Cassius knew immediately that something was wrong. He rose from his seat and turned to face them fully, and the moment he stood, young Lucian felt, for the first time, just how tall the Patriarch truly was, the sheer weight of his presence pressing down on the space around him.
But it was the look on his father’s face that made young Lucian’s stomach drop. Something terrible was coming.
"Tell me, Edward. What’s happened to that sword?"
Edward hesitated before answering. "The sword itself is still exactly where it should be. But..."
"But what. Speak."
"Reporting, my lord. The Kirana crystal fused to the Sonata blade has been split in two. It appears someone managed to remove half of it."
A heavy stomp shook the ground beneath them.
"Lucian!" Cassius’s voice cracked like a whip. "Where is that crystal?!"
His face had twisted with fury, aimed squarely at young Lucian, as though the boy himself had torn the crystal free with his own hands. Edward hadn’t finished, though.
"Please, Patriarch, calm yourself first. The theft only just occurred. It seems the thief couldn’t remove the Sonata blade itself, only managed to tear away half the Kirana crystal by force. The Phantom unit is already tracking them as we speak."
The Phantoms were a special detachment within House Sarnel, tasked exclusively with handling matters internal to the family, matters far too delicate to trust to anyone outside it.
Not even every member of the Sarnel main family knew who belonged to that unit, only the Patriarch himself held that knowledge in full. Though their numbers were few, in certain critical matters affecting the empire, they could be mobilized at his word, and every single one of them carried strength far beyond the ordinary.
Still, none of it satisfied Cassius, and the two Elders beside him looked no more convinced.
"Elder Meron. Search Lucian’s memory. That woman, and wherever that sword actually is." Elder Burrel said it plainly, as though it were the obvious solution.
Elder Meron wasn’t like the other Elders of House Sarnel. Combat had never suited her; her Blessing made her nearly useless on a battlefield. But what she carried instead was one of the most powerful, and most feared, Blessings in the family’s history.
Mnemosyne, a terrifying ability that let her step into a person’s past memories, three fingers pressed against both eyes and the center of the forehead all at once. That power came at a steep cost, though. She could only use it once every fourteen days, or risk draining her entire mana reserve dry.
Elder Meron’s gaze settled on young Lucian. "If we do this, his memories will be damaged."
"Didn’t you say yourself that crystal could be dangerous in the wrong hands? If Lucian knows where it is, using this could prevent worse from happening."
"We could simply ask him directly, Patriarch, rather than take a risk like this with a child."
Cassius rested a hand on Elder Meron’s shoulder, his stare alone enough to make the order clear: proceed.
"But, Patriarch... his memories could be lost for good."
Cassius’s expression made it plain he had no intention of weighing that cost. Reluctant as she was, Elder Meron lowered her hand toward young Lucian.
"Wait, Elder Meron, I didn’t steal anything—"
His protest meant nothing. Meron’s fingers had already begun drawing mana to their tips, gathering into something like fine needles of light, needles that sank straight into the boy’s skull.
Young Lucian’s whole body went rigid. No sound left him, no movement at all, while Meron focused everything she had on tracing whatever fragments of memory remained. But she couldn’t search Lucian’s memories the way she could an ordinary person’s.
Because Lucian couldn’t see, whatever she found came to her only as sound, fragments of conversation, nothing visual at all. And no matter how far she searched, she found nothing useful.
"Well?" Cassius pressed.
Meron only shook her head. "I can’t find any trace of where that crystal might be."
"Have you gone deep enough?"
"No, Patriarch. If I push any further, his memories will suffer real, lasting damage."
"This is an order, Elder Meron. Find out everything he did today, and get me a name for that woman, and confirm whether that sword he described is truly Sonata, or something else entirely."
Elder Meron drew a slow breath. Even she couldn’t deny her own curiosity about the mysterious woman everyone kept circling back to.
Reluctantly, she pushed her mana output higher. The veins along young Lucian’s temples began to bulge visibly under the strain building inside his skull, his face twisted in an expression too pained to watch, wanting to scream and unable to make a single sound.
"Young Master!!"
Rumelia appeared at his side without warning, seizing Elder Meron’s wrist in both hands.
"What are you doing to Young Master Lucian?!"
Elder Meron pulled her hand back at once, and the needle-thin threads of mana dissolved instantly from the boy’s skull.
"I still found nothing, Patriarch. It seems Young Master Lucian truly has no connection to this incident."
Rumelia’s eyes went wide with fury. "How dare you hurt him like this. If she were still alive to see how you’re treating Lucian right now, all of you would be in serious trouble!"
No one said the name out loud, but every Elder present, and Cassius himself, knew exactly who Rumelia meant, and the words landed hard enough to silence the entire platform. Edward stepped forward, gripping Rumelia’s shoulder in an attempt to calm her.
"Rein in your temper, Rumelia. You’re standing in front of the Patriarch."
She shrugged his hand off without hesitation. "I serve the people I choose to serve. Not someone who can’t even show his own family basic respect."
"How dare you, a mere servant, speak like that!" Elder Burrel snapped, appalled that a servant would dare address the Patriarch so openly, unafraid even of Cassius himself.
Cassius finally lifted a hand and let out a long breath.
"Very well, if that’s what you want. You’re free to join your master out at the western border, near the Kingdom of Calistia. I imagine you’ll both find it far more comfortable living there. Edward, see to the arrangements."
"Understood, my lord."
Cassius turned and walked back toward the mansion with his two Elders, leaving the rest of them behind to go inspect the state of the sword firsthand.
Meron watched as Rumelia gathered the now-unconscious Lucian into her arms.
"I’m sorry, Rumelia. We had no choice. He’s only lost a few days of memory, nothing more."
"Don’t you dare say ’only’!" Rumelia’s voice cracked with fury. "Do you honestly think I don’t know you people have been quietly selling off his mother’s belongings to those nobles? How careless of me, sitting inside chatting with Lady Helia, while you were all out here trying to steal his memories the second my back was turned."
Her voice rang out sharp and unrelenting, every ounce of restraint gone. Meron opened her mouth, wanting to explain, but Edward shook his head, silently urging her to let it go, at least for now.
I never knew Rumelia could get this angry, Lucian thought, watching this fragment of his own erased past play out before him. It explained so much, why he’d never been able to remember exactly how or why he’d been moved out of the main estate so suddenly. Rumelia had only ever told him it was the Elders’ decision. Now he knew the Patriarch himself had played no small part in it either.
"Edward, where’s the Patriarch?" Adrian came running up from the Tomb grounds, Kaelyn and the others close behind him. But scanning the platform, there was no sign of Cassius anywhere, only Elder Meron, Edward, Rumelia, and Lucian, still unconscious.
"Well, since you’re all here now, perhaps it’s time you went to show your swords to the guests and your families waiting inside. And as for what just happened out here, none of you breathe a word of it to anyone."
Edward said it with a pleasant smile still fixed on his face, though a killing edge had crept into the air around him, sharp enough that it left the boys visibly unsettled.
"Relax, will you," Kaelyn said. "You think we actually understood a word you old folks were arguing about back there?"
"My apologies, Young Master Kaelyn. I got a bit carried away."
Kaelyn turned and walked off without another word, the others trailing behind him toward the main house.
Adult Lucian tilted his face upward, back in the present.
Seems like I still can’t find a way out of here. And I still haven’t found Miyu, or figured out what this sword actually is.
He lowered his gaze again, the strange blade still gripped tight in his hand.
The Patriarch and the Elders are already inside checking on the sword, aren’t they? Maybe I should head up there too, see what I can find.
Weighing every possibility carefully, Lucian decided to make his way back toward the main house. His whereabouts, his situation, none of it had become any clearer. All he had to go on was this sword, and whatever chance remained of finding Miyu again, if she could even help him find a way out.
He now stood right at the estate’s back entrance. He remembered, though, that every time he’d passed through a door so far, he’d ended up somewhere entirely different from where he expected.
If I open this one, where will I end up this time?
Still hesitant, Lucian closed his hand around the doorknob anyway.
He turned it and pushed the door open.
No light spilled out from the other side. Instead, a thick, suffocating darkness rolled toward him, one he couldn’t sense in the way he normally would, and before he could second-guess himself, his foot had already crossed the threshold.
The instant he stepped through, the air around him changed entirely, colder, heavier, wrong in a way that raised every hair on his arms. Whatever this door had led to, it wasn’t the mansion’s interior at all.
I really am back here again.
A shiver tore through his entire body. He’d barely finished stepping through the doorway, and somehow, impossibly, he found himself standing at the base of the staircase leading to the fourth floor.
"Honestly, I’m getting tired of this."
He wasn’t talking to himself, either. His face turned downward, toward the stairs beneath him.
Lucian inhaled deeply.
"Why don’t you just come out already?! Haven’t we played this little guessing game long enough?!"
Lucian shouted it down into the stairwell, his voice hard, all traces of hesitation gone from his expression now, replaced with something far more resolute.
TAP
TAP—
The sound of heels rang out, climbing the staircase toward him, one deliberate step at a time, accompanied by the faint, unmistakable rustle of fabric dragging against the floor, growing closer with every second.
This presence...
Lucian’s voice, when it came, was ice-cold, directed straight at the figure now closing in beside him.
"No way. Why are you here"
The figure only smiled, and kept walking, closing the last of the distance between them without a word.
"SSHH"