I stretched, letting my joints and muscles get rid of the extra knots and pops in them. Last night was a blur. Pretty sure I drank more than one biser and ultimately passed out. How did I even get back to my room where I woke up this morning? What happened last night? The last thing I remember was Trink asking Ahrian if she ever thought she'd grow wings if she flapped her arms fast enough. Did Ahrian drink from her cup, claiming she has no comments about it, or did she outright confirm or deny it?

Ah, good old uni days, this resembled. Back then, my friends and I would play the same game and drink until we're hurling our guts on the pavement, getting shouted at by old ladies. There was even one time when we got hauled to the police station because we couldn't get up anymore and passed out in the street. I swore I could still feel the beating I got from Mom even now.

Hye-jin's room whizzed by my periphery on my way to the mess hall. The gap between the door and the frame made me stop in my tracks. That's strange. She didn't like leaving any door slightly open even when leaving a room. Finish what you started, from the get-go to the very end, her voice said from the back of my memory. It was something she lived by, so it's weird she stopped doing it out of the blue.

Because I wasn't the type to keep my curiosity in check, I abandoned my trip to the mess hall—and breakfast altogether—and approached her door. "Hello?" I called, keeping my voice level so as to not rouse the adjacent rooms. "Seline?"

No answer. Stranger. Usually, she would mumble something, even in her sleep. That's just how she loved talking and running her mouth. Then, on a softer note, I said, "Hye-jin?"

Still no answer.

With my forefinger, I gingerly pushed the door in. It swung with ease, its hinges silent like an obedient child. The curtains were drawn and the sheets were rumpled. Another strange thing. Hye-jin would never leave her sheets unattended. It's ingrained into her system, to tidy up every time she's been into one place. It included everything—restaurants, the kitchen, the living room, public parks, and yes, her bed.

And her slippers were still on the foot of the bed. She would never walk anywhere without any sort of footwear. I whirled around. Her boots still sat on the bare part of the floor, just outside the rug. They collapsed like fallen towers. It's as if she had just kicked them off. Must be the alcohol. All her organization instincts flits off into oblivion whenever she drank.

But that didn't explain the sheets and the door. If she got up somewhere around dawn, then she's already sober. She would have remembered putting things in order and shutting the damned door.

Where was she?

I bit the inside of my cheek as I shut Hye-jin's door and dashed to the mess hall. The other Knights and the Crimsons would be there. Everyone usually was. I spotted their colorful heads bobbing out of a sea of hues.

"Crown's blessings," Heather greeted, shoving a cube of meat into her mouth. I didn't even want to know where it's from. "What's got your scales scabbing?"

Cavya didn't look up from his meal of just a cup of tea mixed with milk and sugar and a plateful of pastry. Cookies. Biscuits. Whatever. "Seline," I breathed, still catching my breath from running to the mess hall all the way from our floor. "Have you seen her? She's not in her room, and she left behind bizarre clues. It doesn't sit well with me."

"Maybe she stepped out for some air?" Revery suggested, inclining her head to one side. "She is known to do that when she gets some liquor in her system."

Heather clicked her forked tongue and patted the empty spot in the bench next to her. "Sit down and relax, Kora," she said. "It's not good to get all ruffled up this early."

"I can attest to that," Ahrian muttered under her breath, her beak clamping on a nut. One stringent crack, and she popped the nut's heart into her throat. Her comment earned a light laugh from the members of the table.

How strange was it—that I was completely agitated while the rest of them sat and joked around with each other.

Something was wrong.

As I settled beside Heather and Trink, I studied the table. Valren, as expected, was absent. Ahrian and Nazran, who were both assigned to fairly easy assignments that still allowed them to commute to and fro, sat side-by-side, poring over their meal like they're in no hurry. Revery sipped from her cup, a half-eaten pastry resembling a strawberry shortcake sitting on her rectangular plate. Trink, who ate like he was from the '50s, just finished shoveling the last piece of a potato-like crop into his snout. His tongue licked around his mouth, showing me his sharp canines.

There's only one missing.

"Where's Arzo?" I asked.

Revery set down her cup and picked up her fork again. She scrimped on the pastry's side and bit off the small chunk from the edge of the prongs. "He's...doing stuff?" she said. "Honestly, I don't know. He's probably with Seline since well...you know."

Right. That brave declaration of Hye-jin's at town a couple of days ago. I really wished that was just the case, that Hye-jin would walk into Dragnasand's doors unscathed. I stared down at my lack of a meal despite being in the mess hall. If it was true, then why was my mind not letting go? Why were my instincts flaring like fire alarms?

Something resurfaced from my vague recollections of the day I got stabbed and poisoned. A face. Hidden in the shadows. A cult. The symbols. People with glowing symbols on their foreheads, scribbling the same thing into trunks. Imprinting them into anything. Giving up their magic and life forces to activate the symbols. The symbols with the power to summon beasts from the netherside, scattered around Solarlume. Every uncontrollable infestation over the past year.

They're all made by the man in the hood. Shadows. A voice. I heard his voice when he told me I wouldn't last long. Had I pinpointed who he was and just forgot about it because my memories were so hazy? Maybe.

But now, Hye-jin was gone at the same time Arzo was. They could be together exploring the town they'd already seen a couple of times, or they're together but one side was in danger. Because after hearing Arzo's voice yesterday and as he hollered and laughed at the Ivertale last night, I knew.

He was the hooded man.

And I had been a fool, forgetting to tell everyone about it.

"How did you meet Arzo?" I prompted, stopping Heather from shoving the last piece of meat into her mouth. "I mean, for curiosity's sake. I'm wondering how you guys met and formed the Crimson Scouts."

Heather stuck her bottom lip out. "Sonii was the one who found us," she said. Sonii? Must be the former leader. He'd either moved up the ranks and forgot about them or he died. Judging from the absence of anger and the thin veil of emotions clouding Heather's eyes, I'd say it's the latter. "I only came after Revery and Arzo was already there, but I remember Sonii's story, saying he'd picked Arzo from Eaglent."

I frowned. Eaglent? That's way off—Western-Tower-off—from Suprana and Raventhorne. What was Sonii doing there when he found Arzo. "Did he say anything about Arzo's past?" I prodded.

Revery frowned. "What are you getting at, Kora?" she said. "Arzo's like my little brother. He wouldn't hurt Seline."

The way her tone ended in a clipped edge told me her next words could be, like you did. I pursed my lips. "Just curious," I said. "Really."

The blue-haired summoner blew a breath. "Arzo was originally from Auriven," she said, her eyes glazing over as she got lost in her memories. "He used to sell flowers on the streets, at least, until the farms got obliterated due to the War."

I raised an eyebrow. "War?"

Cavya's teacup clinked from its saucer. His cat-head turned to me from across the table. "The Great Monarch Crusade," he said. "Dark, dark times."

Monarch? Something clicked at the back of my brain as my neurons snapped together. Right. Monarch. How come I didn't see it? Of course. The first storyline of The Legends of Solarlume involved a tyrant Monarch who wanted to conquer the rest of the world by employing nether beasts. The main quest of the game involved maxing out the character's stats in order to defeat all of the dungeons she raises and save the Princess from her grasp. The Princess, who could grant wishes and stop the madness in one fell swoop.

Don't tell me the Monarch Crusade was the same as the game's storyline?

"By Monarch," I tapped a finger on the table. "Do you mean Leala Betradis?"

Revery's eyes widened, whipping to me in a flash. "Don't say her name out loud!" she said. "It's bad luck."

Oops.

Cavya's ears jerked from left to right. "At least you got it," he said. "She trapped our Princess when she was a mere child and forced the other Towers to follow her or risk getting overrun by nether beasts. Stressful times, for all sides involved. That's why the guilds and the adventuring systems were established. It's to stop anyone like the Crusade from happening."

And now, it might happen again due to Arzo.

"Wait, you said Arzo's old enough to live through the War," I turned back to Revery. "How long ago was it?"

"Just fifteen years ago," Revery said.

Fifteen years. A lot could change and would be forgotten. "Say, Cavya," I said, catching our leader's attention. "What happened to the correspondence with the scholar?"

Cavya's eyes narrowed into slits. "I was hoping you'd never ask," he said. "I met with one from the Princess' own court. He told me that script was never used even during the War. It appeared to be an ancient form of syllabary representing the early age of Solarlumean magic."

Ancient magic. And yet Arzo was here, carving it into stones and trunks like it was common knowledge. Where did he get that sort of information that stumped even the archives?

"Would you believe me when I say Arzo's somehow connected to all of this?" I blurted.

Trink snorted, his nostrils flaring. "This better not be one of your dramas," he said. "I'm so done with those."

And so, I recounted everything I saw before I was stabbed with a dagger coated with poison. Poison that happened to have some kind of flowery fragrance in it. I could never forget its smell, seeing as it's all everything I could perceive in my dreams until now. He knew a lot about flowers. Well, so did I. And most of the time, the most innocent ones were the deadliest.

The faces around the table grew grimmer and paler as I went on. When I finished, Heather covered her mouth. "Then, don't tell me..." she said. "He's the one behind the infestations? But he told us he didn't know anything. Should his word count for it?"

"Then, where is he now?" I prodded. "I want to be wrong. Divine's Foot, I wish I was wrong. But I've known Seline for a long time. The way she left this morning—or last night, more like—didn't coincide with a lot of things."

I met Cavya's eyes who blinked long at me. "It's rare to get a coincidence," I said. "But when two coincidences meet..."

"Look into Arzo, then," Cavya said, without an ounce of signs telling whether he believed me or not. "Present us with something tangible and not based on mere speculation."

Fine. If that's how he wanted to play it. "To do that, I will need access to his room," I said. "There might be something there."

Revery shot up. "Kora! That's going too far!"

I craned my neck up at Revery. "And if I find something?" I asked. "What are you going to do then?"

She opened her mouth to argue but Trink's hand wrapped around her wrist. Even the dog-headed langkoor has some sort of doubt clouding his eyes. "He's got a point," he said in a low whisper. "Just this once, I'll give him that."

He gave me a brief nod. "Do your worst," he jerked his chin at me. "I've been sniffing some odd things in Arzo's belongings for a while now. And if you say the poison's got some kind of flower in it, then I might have smelled and recalled it."

"You were there with me when you guys rushed me to the infirmary," I glanced at Heather who has now fallen deathly silent. "Didn't you sense something familiar?"

The dragonkin shook her head. "The smell of blood was too thick for me to pick up anything," she said. "If he wanted a quick death, he must have used a potent poison—one that would need small amounts to be untraceable but could still finish the job."

And the fact that we're talking about how I could have died wasn't helping.

Cavya bobbed his head at me, his whiskers twitching. "I'll give you the permission to search his room. Do tell me what you find. I'll be in my office."

We all stood up and went on our ways. Revery, Heather, and Trink stuck by my side as we made for Arzo's room. The door was unlocked and the room was in order when we made it inside. In fact, it was too clean, like someone spent a whole night erasing any traces. Whoever Arzo was, he knew what he was doing. And he was good at it.

Without as much as a brief nod to each other, we began searching. Cabinet doors yanked open, drawers pulled out, and sheets upturned. After a while, there was nothing. He had prepared for the eventuality his room would be searched.

That sly fox.

I made for the door, my footsteps thudding against the floorboards. I was about to reach the door when Revery held out her arm. "Wait," she said. "Something didn't sound right there. Back up a bit."

I did. Nothing out of the ordinary. "One more," Revery said, scrunching her face as she closed her eyes in an attempt to strain her ears. "One more."

My foot thunked. Unlike the other full thuds, this one thunked. My heart hitched as I sank to my knees and began rapping my knuckles on the floor. Hollow. Some parts of the floor were hollow. Just like in the movies. I summoned Mirani's dagger from inventory and struck the space between the floorboards. With a grunt, I levered the blade up. The plank popped.

Something dark and silky was bundled in the cramped space. It was just a rectangular cube as big as my palm. With shaking fingers, I pinched and drew the lump out. Cloth. It was cloth. Then, the whole thing popped off. A hood flapped into the open. Hood...

There it was. The smell of flowers. I turned the cloak over. Traces of magic shone on its hood, characterized by thin thread-like substances hanging from the seams like some sort of veil.

Veil...

"Everyone," I called. Arzo's former teammates paused from whatever they're doing and strode towards me. I held the cloak towards them. In the open light, the dried stains of something darker made cloud-like edges from various regions. Blood.

My blood.

"Get Cavya," my voice came out urgent and clipped. "Arzo's our guy. And we have to hurry."

Because if he attacked me and I lived, he knew I had some information about him and would most likely tell Cavya and the others. That's why he had to act fast. I still didn't know why in God's name he kidnapped Hye-jin, but he knew he didn't have the luxury of time. That's why he hasn't even discarded this one he used. How it ended up back in Mystriae meant he had traveled with it from Naskali. The idea of who almost murdered me had always been so close sent inexplicable shivers down my spine and made my gut wrench.

We needed to find Hye-jin, and fast. Whatever Arzo's planning, it would always—always—lead back to the Monarch.

To Laela Betradis.