Young Blair stretched her neck from where she sat, looking at the spot where Esmeralda had been.

Just moments ago, she had witnessed Esmeralda opening the floor and burying something there.

“What did you hide in the floor?”

“…You saw everything already?”

“Could it be… a treasure hunt?”

Esmeralda burst into laughter at Blair’s answer, which she had given after pondering with a serious expression for a moment.

“Well, something like that. It’s very important to me.”

“What is it?”

“It’s a secret. Because it’s very important.”

Esmeralda raised her index finger to her lips, making a gesture indicating it was a secret.

“So, can you keep what you just saw a secret?”

“A secret?”

“Yes. Don’t tell your mother, your father, or your brother. Of course, you shouldn’t tell anyone else either. Not even my ladies-in-waiting or maids.”

“So it’s a secret only I know?”

“That’s right, it’s a secret only you know, Blair. Even Herdin doesn’t know about it.”

Blair’s eyes sparkled at Esmeralda’s words.

Sharing a secret with someone meant becoming closer to that person.

It meant that she had become a special person to Esmeralda.

“Can you keep the promise?”

“Of course! I’m good at keeping secrets. I haven’t told anyone about Anna’s secret or Karen’s secret either.”

Esmeralda, who had been watching Blair confidently promise with an endearing look, held out her hand.

Understanding the meaning, Blair hooked her finger with Esmeralda’s pinky.

“Promise!”

“Yes, promise.”

After Blair even pressed her finger like a seal and let go, Esmeralda chuckled and gently stroked Blair’s head. That touch was infinitely affectionate.

As she quietly received that touch, her heavy eyelids slowly drooped, regardless of Blair’s will.

Those eyes that looked at her falling asleep with affection flickered beyond her closing eyelids, and then disappeared with complete darkness.

* * *

“Huh…!”

Blair woke up from her sleep, breathing heavily. Outside, it was still covered in darkness, a time that was too early to even call dawn.

Blair examined her two hands with trembling eyes.

The touch of Esmeralda caressing her, those eyes looking at her, that touch… it was still vivid.

‘How could I have lived forgetting this?’

Even though it wasn’t a memory from the time of the accident, she had completely forgotten about it.

The sudden return of memories that had been forgotten for years was probably due to the hypnosis. There was no other trigger besides that.

Whatever the cause, the meaning of the returned memory was one thing.

‘There’s something the Empress left in the Empress’s Palace.’

Of course, it could be something truly precious to her, or emergency funds.

But she had a strange premonition.

A premonition that there, in the floor of the Empress’s Palace, was something crucial related to the fire accident that day.

There was no evidence. It was just an instinctive hunch.

‘I need to find it. What the Empress left behind.’

The Empress’s Palace that Esmeralda had used was left abandoned after the fire incident.

Katrina, who succeeded her as Empress, refused to use that building, saying it was ominous, and there was no immediate need to repair a palace without an owner.

So if she went there, she should be able to find what Esmeralda left behind.

‘But if I go during the day, Mother will find out.’

Blair looked at the still dark window outside, then got up from the bed with determined eyes.

In the pre-dawn darkness when Katrina would also be asleep.

This was the only chance.

* * *

At the time when the pre-dawn twilight began to fall, the carriage of the Delmark ducal family carrying Blair stopped in front of the Imperial Palace.

The gatekeepers of the palace, who were yawning and trying to shake off their drowsiness, were surprised to see Blair.

“What brings you here at this hour, my lady?”

“I have an urgent matter to see my mother.”

The gatekeepers were curious about what could be so urgent as to visit at this early hour, but they had no reason to stop a daughter coming to see her mother.

The carriage quickly passed through the entrance of the palace. However, the carriage headed not to the Empress Dowager’s palace, but to the abandoned Empress’s Palace.

After getting out of the carriage, Blair ordered the coachman to wait and stood alone at the entrance.

The Empress’s Palace, revisited after a full ten years.

It was time to face, albeit vaguely, the memories she had been running from for ten years.

Blair looked at the door for a moment, and finally, as if she had made up her mind, opened the closed door and entered the Empress’s Palace.

Creeeeak—

The interior of the building, which had been left unattended for a long time after the accident, still had soot remaining.

Blair climbed the stairs leading to Esmeralda’s bedroom, tracing her faint childhood memories.

As Blair climbed one step at a time, the young Blair of that time passed her with an excited expression, running up the stairs ahead of her.

Following the young Blair who was climbing with light, pattering footsteps, a familiar corridor appeared. However, unlike the scenery in her memory, the corridor full of black traces created a desolate atmosphere.

The young Blair, who had been walking down the corridor where the pre-dawn twilight had begun to seep in, stopped in front of a door and then disappeared into it.

At the same time, Blair’s footsteps, following the child, also stopped.

It was Esmeralda’s room.

As she opened the door and entered, a sight vastly different from the peaceful and neat scenery in her memory came into view.

Everything in this room, scattered with blackened traces, was frozen on the day of the accident, and it felt somehow strange that only she was living in the flowing time.

Blair, who had been staring blankly at that scenery, approached Esmeralda’s bed, recalling the dream she had before coming to the palace.

‘It was around here.’

Considering the position where Blair was lying in the dream, Esmeralda must have buried something around here.

Blair tapped the spot with the heel of her shoe. Then, among the marble tiles on the floor, there was a spot that made a subtly different sound.

As Blair traced the edges of that marble, she noticed that the gap between the tiles was slightly wider than elsewhere. Just enough to insert a lever.

Blair began to bring various things that she could grab, looking around the room for something that could be used as a lever.

Blair, who had been trying to insert various items such as a comb, mirror, and candlestick between the marble tiles in order, finally succeeded in lifting and opening the tile.

Underneath was an iron box with a keyhole.

“It really… was here.”

For a moment, she felt relieved that it remained undiscovered by anyone, just as in her memory, but Blair encountered another problem.

She didn’t know the whereabouts of the key that could open the box.

‘Where would she have put the key?’

Blair pondered from Esmeralda’s perspective.

Esmeralda had said that only she knew about the existence of this secret box. Then she wouldn’t have put the key in a place where the maids might find it.

She probably put it in a secret place where no one’s hands would reach, where even the maids wouldn’t clean.

Blair looked around the room that was completely blackened, and suddenly recalled the memory from her dream.

‘At that time, the Empress noticed that I had woken up and immediately approached me. But there was nothing in her caressing hand.’

There must be a place to put the key between the bed and the sofa.

‘Perhaps…’

After pondering for a moment, Blair suddenly remembered something and reached her hand towards the ceiling under the bed frame.

If it were on the floor, the cleaning maids would find it quickly, but if it were attached to the bed frame, at least it wouldn’t be visible from an adult’s perspective. Not unless they directly felt for it with their hands.

As she felt around the reachable area, something was caught as expected. Blair peeled it off.

It was a key.

Taking a small deep breath, Blair inserted it into the keyhole of the iron box. At first, it seemed a bit stiff, but when she applied force, the key engaged precisely with the lock and turned, opening the box.

And inside, there was a document.

Blair took it out.

Although she couldn’t read the letters accurately because the darkness hadn’t completely faded, the unique pattern on the first page was clearly visible.

‘A magic circle…?’

Below it, in Esmeralda’s familiar handwriting, was a single sentence.

[It is said that there is black magic that connects the second condition of the contract with the divine beast that was broken long ago. Maybe…]

Blair, who was examining the letters in the dawn light, suddenly raised her head as she heard a faint bell sound from afar.

It was the bell signaling 6 o’clock.

‘It will be dawn soon.’

When morning comes, the news of her visit here will be conveyed to Katrina. There was no time to dawdle here.

Moreover, if it was related to the power of the family, Herdin would know better than her.

Blair decided to wrap things up here and return to the ducal residence.

She couldn’t take out the box, so she closed it again and only took the key and the documents that were inside. Before leaving the room, she looked back at the desolate scenery.

She had hoped that perhaps her memories would return if she went to the accident site, but in the end, nothing more came back. Because of this, this room still felt like a place of memories to Blair.

Blair, recalling the traces of Esmeralda that remained everywhere, made a promise.

‘I won’t run away this time, Your Majesty.’

Blair turned around, left the Empress’s Palace, and got into the carriage.

The coachman, who had hurriedly followed her out from early dawn, had been dozing off and hastily started the carriage. The carriage quickly left the palace.

Blair unfolded the document she was holding in her hand again. She tried to read the back page of the document, but due to the shaking carriage, she felt nauseous and had difficulty reading the letters.

In the end, Blair gave up on reading the document and became lost in thought.

‘Why were you looking into something related to the second condition of the contract with the divine beast?’

And why did you keep this document secret?

From her perspective, there seemed to be no connection between the contract with the divine beast passed down in Delmark and the fire incident.

Perhaps her intuition that this document might be related to the accident that day was wrong.

‘Still, I should pass it on to Herdin for now.’

Just as she thought that and organized the documents.

Bang!

With a big impact that shook the carriage, Blair’s body violently collided with the carriage wall.

In the pain that made it difficult to breathe, Blair lost consciousness.