"Miss, His Majesty invites you to meet him in imperial study."
The day after Lyra left, Astrid was having breakfast at the Royal Dining Hall as usual. Just after finishing the mushroom soup carefully prepared by the palace chef, she picked up a silk handkerchief and gently wiped her lips, when she immediately heard Elise report in a soft voice.
"Father wants to see me now?"
With war approaching, Emperor Hibbort Valeria naturally had a mountain of troublesome affairs to handle. Astrid remembered that the last time she saw him was at the beginning of last month.
Even as the sovereign ruler of an empire, despite his ailing body, he was still diligently arranging affairs for after his passing. Thinking back now, in the original story Hibbort's condition rapidly deteriorated in the middle of the plot, likely due not least to the relentless overwork during this period.
