For several long minutes, Richard sat motionless, his gaze fixed on the slowly dying logs in the fireplace.
The fire was gradually losing its strength, and only occasional flickers of flame illuminated the room with a soft, uneven light, leaving the rest of the space shrouded in deep half-darkness.
He made no attempt to rise, nor did he search for explanations for what had happened.
He did not rush to draw conclusions, because for the first time, he understood that any hurried attempt to make sense of it would only leave him more confused.
Too much had already changed, too many questions had arisen over the past few hours, and he still could not give himself an honest answer to a single one of them.
For the first time since waking, Richard allowed himself to simply stop.
Everything that had happened had come crashing down upon him too quickly, leaving almost no time either to process it or to adjust to his new reality.
One question followed another, each new detail tearing apart his previous assumptions, while the чужие memories that flared within his mind as suddenly as they vanished only blurred the fragile line between what truly belonged to him and what had once made up another man’s life.
At times, Richard felt as though he was finally beginning to understand what was happening, but the moment he grasped at some new thought, another fragment of the past would force him to doubt everything all over again.
Only a short while ago, he had been lying in a hospital bed.
He remembered the white ceiling of the ward, painfully bright after hours of sleeplessness.
He remembered the monotonous beeping of medical equipment, which had irritated him at first before becoming so familiar that his mind had almost stopped registering it.
He remembered the quiet voices of the doctors speaking to one another with increasing caution and in increasingly hushed tones, even though they had long since stopped hiding the hopelessness they were trying not to let him see.
He remembered his own breathing growing heavier.
He remembered his final breath.
He remembered the cold slowly spreading through his body, gradually pushing out every sensation of pain.
Along with the pain went the fear.
Regrets faded.
Even the sense of time disappeared.
Seconds ceased to matter, and the world around him seemed to grow farther and farther away until there was nothing left for him to hold on to.
At some point, the world simply began to dissolve.
There was no flash of light, no sudden realization of death, no clear transition of any kind.
It happened slowly, almost imperceptibly, as though someone were gradually extinguishing one source of light after another until nothing remained but endless silence.
He had been certain it was the end.
Not a temporary pause.
Not a dream.
Not a state from which he would one day awaken.
The end, after which there should have been nothing.
Absolute and final.
Richard had truly accepted that thought then.
That was precisely why what was happening now seemed so impossible.
Because he had awakened.
But not there.
Not in that hospital room, not in his own body, and not in the life he had left behind a moment before his death.
He had opened his eyes in a world where his name belonged to another man, where strangers called him their lord, where the walls held memories he did not possess, and where a man named Sebastian looked at him as though the person standing before him truly was the one he had known all his life.
But now…
Richard slowly lifted his gaze from the fireplace.
Now he could no longer tell himself that all of this was merely a mistake, an accident, or some strange dream.
Too much of it was real.
And if this truly was a second chance, then for the first time, Richard began to understand that fate had not given him the opportunity to reclaim his own life.
It had given him someone else’s.
Now he sat in an unfamiliar room where the air still carried the scent of old wood, melted wax, and the ashes left behind by a long-spent fire.
Beyond the windows, the winter wind howled, occasionally making the glass tremble faintly in its frames.
The floorboards creaked softly beneath their own weight, while somewhere deep within the vast estate, the barely audible footsteps of people continuing with their ordinary lives could be heard, as though nothing unusual had happened here.
And yet he was here.
In the body of a man he had never met before, surrounded by people who looked at him as their lord, and by memories that had never belonged to him, yet now somehow lived within his consciousness.
Richard slowly lowered his gaze to his own hands.
They were old—covered in a fine web of wrinkles, marked by prominent veins, and bearing countless traces of the years they had lived through.
Faint age spots mottled the skin, and his fingers looked unusually thin and bony.
Richard simply stared at them for a while, as though doing so might somehow convince him that what was happening was real.
Then he slowly clenched his fingers.
The skin pulled tight, the joints answered with a dull but unmistakable ache, and for some reason, that simple physical sensation was almost frightening.
The movement was still his own.
He could still make his hands move as he wished, still feel the touch of his own fingers and the weight of his body, yet the body itself continued to feel чужим.
That strange, almost impossible sensation did not fade, no matter how much time passed.
It continued to feel unnatural, as though something fundamental in the order of things had been violated, as though Richard’s mind had been placed inside a shell that had never been meant to become his.
As though his consciousness had been forcibly imprisoned within someone else’s body—too cramped for one soul and too hollowed-out for another.
He slowly ran his palm across the desk, as though touching something real might restore his sense of belonging in this world.
But even that did nothing to dispel the strange feeling of detachment.
He looked at his hands again and, almost cautiously, repeated the name he had heard only minutes ago in his mind.
Richard Ravenhart.
The name sounded unfamiliar and heavy in his consciousness.
It seemed to belong to someone else—a man he did not yet know, whose life he was now somehow expected to continue.
Richard repeated it again.
Richard Ravenhart.
Then once more, more slowly, trying to grow accustomed to every sound, to the combination of first and last name that was now supposed to signify him.
He almost hoped that something would change with each repetition.
That somewhere deep within him, his memory would finally respond, that a forgotten face, a familiar voice, or at least the faintest sense that this name truly belonged to him would rise to the surface.
But nothing happened.
No faces he could recognize.
No voices that had once been familiar.
No memories of childhood, family, or the people who had surrounded the former Richard.
Not even the faintest, most elusive sense of belonging to the name appeared.
It remained чужим.
And that only made it more frightening.
Because Richard was beginning to understand that simply bearing someone else’s name was not enough to become the man who had once carried it.
Only a strange, elusive sensation remained, something impossible to put into words, which somehow made it all the more persistent.
Richard could not call it recognition, memory, or even a vague sense of belonging, yet it stubbornly refused to disappear, no matter how hard he tried to push it away.
The surname was unfamiliar to him.
He would have sworn that he had never heard it before, let alone spoken it, associated it with himself, or connected it to anyone he had ever known.
And yet it did not feel entirely foreign.
It was as though somewhere deep within him, beyond the invisible barrier separating his own consciousness from the memories of the real Richard, there was already a thin, almost imperceptible thread somehow connecting him to that name.
He could not yet reach it, nor did he understand how it was even possible to touch something that existed beyond the boundaries of his memory.
He did not know what lay on the other side of that barrier, or why certain images suddenly managed to break through it while everything else remained beyond his reach.
But he could feel its presence.
It was like the sensation experienced by a traveler lost in a dense fog.
Distant mountains are hidden behind a thick white veil, the path disappears from sight, and the traveler can see no farther than a few steps ahead.
And yet, even then, he may know that the mountains are somewhere in front of him, because he can feel their silent grandeur beyond the wall of mist.
That was how Richard felt about his own memory.
He could not see it in its entirety, nor could he understand where the other man’s life began and where it ended, but now he knew that something truly existed beyond that barrier.
Something that had belonged to the former Richard.
And perhaps, one day, he would be able to remember it.
Richard slowly closed his eyes, allowing himself, if only for a few moments, to withdraw from the world around him.
He had received too many answers that day, and with them had come even more questions that now refused to leave him in peace.
He had died.
He had awakened in a чужом body that was gradually beginning to feel not only foreign, but somehow connected to him as well.
He had inherited the name of a man he had never known, along with his home, his past, and memories that did not belong to him.
And then he had met a man who was willing to give his life without hesitation for his lord.
But not for him.
Not for the man Richard had been before.
For another Richard—the man he barely knew yet, but whose life he was now expected to continue.
And that thought proved heavier than everything else.
Because for the first time, Richard understood that his task was not merely to figure out what had happened to him.
He had to learn who the man was whose name he now carried.
And one day, answer the most difficult question of all— could he become, for these people, the Richard they had lost?
That thought left an unexpected heaviness in his heart.
Only now did he truly understand a simple yet merciless truth: he had not found himself in an empty world or in a new life beginning with a clean slate.
He had stepped into a story that had already taken on a life of its own long before his arrival, complete with its own connections, its own history, and its own consequences.
Now he would have to live among people for whom he was a lord, a friend, an ally, or an enemy.
They addressed him, spoke his name, trusted him, or hated him, but none of it was truly meant for him.
They were waiting for the man whose place he had unwittingly taken.
After some time, Richard finally forced himself to stand.
This time, he moved far more carefully, no longer trying to fight against the frailty of the body he had inherited.
Every movement was slow and deliberate, as though he were learning all over again how to live inside a body that obeyed entirely different laws.
The slightest lapse in concentration, the smallest sudden movement, and his joints answered with a dull ache while his muscles responded with a heavy, almost exhausting weakness.
Strange…
Only recently, such caution would have seemed humiliating to him.
In his previous life, he had hardly ever thought about his own body.
It had existed somewhere at the edge of his consciousness—familiar, reliable, obedient.
He had taken it for granted, like a tool that carried out its owner’s every command without question.
If he wanted to walk, his legs walked.
If he wanted to run, his body obeyed.
If he wanted to work until deep into the night, forgetting sleep and rest, it endured, time and again bearing the consequences of his own stubbornness.
It was only when illness began to slowly take his strength away that he understood, for the first time, how cruelly a person underestimates the simplest things.
The ability to take a step without having to think about pain.
To draw a full breath freely.
To raise an arm without feeling its weight.
All these simple, almost imperceptible things disappear so gradually that a person realizes their value only when there is no longer any way to get them back.
And yet…
Even the weakened body in which he had lived out the final months of his previous life had never felt as foreign to him as this one did.
Back then, despite the illness and constant weakness, he had at least known his own body.
He knew how it responded to movement, how much strength it took to rise from bed, how his breathing changed after a few steps, and where the limits of his physical capabilities lay.
It had been worn down, exhausted, and slowly failing him, but it had still been his own.
Now everything was different.
This body had its own memory, its own habits, even its own fatigue, entirely different from the kind Richard had grown accustomed to during the final months of his former life.
It moved differently, breathed differently, and even kept its balance in a way his mind was not used to.
At times, Richard felt as though he were controlling not his own body, but an unfamiliar mechanism whose workings he had yet to understand.
He would command his hand to move, and it would respond with the slightest delay.
He would take a step, anticipating the movement as he normally would, only for his body to shift its weight slightly differently, forcing him to adapt to himself all over again.
It was so unfamiliar that at times he caught himself thinking something strange: as though the true owner of this body were still somewhere inside him, silently watching every movement he made.
Richard slowly rose and walked toward the window.
The old floorboards creaked softly beneath each of his steps, as though even the house itself responded to his presence.
Heavy velvet curtains swayed faintly in the cold air seeping through the poorly fitted window frames.
A chill radiated from the glass, and Richard felt it even before he touched the window.
He stopped before it for a few seconds.
Then he cautiously raised a hand and slowly drew the heavy fabric aside.
And froze.
As though the world beyond the glass had turned out to be nothing like what he had been prepared to see.
The estate stretched out before him.
A single glance was enough to understand that it belonged to a truly great house.
A broad inner courtyard spread out before the main building, surrounded by massive stone structures.
Several tall towers rose in the distance, connected by covered walkways, and beyond them stood a fortress wall that disappeared into the whiteness of the winter landscape.
Everything spoke of the power of a family that had possessed wealth, influence, and authority for centuries.
Thick walls, towering spires, spacious courtyards, and vast grounds should have conveyed an impression of impenetrable strength.
This was not merely a wealthy household, but an entire world built around the name of House Ravenhart.
Yet only a few moments later, Richard realized that his first impression had been deceptive.
He had expected to see wealth, immaculate order, and the quiet, assured strength that usually surrounded the estates of powerful houses.
He had imagined numerous servants, guards stationed at the gates, a bustling courtyard, stables filled with horses, and the constant movement of people that accompanied the life of a large and influential family.
But he saw none of that.
Instead, before him lay an estate submerged in a strange, almost unsettling silence.
Snow continued to fall slowly over the empty courtyard, settling across the stone paving and rooftops.
The paths between the buildings appeared almost deserted, while the few figures moving through them did so so quietly and methodically that, from a distance, they could easily have been mistaken for shadows.
Even the house itself, despite its size and grandeur, seemed unnaturally quiet.
And the longer Richard stared through the window, the stronger the feeling became that something was hidden behind those walls—something he did not yet understand.
Something that was connected not only to this estate.
But also to the man whose name he now carried.
It was not the peaceful silence of a winter morning, when snow muffles every sound and the cold keeps people indoors.
Nor was it the measured silence of a great estate, where life continues its familiar course even when everything outside appears frozen and still.
This silence was different.
There was something heavy and ominous within it, the kind of feeling that could only arise in a place where life still continued, yet had already begun to slowly fade.
There were no voices from the courtyard, no sound of carriages, no ordinary bustle that should have accompanied life in a large noble estate.
No stablehands shouted to one another, no stable doors slammed, no servants called out their orders.
It was as though the estate itself had deliberately muted every sound, leaving behind only the faintest signs of life.
Only the wind moved freely between the stone buildings, slipping through empty passages and lifting light swirls of snow from the ground.
It swept across the courtyard, rushed along the walls, and then disappeared somewhere beyond the towers, leaving behind a long, almost mournful howl.
Richard began to notice details he had initially overlooked.
Despite the winter, an experienced eye could easily discern years of neglect.
The shrubs had not been trimmed in a long time, their branches growing wildly along the paths.
The stone walkways were gradually disappearing beneath grass, moss, and the thin layer of earth that had accumulated between the slabs year after year.
Old trees grew freely and unchecked, stretching their branches in every direction as though no one had cared to maintain the garden’s former elegance for many years.
The spacious inner courtyard looked much the same, as though it had long since ceased to receive proper care.
Even in winter, the neglect was impossible to miss, especially against the backdrop of the estate’s imposing walls and immense scale.
Some of the buildings were clearly in need of repair, while certain sections of the courtyard had already begun to lose the order that had likely been maintained there every day once.
The roof of one of the outbuildings had visibly sagged beneath the weight of time and snow.
Its wooden supports looked as though a few more harsh winters might be their last.
On another building, several roof tiles were missing entirely, exposing beams darkened by damp.
In places, the wood had already taken on an almost black hue, while beneath the eaves there were clear signs of persistent moisture.
The stonework was covered in a fine network of cracks in places.
They began as barely visible lines, then gradually spread farther and farther.
The walls that had once surely gleamed with clean, pale stone and emphasized the wealth of the family were now almost entirely concealed beneath dark ivy and wild vines that had climbed higher year after year without restraint.
And yet the place did not feel dead.
It was still alive.
People continued to keep it going as best they could, with whatever strength and means remained at their disposal.
Somewhere inside the building, fireplaces were still being tended.
Servants still moved behind heavy doors.
Someone kept track of the supplies, someone closed the shutters before nightfall, and someone, perhaps, tried every day to preserve at least the appearance of the order that had once existed here.
But there was no longer any of the confidence that had once defined this place.
Richard could feel it almost physically.
Everything around him carried the sense of a slow and inexorable decline—quiet, almost imperceptible to the casual eye.
It was as though the estate had not fallen into ruin suddenly, nor been destroyed by a single event.
It had simply lost a little of its strength year after year, until one day those around it stopped noticing just how much the place that had once seemed so magnificent had changed.
It resembled a dying hearth.
The flame had not yet gone out completely.
A few embers still held their warmth, and a faint reddish glow continued to smolder within the fireplace.
But the heat was already fading, and the embers were slowly being covered by gray ash, concealing beneath it the last remnants of the fire.
Richard frowned unconsciously.
He did not know what had happened to this house, or why an estate that had once been so powerful had fallen into such a state.
But now, for the first time, he felt that the чужая life he had been forced to accept along with this name was far more complicated than he had imagined.
And perhaps it was here that he would have to discover why the former Richard had found himself on the very edge of this slowly fading fate.
Somewhere deep within Richard’s consciousness, a strange feeling stirred—quiet, painful, and utterly foreign, as though it belonged not to him, but to the man whose body he now inhabited.
It was neither a thought nor a memory that he could hold onto and examine.
Rather, it was a vague emotion that had arisen without warning and for no apparent reason.
Deep longing and regret mingled within it, so natural and powerful that Richard did not immediately understand why he was feeling them at all.
He knew that this feeling could not possibly belong to him.
He had never seen this place before, never walked these corridors, climbed these staircases, or lived within these walls.
He had not a single memory of his own connecting him to the Ravenhart estate.
And yet, as he looked upon the grounds slowly losing their former grandeur, he felt something close to physical pain.
It was so strange that Richard unconsciously held his breath.
It was as though he were watching not someone else’s inheritance fade away, but his own home—a place tied to his entire life, even as his mind continued to insist otherwise.
For a brief moment, he even felt as though his heart had responded before his mind could understand the reason for the pain.
And it was then that Richard felt truly afraid for the first time.
Not of the world he had found himself in, nor of the unfamiliar body, nor even of the unknown future that now awaited him.
All of those things, frightening as they were, could still be understood somehow.
Something else was far more terrifying.
He was afraid that the former owner’s feelings were slowly and imperceptibly becoming part of him.
That along with the чужое body, he was beginning to inherit чужую pain, чужую sorrow, and чужую attachment to this place, gradually erasing the thin boundary that still separated his own life from that of a man he had never known.
For a moment, reality seemed to waver.
Richard felt as though he were no longer standing at the window of his room.
Instead, he was looking upon the estate through another man’s eyes—the eyes of someone who had watched year after year as his home slowly lost its grandeur, as stone walls cracked, gardens became overgrown, roofs decayed, and, along with it all, the very thing that had once given meaning to his life gradually faded away.
He did not merely see this place.
He felt its loss.
The sensation was so real that Richard abruptly turned away from the window, as though doing so might rid him of the чужой gaze that continued to live somewhere inside him.
He did not like this feeling.
It reminded him too clearly of the most important truth: this life did not belong to him.
He should not have felt the pain of a man he had never known.
He should not have mourned a home in which he had never lived.
He should not have felt attached to walls that, until today, had not even existed in his memory.
And yet he mourned.
Not by choice, and without even understanding why.
As though along with the чужое body, he had inherited a fragment of another man’s soul.
The thought made him freeze for several moments.
He did not know whether such a thing was truly possible, or whether his mind was simply trying to find some explanation for what was happening.
But the longer he considered it, the stronger the feeling became that there was something between him and the former Richard that went beyond a mere body, a name, and fragments of memory.
Unwilling to dwell on those thoughts any longer, Richard turned away from the window and began to examine his surroundings more carefully.
Now he was no longer merely looking at the room.
He was trying to notice the details that had escaped his attention before, as though hoping to find among them at least a few clues about the man whose life he was now expected to continue.
Gradually, the room revealed itself in its entirety.
It was spacious, with high ceilings and massive walls of pale stone, built seemingly not so much for comfort as to withstand the passage of centuries.
The thickness of the walls was apparent even at a glance, while the tall windows and heavy wooden doors only reinforced the sense of solidity and an old, almost enduring order.
Everything around him looked expensive, yet nothing suggested ostentatious luxury.
Every object seemed to have its purpose and its place.
Every piece of furniture, every detail of the room, even the smallest elements of its decoration seemed to preserve a fragment of a history Richard knew nothing about.
The furniture, crafted from dark-stained oak, was adorned with delicate hand-carved designs, darkened by age yet still retaining their former beauty.
The same motif appeared on the tall cabinets, the massive headboard of the bed, and the heavy wooden columns.
Intertwining branches, among which could be made out the silhouettes of wolves and black ravens.
They seemed to silently watch everyone who entered the room, as though they were part of the house itself—symbols of a family that had survived through countless generations.
Richard lingered over them, trying to understand what exactly they were meant to represent.
Why had wolves and ravens become the symbols of House Ravenhart?
And why, when looking at these images—familiar only through the memories of another man—did he once again feel that strange, almost painful sense of recognition?
He did not know the answer yet.
But he was gradually beginning to understand that too much within this house was connected to the man he had once not been, but whose life he now had to accept.
Ancient paintings hung on the walls.
Some depicted harsh, snow-covered landscapes; others showed knights in heavy armor leading their forces through snowbound mountain passes.
On nearly every canvas, the white wolf appeared again, invariably accompanying the people.
It seemed that this image was more than a recurring symbol—it was a thread connecting all the scenes captured upon the walls.
But the longer Richard examined the room, the more he realized that its significance lay not only in the paintings.
The room itself seemed to preserve the imprint of the past.
The high ceiling rose above him like the vaulted roof of a small palace hall.
Intricate plasterwork adorned it, intertwined with patterns of gold and silver so delicate that they seemed almost impossible to have been fashioned by human hands.
Yet what drew his gaze most strongly was the enormous fresco at the very center.
It depicted a lone knight standing with his back to the viewer, clad in heavy armor.
His cloak, caught by the icy northern wind, nearly brushed the snow-covered ground, while a long sword stood driven into the snow before him.
Though the knight’s face could not be seen, his very figure radiated the quiet majesty of a man before whom even kings would not hesitate to bow their heads.
Behind him, like a silent guardian, stood a white wolf.
Its thick fur shimmered with silver, while its piercing eyes were fixed upon the distance, as though the beast was watching not the man, but the entire world before it.
It did not look tamed or subdued.
On the contrary, there was something in the composition that suggested the man and the ancient beast stood beside one another as equals.
High above them, its broad wings spread wide, soared a massive black raven.
It silently watched the knight and the wolf, and there was something inexplicable in its still gaze—as though this encounter meant far more than it might appear at first glance.
The artist had rendered the bird with such astonishing precision that it seemed as though the raven might suddenly launch itself from the ceiling and take flight into the sky.
The entire composition radiated an inexplicable sense of antiquity and power.
Even someone who knew nothing of the history of this world would have understood at once that this was not merely an image of a man and a beast.
There was a connection within it, one whose roots reached deep into a distant past long since forgotten, yet which still continued to influence the present.
Richard’s gaze slowly left the walls and their images, coming to rest on the objects surrounding him.
If the paintings and the fresco preserved memories of the distant past, then the things around him spoke of a man who had lived here until quite recently, leaving behind traces of his thoughts, decisions, and concerns.
Papers lay scattered across the massive desk.
Some had been neatly arranged into orderly stacks, as though carefully sorted and preserved for a specific purpose.
Others looked as though they had been returned to again and again, their lines reread in search of an answer or confirmation of something important.
The shelves lining the walls were crowded with volumes.
Some looked ancient, their covers bearing the marks of time; others were newer, yet had been preserved with the same care.
Among them were books on history, military affairs, governance, and a wide range of other subjects, as though the former master of the room had sought to gather here not merely a collection, but a repository of everything that might help him understand the world around him.
Nearby lay an old book with a dark cover.
Its edges were visibly worn from age, and the binding bore signs of prolonged use.
It seemed to have been opened not for idle reading, but turned to in moments when knowledge, memory, or the wisdom of the past was needed.
Richard was just about to open the book.
He slowly reached out, and the tips of his fingers had barely brushed the darkened leather binding when, in that very instant, the world around him seemed to lose its familiar stability.
It did not happen suddenly.
Rather, reality itself seemed to tremble almost imperceptibly, as though the invisible boundary between the present and the past had unexpectedly grown thin.
The room disappeared.
Or rather, it did not dissolve into darkness or vanish into shadow—it simply ceased to be the same room he had been looking at only a second before.
The same chamber still stood before him, but now it belonged to another time.
The high ceiling, its oak beams darkened by the years, still rose overhead.
The massive bookshelves still reached almost to the vaulted ceiling, and by the window stood the same writing desk where decisions had once been made—decisions capable of changing the course of human lives.
Yet the study no longer seemed forgotten.
It was alive.
Golden reflections from dozens of candles danced across the walls, filling the room with a soft, flickering light.
Logs crackled fiercely in the enormous fireplace, driving away the chill of the winter night, while heavy curtains were drawn tightly shut, concealing the endless snowfall and impenetrable darkness beyond the windows.
Even the air felt different—thicker and heavier, as though the room itself had absorbed the anxiety and tension of those who had spent long hours within it.
A young man sat behind the writing desk, appearing to be no more than thirty years old.
Broad-shouldered, straight-backed, and carrying himself with quiet confidence, he was clearly someone accustomed to bearing responsibility not only for his own actions, but also for the fates of those who had entrusted their lives to him.
Yet exhaustion had already begun to leave its mark.
Not in his posture or movements, but in his eyes.
Faint shadows of sleepless nights lay beneath them, while his gray gaze held the strain of a man who had forced himself for far too long to be stronger than human nature allowed.
Several people stood before the desk.
Each of them was dressed expensively, yet without ostentatious luxury.
Heavy winter cloaks rested upon their shoulders, swords hung at their belts, and their faces bore the calm concentration of people accustomed to facing danger and making difficult decisions.
These were not random visitors, nor courtiers who had come merely to observe formalities.
They carried themselves with ease, showing neither fear nor any inclination to conceal their opinions, yet every gesture and every glance conveyed a deep respect for the man seated before them.
These were people who were trusted.
People whose opinions carried weight.
People summoned only when the matter at hand involved decisions capable of changing someone’s fate.
A little behind the young man, near the edge of the desk, stood a familiar figure.
He looked noticeably younger than he had in Richard’s memories, but there was no mistaking him.
His back was perfectly straight, his hands clasped behind him, his gaze calm and attentive.
He silently observed what was unfolding without interfering in the conversation.
His hair was considerably darker, with only the first traces of silver beginning to show at his temples, while his face retained the same composure Richard remembered so well.
He made no effort to draw attention to himself.
And yet his presence felt just as natural and indispensable as that of the master of the study himself.
He was not merely someone who happened to be standing nearby.
He was part of this house—someone trusted enough to be present during its most important moments, when decisions were made that most people would never even learn about.
Richard tried to listen.
He could see the gathered men’s lips moving, one speaking while the others responded.
From time to time, the young head of the house would utter a few brief words, and everyone would fall silent, waiting for his decision.
But not a single word reached Richard.
As though the memory itself deliberately concealed the meaning of what was happening, allowing him only to see the images, sense the mood, and feel the weight of the moment.
Yet words were unnecessary.
He understood the most important part without them.
The air in the study seemed almost tangible in its heaviness.
Anxiety could be read in every gaze, while every restrained movement betrayed a tension that no one allowed themselves to show openly.
No one raised their voice.
No one argued.
And yet Richard understood without a doubt: the discussion concerned something so serious that the decision made within these walls could determine not only the fate of one house, but of everything dear to the people gathered there.
Then the young man seated at the head of the table slowly raised his gaze.
For one brief moment, their eyes met, and Richard was struck by an impossible thought: the man from the past was not looking through him, nor into the emptiness separating their two times.
He was looking directly at him.
The next instant, the world around him trembled.
The candle flames vanished one by one, as though an invisible hand had extinguished them all at once.
The room began to crumble, dissolving into fragments of light and shadow, and then the past finally receded, leaving behind only a heaviness in Richard’s chest and the strange sensation that he had touched a memory that was not yet ready to reveal itself completely.