A few moments ago on the same day, the morning sunlight slowly crept in through the glass windows of the Victoriaz Kingdom's royal library. Inside the spacious room that was usually filled with silence, Prince Lionias appeared to be still fast asleep. His head rested on the hard surface of a wooden desk, using a thick, open book as a pillow.
Slowly, his eyelids fluttered. Lionias opened his eyes, blinking several times to adjust to the morning light before finally lifting his head from the book that had served as his pillow.
"Goodness, I actually fell asleep here." he muttered while stretching his muscles.
Lionias closed the thick book on the desk. He stood up from his chair, intending to return the book to its original shelf.
With lingering sleepiness still hanging over him and slightly unsteady footsteps, the Third Prince walked down the aisle between the shelves toward the place where he had taken the book last night.
However, when he finally stopped and stood right in front of the shelf, Lionias's steps instantly froze. His sleepiness evaporated without a trace.
The prince widened his eyes with his mouth slightly agape. In front of him, the bookshelf that was supposed to hold many neatly arranged books was now completely empty, leaving not a single one behind.
With stiff movements, Lionias immediately turned his head to the shelves on his right and left. Both shelves were also completely empty.
His heart began to beat faster, panic began to creep into his mind.
Lionias turned around and swept his gaze across the rows of other bookshelves throughout every corner of the library. He stood transfixed in silence, his heart seemingly coming to a sudden halt at what he saw.
There were no longer any books, parchment scrolls, or stacks of royal historical records that were usually neatly arranged there. Every shelf in every corner of the room was completely clean, as if this library had just been built and had never been filled with anything.
Feeling his sanity being toyed with, Lionias raised his hands and rubbed his eyes, desperately hoping that everything he had just seen was merely a hallucination caused by sleepiness. However, when he opened his eyes again, the bitter reality remained unchanged. All the books and crucial royal documents were still missing from their places.
Still unable to believe what his sense of sight had captured, Lionias raised his right hand and pinched his own cheek quite hard.
"Ouch!" he yelped reflexively, wincing as he felt the stinging pain on his facial skin. "This... this is reality! I must report this to my father immediately!"
Wasting no time, Lionias turned around and sprinted away, leaving the library that was now nothing more than an entirely empty room.
That morning, from the threshold of the library to the main corridors of the royal palace, the youth's footsteps echoed hurriedly. His face was filled with immense panic after thousands of books and important documents inside the royal library had vanished without a trace while he was fast asleep in the very same room.
Slam!
Lionias violently threw open the grand doors leading to the throne room and immediately ran inside, ignoring the startled gazes of several guard soldiers stationed in the room.
However, as he swept his gaze across the magnificent room, he did not find his father on the throne.
Realizing that the King was not in the room, Lionias immediately turned around. He hurriedly continued his steps out of the throne room, back through the long corridors, until he climbed the stairs leading to the exclusive area for the core members of the royal family.
The youth's breathing now sounded ragged. However, the moment he arrived in front of the door to his father's master bedroom, the pressing panic left Lionias with no time to think clearly.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Lionias pounded on the wooden door roughly and repeatedly, completely forgetting all the etiquette he was supposed to observe if he wanted to meet the King.
Inside the room, King Estadian, who was still fast asleep on his bed, was instantly jolted awake. His eyes shot wide open, and he immediately sat up. He turned sharply toward the door of his room, which was being pounded relentlessly.
"Who dares to knock on my door so violently this early in the morning?!"
With a face filled with annoyance and anger because his rest had been disturbed in such a highly disrespectful manner, the King immediately got out of bed. He strode with a sour expression toward the door that was still being constantly pounded.
As soon as the door opened, the King's anger was slightly restrained when he saw his third son standing there, panting heavily with an incredibly panicked expression.
"Why are you suddenly pounding on my door like that, Lionias?!" King Estadian asked in a deep baritone voice, demanding a direct explanation from his son. "Do you wish to be punished?!"
Hearing the threat coming from his father's mouth, Lionias spontaneously felt afraid. His body tensed slightly. However, the urgency of the missing books he had just witnessed forced him to immediately brush aside that fear in order to convey what had happened.
"F-Forgive my insolence for disturbing your rest, Father." the Third Prince replied, his breath still ragged, his tone laden with panic and fear. "B-But... in... inside the library—"
"Speak clearly!" King Estadian cut in firmly, his sharp gaze piercing into his son's eyes. "If you stutter like that again I will truly punish you!"
Hearing that bark, Lionias swallowed hard. The fear of his father's punishment crept up. With his survival instincts as a son who knew the limits of the King's patience, he closed his eyes for a moment, took a long, deep breath, and exhaled it just to suppress all the panic, fear, anxiety, and exhaustion that were scrambling his mind.
After feeling his mind calm down slightly, Lionias opened his eyes and looked straight into his father's face.
"All the books inside the library are gone!"
Hearing that straightforward yet absurd report, King Estadian was stunned for a moment, furrowing his brow. However, instead of believing it, the King assumed that his third son was simply speaking nonsense due to a nightmare.
"What did you say? All the books in the library are gone?" the King repeated in a highly intimidating tone, wanting to confirm the ridiculousness of the report that had just come out of his third son's mouth. "Don't you ever dare give me a report based on a dream you just had last night!"
"I'm not dreaming!" Lionias retorted quickly, unconsciously raising his voice in front of the King. "If you don't believe me, go and see for yourself inside the library!"
After that high-pitched rebuttal slipped from his mouth, Lionias's senses immediately returned.
Lionias's face instantly paled upon realizing that he had just snapped and acted incredibly disrespectfully toward his father. The prince quickly lowered his head, staring at the floor, consumed by the fear of the severe punishment that might be brought down upon him.