Alphard and Didier exchanged a silent glance before turning their attention back to Antonie, who remained absorbed in studying the horizon.
Though the windows stayed shut and no outside air crossed the glass, a subtle, cool, strangely comforting breeze swept through the three of them, easing the tension that had built up.
When the emotional tide finally settled, Antonie turned on his heel and fixed his tear-glazed eyes on Alphard.
"Could you tell me... exactly what it was you saw down there?" he asked, his voice measured.
Alphard hesitated for a moment, looking off to the side to organize his thoughts, before recounting from start to finish the hallucinatory vision he'd experienced inside the tomb. As he spoke, he noticed, with some confusion, the genuine surprise on the old man's face; it was clear Antonie hadn't witnessed the same events.
A bitter, barely visible smile crossed Antonie's lips.
"I never saw any of that," he began, letting himself sink slowly onto the mattress. "The first thing that appeared before my eyes was an endless crowd of warriors marching toward some uncertain fate. Then, the image shifted abruptly..."
Antonie drew a breath as the memory carried him back into his own past.
His vision had returned him to an intimate memory in Saint-Rémont, alongside his wife and only son. He relived the warmth of that ordinary day, right before the two of them had boarded the train bound for Steamford, Victoria's majestic capital, while he stayed behind in the city. Back then, everything had unfolded normally — but the illusion didn't stop at the farewell.
It showed him the newspapers that, days later, announced the disaster: the tragic derailment of the train to the capital, which left no survivors. But the torment of the vision went far beyond the headlines.
It forced him to witness the agonizing final minutes of his loved ones, the grotesque way their bodies had been twisted among the mangled metal, the echo of their desperate screams calling for a help he could never give. Among the victims, he also recognized the mentor who'd taught him the secrets of the Doors and the principles of life, finally understanding the origin of his old pain.
"In the end," Antonie concluded, heavy with exhaustion, "my vision led to the same outcome as yours, though mine held no worship at all for that deity."
Alphard didn't react with sadness right away; his mind processed the facts first, breaking down the information with a cold, analytical detachment before making room for sentiment. Still, catching sight of the abyss of grief the confession had reopened in the old man, his expression softened, filling with deep compassion. Beside him, Didier blinked hard, fighting back a couple of tears threatening to spill down his cheeks, holding back only so as not to add further weight to the room.
Moving quietly, Alphard rose and pulled Antonie into a sincere embrace, recognizing the fragility of a man visibly shattered by his own memories. Didier joined in at once, wrapping both of them in warmth.
"You're our teacher too," Didier murmured, his voice thick with emotion.
"I came all this way with the hope of finding something extraordinary... and in the end, we walked out empty-handed, with the certainty of a good scolding waiting for us once we're back," Antonie remarked, letting out a faint, melancholic laugh through the remains of his grief.
"I wouldn't be so sure about that," Alphard cut in, offering a small smile. "We've certainly got something to bring back with us."
"What? Did you swallow the stones, or are you hiding them somewhere on you?" Didier asked, trying to puzzle out the mystery with a look of disbelief.
"Of course not," Alphard answered, keeping the mystery intact. "But I've got my own tricks for transporting texts."
The atmosphere in the room lightened considerably. Still, the reprieve didn't last long before the accumulated weight of the night bore down on all three of them without mercy, forcing them to prepare for rest.
By his own choice, Alphard settled onto the cold stone slabs of the floor, leaving the two beds to Didier and Antonie.
Though the gesture ensured his companions' comfort, it also concealed an ulterior motive: he needed to detach his mind and summon the dimensional circus to make sense of the chaos of his own discoveries.
Once materialized in the stillness of the astral platform, he dropped into his chair and gazed out at the emptiness.
"Key 2 of the Clown..." he murmured to himself, letting the term settle into the silence.
At once, he began sketching a mental map to connect the loose threads together.
The note in Japanese I found at the cathedral said I'd find the truth here... Could it have meant this circus? But what truth, exactly? Alphard wondered, glancing over at the carved stone blocks he'd recovered from the ruins. If the answer lay somewhere in those texts, he still lacked the key needed to translate them.
The pieces kept piling up without any clear order: the aristocratic woman of Authority, the dragon, the manuscript, the traumatic vision, and the tomb itself.
He laid out the web of possibilities once more: if the ruins branched off into several distinct paths — where the tomb tied partly into the vision, while the dragon seemed connected to the God of Beasts, the site itself, and the note — the equation still remained incomplete.
Still, he sensed that uncovering the identity of the previous transmigrator would solve the whole riddle. Beyond that, knowing that the cult of the Lord of the Apocalypse held a fierce enmity with Noctis — and that Noctis, in turn, was searching for him specifically — an obvious space opened up where the cult, the tomb, and the transmigrator all shared invisible threads.
Suddenly, in the middle of untangling his own deductions, a searing suspicion cut through his mind:
What if the dragon has a direct connection to the note?
Alphard didn't rule out the possibility, but he also refused to make the mistake of taking it for granted too soon. He held the scattered points of an unfinished mental map, but absolute answers still eluded him in the dark. To uncover the truth, he'd need to dig deeper and trace every branch of the puzzle, fully aware that, unlike his previous steps, this time he was heading into the darkness without any charted route, without an obvious path to follow.
Not long after severing his connection to the circus, Alphard's consciousness slammed back abruptly into his physical body. It wasn't long before the accumulated exhaustion claimed him; he wrapped himself hastily in the sheets, seeking shelter from the relentless cold radiating up from the stone floor.
The next day, the sun rose triumphant overhead. A clear, completely cloudless blue sky flooded the room with vibrant light through the window, and the morning heat, gentle but persistent, finally roused the group from sleep. They readied themselves without delay to begin the journey back to the capital.
Still, before leaving, they went down the stairs and said their goodbyes with genuine warmth to the hotel's owners, thanking them for the help they'd given and the real concern they'd shown during Antonie's crisis.
Outside, the transformation was total: the ground was no longer soaked through, and the wind blew fresh, turning warm at moments beneath the summer sun.
They boarded a carriage for hire that carried them through the now-dry streets to Fercluse's main station. During the ride, Didier kept his eyes fixed on the urban landscape rolling past the vehicle's window.
"Shame we didn't get to explore Fercluse a bit more," Didier remarked, a note of frustration in his voice as he bid farewell to the architecture he'd barely glimpsed.
"We'll be back here someday, don't you doubt it," Antonie answered, his mood visibly restored, letting out a comforting laugh.
Alphard, meanwhile, traveled sunk in the depths of his own thoughts. He turned the recent events over again and again, trying to weave together the connections that had come to obsess him, though cold logic kept reminding him he still lacked enough information to draw any firm conclusion.
Arriving at the terminal, they found themselves before an imposing structure of wrought iron and glass, a monument to steam engineering dominating the heart of Fercluse. The air hung thick with the smell of burnt coal and machine oil, mixed with the ceaseless bustle of hundreds of passengers and the deafening whistle of the locomotives.
They didn't have to wait long before an immense mass of steel, painted black and dark green, appeared on the platform, screeching to a stop with a metallic roar as it released thick clouds of white steam that briefly swallowed the crowd.
Using their tickets, they avoided the crowded common carriages and boarded straight into the first-class car. The change was immediate: from the chaos and soot of the platform, they stepped into a corridor carpeted in deep garnet tones and polished fine wood.
The private compartment welcomed them with plush velvet seats, walnut paneling, and a grave silence that sealed them off entirely from the outside world.
Once settled, the train set off with a smooth, rhythmic jolt. As the locomotive picked up speed, Fercluse's stone architecture began to blur.
Through the wide window, the urban landscape quickly gave way to countryside, and soon, the cultivated fields and familiar hills signaled the city had been left behind; before their eyes, the geography shifted once more into the surroundings of Saint-Rémont, drawing them inexorably closer to their final destination.