out, Thalia stood outside the gate and looked through it.
The main estate wasn’t visible from there.
All she could see was a stone path stretching into the woods, more than half of it swallowed by weeds.
The hedges lining both sides had long since grown wild, and thick grass pushed up between the paving stones.
The gate wasn’t locked.
Ivan gave it a push.
The heavy hinges immediately let out a harsh scrape.
Thalia glanced around.
There was no one nearby, so she followed him inside.
They walked along the stone path, surrounded by little more than the sound of their footsteps over loose gravel and the rustling of leaves in the wind.
Several minutes later, the trees ahead began to open.
A large three-story building finally came fully into view.
Thalia stopped without meaning to.
She had already seen Eremon Estate in photographs, but standing in front of it was different.
Decades without residents had left the building visibly worn.
Dark green vines spread across much of the gray-white exterior, several windows were broken, and a thick layer of fallen leaves covered the steps leading to the entrance.
Even so, the overall structure had changed very little.
The tall central portico.
The long wings extending to either side.
The dry circular fountain in the courtyard.
Every detail matched Adrian’s old photograph.
Thalia took the picture from her bag and compared the two.
“No mistake.
This is it.”
Ivan looked at the photograph as well.
They crossed the overgrown courtyard and approached the main entrance.
The doors were firmly shut.
Ivan tried pushing them, but they didn’t move.
Thalia instinctively reached toward the protective case holding the brass key, then stopped.
The main entrance used a large, old-fashioned lock.
The key they had found was barely larger than a fingernail.
There was no chance it belonged here.
Rather than waste time at the front entrance, they walked around the outside of the building.
Eventually, they found an old kitchen entrance along the side where the door had been left slightly ajar.
The lock had already broken long ago.
Ivan pushed the door open first.
As it moved, years of accumulated dust stirred into the air, bringing with it the heavy smell of an old, closed building.
They waited for the dust to settle before stepping inside.
The interior was even quieter than the grounds.
Most of the old furniture remained in place, though everything was covered in a thick layer of dust.
The curtains had long since faded, and sections of wallpaper had peeled away from the walls, exposing yellowed plaster beneath.
Thalia didn’t immediately move deeper into the house.
Instead, she took out Adrian’s floor plan and compared it with the layout around them.
“We should be here, in the kitchen.”
She pointed to the corresponding place on the paper before tracing a route toward the western side of the building.
“The room he circled isn’t far from here.”
Since Adrian had deliberately marked that room, there was little reason to explore the rest of the estate first.
They crossed the kitchen and followed the route shown on the floor plan.
Although the estate had stood empty for years, the main structure remained largely unchanged.
Most of the corridors on the old drawing were still there, though some doors were damaged and pieces of plaster and splintered wood littered the floors.
After passing through the main hall, they entered the western wing.
The corridor here was noticeably narrower than those near the center of the house, and there was far less light.
Thalia checked the floor plan as they walked.
At the end of the corridor, she stopped.
“This should be it.”
There was indeed a door ahead.
It was smaller than most of the others in the estate, its dark wooden paint cracked and peeling with age.
An old brass padlock hung beside the handle.
Ivan examined the lock first.
Once he was satisfied that it was still intact, Thalia took the small protective case from her bag.
She held the brass key beside the keyhole.
The size looked almost exact.
The siblings exchanged a glance.
Thalia put on her gloves, removed the key from its case, and carefully inserted it into the lock.
It slid in without resistance.
“Looks like we found the right place.”
She slowly turned the key.
At first, the mechanism felt stiff.
The lock hadn’t been used in decades, and she could feel resistance from inside.
Rather than forcing it, Thalia adjusted the angle slightly and tried again.
A moment later, a crisp sound came from the lock.
Click.
It opened.
Thalia removed the key while Ivan took the padlock off the door.
The door itself was difficult to move after being closed for so long.
As Ivan gradually pushed it inward, a stronger smell of dust and old wood drifted out.
They waited briefly before looking inside.
The room wasn’t large.
There was even less in it than they had expected.
An old wooden desk.
A chair.
And a low cabinet against the wall.
Thalia remained in the doorway for a moment, slightly surprised.
Adrian had deliberately circled this room on the floor plan and hidden its key inside his pocket watch.
That alone suggested the room had been important to him.
Yet there was almost nothing here.
They stepped inside and began checking the room separately.
The desk drawers were empty except for a layer of dust.
The low cabinet contained a few yellowed scraps of paper, but whatever had once been written on them had faded beyond recognition.
Thalia unfolded the floor plan again.
They had the correct room.
The key had opened the door.
Adrian couldn’t have gone to so much trouble simply to lead someone to an empty room.
She was about to examine everything again when Ivan spoke behind her.
“Thalia, come look at this.”
She folded the floor plan and walked over.
Ivan was crouched beside the low cabinet, but he wasn’t looking inside it.
His attention was on the wall behind it.
Because the cabinet had been standing there, neither of them had noticed the faint rectangular mark on the wall, as though something had once covered that spot for a long time.
Ivan carefully shifted the cabinet aside.
More of the wall gradually came into view.
There was no hidden door.
No mechanism.
Only a line of writing so faded that it was barely visible.
Thalia moved closer.
It looked as though someone had written directly on the wall in pencil many years ago.
Most of the sentence had been erased by time and damp, leaving only the final line clear enough to read.
If I don’t come back, give the box to…
The name at the end was completely illegible.
Thalia stared at the sentence before instinctively looking around the room.
“The box…”
But there was no box.
Ivan checked the desk and cabinet again and found nothing that matched the message.
Thalia lowered her eyes to the floor plan, wondering whether there was something else they had missed.
Without warning, the obsidian ring on the fourth finger of her left hand grew hot.
She immediately stopped moving.
This was nothing like the faint, momentary warmth she had felt around the silver pocket watch.
The heat was clear and persistent, impossible to ignore.
Ivan quickly noticed her reaction.
“The ring again?”
“Yes.
And it’s much stronger this time.”
Thalia remained where she was for a moment, paying attention to the sensation.
The heat didn’t fade.
Slowly, she turned, trying to determine whether the reaction changed depending on where she faced.
When she turned toward the opposite side of the room, the ring grew noticeably warmer.
Thalia raised her head.
There was no desk there.
No cabinet.
Nothing at all.
Only an old wall where large sections of wallpaper had peeled away, leaving the surface beneath stained and discolored.
She stared at it for a moment before turning slightly away.
The warmth weakened.
When she faced the wall again, it immediately became stronger.
There was no need to guess anymore.
“Ivan.
I think it’s coming from over there.”
He followed her gaze.
From the outside, the wall looked no different from any other part of the room.
But the obsidian ring on Thalia’s finger still hadn’t cooled.
Neither of them rushed toward it, nor did they immediately assume that something had to be hidden behind the wall.
But by that point, one thing was clear.
The room Adrian had gone to such lengths to lead them to wasn’t nearly as empty as it had first appeared.