"These fragments of memory… I truly hadn't recalled them before. It feels as though something had sealed them away from me." Marcellus's voice was low, threaded with strain. His brows furrowed tightly, and his fingers tapped an unsteady rhythm against the table—as though the sound itself could pry open the locked chamber of his mind. "But lately, they've begun to resurface. Perhaps it is because we've gathered more shards… their resonance is stirring something within me. Or perhaps," his gaze grew distant, heavy, "the Grail itself longs to be restored."
Alia watched him intently. The sharp irony that had colored her eyes moments ago slowly receded. Her vigilance remained, but deep down, she sensed that his words were not a fabrication. The Grail's strangeness was something she knew too well. She merely inclined her head, faint and measured, withholding further scorn.
The room fell into a thick, weighted silence. Candlelight trembled at the draft, stretching their shadows long and thin upon the wall—two silent figures, locked in a stare that seemed to echo the heaviness of their hearts.
"And what are these clues?" Alia asked at last. Her voice was quiet but edged with steel, as though pressing him to bare the truth without evasion.
"The clue is this…" Marcellus's tone sank deeper, slow and deliberate, heavy as a tolling bell, "I have begun to recall… what truly happened back then."
And as his words unraveled, Alia felt herself drawn with him, pulled down into that dim and suffocating memory.
——
It was not long after their marriage.
To the outside world, they were the picture of perfection—the most enviable couple of the city. Power entwined with beauty, devotion adorned with grace. At court banquets, in the whispers of the streets, they were celebrated as a symbol of love and harmony.
But beneath that polished veneer, Marcellus often woke in the dead of night to find the truth far colder. He would open his eyes to see his wife sitting on the edge of the bed, turned away from him. Moonlight streamed through the lattice window, sketching her silhouette in silver. Her slender shoulders trembled faintly. At her lashes clung the sheen of unshed tears—tears she would hastily wipe away with her hand, as though terrified anyone might witness them.
Marcellus's chest twisted with pain. Yet he could only feign ignorance, pretending not to see.
He knew too well the source of her torment. Celesta's sudden death, cloaked under the official tale of "years of exhaustion, a body worn thin." The world believed it without question. Only Livia—only she—held in her eyes a silent, unyielding suspicion she dared never voice. She never accused, never cried out. But day after day, that quiet, buried anguish gnawed at her from within.
Marcellus tried to reach her. By daylight, he would drop Celesta's name into casual conversation. At night, he would ask gently, coaxing. And always, Livia would smile—a smile stretched too thin, a smile that did not reach her eyes. "It's nothing," she would say softly, "I'm just tired."
But he could see the truth in the shadows of her gaze: weariness, and pain that words could not conceal.
What unsettled him further was Edgar's transformation.
After Celesta's death, the father who had once been tender and affectionate hardened overnight into something unrecognizable—a wall of cold stone. The bond of warmth and intimacy between father and daughter evaporated as if it had never been. In its place came deliberate distance, avoidance that could not be mistaken. At the dinner table, no glances were exchanged. In the halls of the estate, he seemed to turn and retreat at the mere sight of her.
The abruptness of it was too stark, too telling—an unspoken signal. Livia never uttered a word, but she felt it. She sensed a truth hidden in shadows. And because of that, her suffering only deepened.
And Marcellus—though his heart ached with helpless devotion—could do nothing. He could only watch as her sorrow consumed her, unable to share the weight, unable to offer her escape. The impotence gnawed at him, night after night, leaving wounds that never closed.
Until one day—