Reus, feeling better, thought it wouldn’t be a particularly special story and readily agreed to talk about the library. However, the words that flowed from Roel’s mouth immediately stopped his thought process.

“There seemed to be a passage leading somewhere behind the picture frame…!”

Rochester Duchy. It was like the last trace of Reus’s parents left to him from childhood.

But without his knowledge, the Emperor sent shadows to the duchy, removing anything that could be a source of trouble and filling the empty spaces with plausible fakes.

After learning that the Emperor had rummaged through the duchy, it was impossible to have the same affection for it as before.

Since then, Reus had completely overturned any place where the Emperor’s traces remained, no matter where it was.

But even then, he couldn’t bear to touch the library. So, he buried it along with his childhood memories and thoroughly ignored it to the point of forgetting its existence.

Perhaps because childhood memories were resurfacing, Reus suddenly felt uncomfortable, but he slowly recalled old memories.

However, since the memories had been buried for so long, it took some time to recall the attic’s appearance.

For a long time, as if veiled in fog, sunlight entered the dim attic in his memory, and old recollections began to reveal themselves one by one.

The sunset light quietly settling in the attic through the glass dome. The sight of his dear mother smiling at him in it. And… the image of his father, whom he had never forgotten for a single moment, appeared.

For a moment, his heart ached. Reus wanted to stop recalling the past, but once the memories became vivid, they expanded uncontrollably.

The image of his mother lying next to him, drawing pictures for him, and his father’s back as he posted them on the wall. Numerous scenes overlapped on top of that.

With an emotion that was either surging or choking, the memory focused on the frame right next to where the picture was attached.

If it was the attic’s frame….

A family photo.

‘There would be nothing else but that.’

Although he appeared calm on the outside, Reus’s fingertips were trembling slightly.

Suddenly, words his father had said in passing came to mind.

His father had definitely mentioned that there was a secret archive of the family, hidden in the most precious space.

He had also tried to find it once, not long after meeting Theron. But unfortunately, they couldn’t find the secret archive or any hidden passages anywhere.

Reus had thought that even that must have disappeared at the Emperor’s hands.

But what if that space led to the secret archive his father had mentioned, the one his father had left behind?

“Reus, are you okay…? Your complexion suddenly turned very bad.”

As a touch as soft as cotton wool touched his cheek, Reus was drawn to place his hand over the back of Roel’s hand.

The woman’s tenderness seemed to ease his breath a little.

“I should have been more careful with this kind of story… If it’s hard, we can talk about it next time… No, we don’t have to talk about it ever again. I’m sorry, Reus.”

“…Roel.”

A terribly cracked, metallic sound mixed into his voice, which had been fine until just before.

It wasn’t that he called out expecting an answer.

Reus just needed to hold onto something, anything, because he couldn’t believe the current situation. It was just the woman’s hand and existence that he was holding.

Despite his still cracking voice, Reus called out to Roel once more.

“Roel.”

What if there are traces of my parents left in the place you mentioned?

Reus’s heart was filled with a burst of anticipation and an inexplicable fear.

Roel saved my life. Not only that, but she taught me how to breathe and even helped me regain the light of the world that had been dead.

But if she puts the traces of my parents in my hands like this… how can I repay all of this?

I have nothing to my name.

Reus, who had been moving his lips, asked carefully.

“Can you… give me the ring?”

Roel naturally placed the ring on the table into Reus’s hand.

“Of course. Why wouldn’t I? It’s the ring of the Rochester family, so it’s practically yours.”

Reus, who had been staring at his palm stupidly for a moment, stammered on, unable to hide his trembling voice.

“Exactly where… No, where should I put this….”

“Do you want to go there?”

Roel seemed startled, then pondered for a moment before answering quickly.

“It’s exactly on the bottom left of the frame. If you put the ring in there, a metal button will appear to open the frame.”

“Bottom left….”

Right now, Reus had no room to care about anything other than the passage in the attic. And Roel knew that fact.

“But I’m a little scared of that place…. Reus, would you go and check it out first?”

Reus couldn’t bring himself to continue at the kind smile. Today, the woman’s tenderness made his heart ache too much.

* * *

Reus arrived in front of the library. Although he had rushed here frantically to find Roel not long ago, the feeling was different this time.

A place that had been locked for as long as he had closed the door to his heart. He never thought he would come to the library again, which he thought he would never look for in his lifetime.

If he hadn’t given Roel this key… No, if Roel hadn’t taken an interest in this place….

Thoughts led to more thoughts, and he arrived at the Forest of Silence.

The very forest where he had been about to close his eyes, resigned to death, but came back to life that day.

Yes. Everything stemmed from Roel saving him.

Reus slowly entered the library. The library, which had a particularly strong scent of sunlight, hadn’t changed much from when he was a child. It was still quiet and gentle.

If there was a slight change, it was that Roel’s traces were faintly imprinted here and there.

Reus took in each and every one of them as he headed upstairs. Soon, he arrived right in front of the stairs leading to the attic.

He wanted to step on the stairs with big strides like when he was a child, but somehow he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

What was this mere staircase? Reus, who had been staring blankly at the attic entrance for quite a while due to his churning stomach, finally took a step and headed up.

When he was young, even this entrance seemed huge, but now it had become so small that he had to lower his upper body to enter.

As he passed through the entrance and stepped inside, a soft and comfortable air greeted Reus.

The attic under the glass dome hadn’t changed at all. Even the scent he always smelled as a child remained the same.

His breath caught in his throat. He realized only now that he had been earnestly longing for this unchanged sight.

A place where his parents’ touch still remained. A place where the memories of his happy times were fully preserved. A space that was nothing but innocent.

Realizing that the things he had to look up at before were now all below his line of sight, a strange laugh escaped. And naturally, a little sadness mixed into that laughter.

The emotions that engulfed Reus were too complex to be defined by a single word.

Was it guilt for having forgotten for so long? A desperate wish to go back to the old days even once? It also felt like he was just so happy that it was overwhelming.

Reus walked in front of the frame and stared intently at his parents.

It was nice to see them… and a bit awkward.

When life got too hard, he would take out his parents from his memories on very rare occasions, and they were always in the form of much older adults. But the parents in the photo didn’t look that different from his current self.

As he felt the long years, a sudden sadness surged like a tide.

Reus quickly lowered his body, fearing that he would spend the whole day taking in the slightly unfamiliar parents. Then he looked for the gap on the left under the frame, as Roel had said.

Indeed, there was a groove carved under the wooden frame, identical to the ring pattern. Reus inserted the ring without hesitation.

Then, a slightly faded gold-colored metal popped out. Pushing it lightly, a click- sound was heard, and the frame opened like a door.

And as Roel said, there was a dark space behind it, along with a ladder leading downward.

Reus headed straight down without hesitation. At some point, lights began to turn on automatically, and the surroundings quickly brightened.

When he took his foot off the ladder, he had arrived in a completely light-filled space.

It was the family’s secret archive that his father had told him about.

* * *

The secret archive was so old that one could hardly guess it was a space in Rochester Duchy. The thick scent of wood permeating the entire space evoked a very distant past that he had never experienced.

Not only the old walls, furniture, and the bumpy stone floor but also the objects filling the space were like that.

There were armor and helmets that looked like they had been used in a very distant past, dull swords were displayed, and shields were placed in random spots.

And on the widest wall, there was an old cloth on which someone had personally drawn the family’s coat of arms.

A round sphere placed on a cylindrical pedestal. Two white lions standing guard on either side as if protecting it.

Looking closely, although it was similar to the current coat of arms, there were many crude parts.

Judging by the many traces of alterations, this seemed to be the beginning of the family’s coat of arms, gradually evolving into the current one.

Reaching the end of that old space, another dark passage appeared as if leading somewhere.

The place he walked to as if drawn was a humid space where the exhaled breath seemed to dampen. In the center of this space, reminiscent of a cave, was a clear pool of water.

And there, the cylindrical pedestal depicted in the family’s coat of arms was present, and a huge sphere was floating right above in the air.

Since his father always said that the Goddess of the Moon had bestowed blessings upon the family, that was probably something symbolizing the moon.

But it looked as if it had entered a state of dormancy, like a light had been turned off.

He looked around the space, but there was nothing but water, the cylindrical pedestal, and the sphere with a blackened, lifeless interior.