In the archive room of the Dawn Prayers, Aurora stood alone between two ceiling-high archive shelves, searching for something.

"Operation code BK208... 208..." She followed the numbers and found the operation log she needed right above her.

Just as she stood on tiptoe to reach it, a large hand got there first and grabbed the log.

Aurora was a bit surprised. She turned around to see Rivern standing behind her with a faint smile, holding the log in his hand.

"Rivern, what brings you...?"

"Knowing there's a girl in need of help? So, here I am," Rivern said, handing the log to Aurora.

The young High Priestess accepted the log, a faint blush coloring her cheeks.

She glanced at Rivern's charming smile and deliberately put on a stern, mature expression to fit her role as the High Priestess of the Dawn Prayers.

"Perfect timing, I was just about to look for you." Holding the operation log, she walked out of the archive room. "Follow me."

Rivern followed Aurora to a small meeting room adjacent to the archive room.

Rivern saw that the meeting table was already covered with many documents, almost filling the entire surface. The crystal lamps glowed faintly in the morning light. He guessed that Aurora might not have slept the previous night.

"Sorry, I didn't have time to tidy up."

Aurora stacked some loose, note-filled papers together and began organizing the other logs and reports.

"Then don't bother," Rivern said, placing a hand on the stacked notebooks, indicating for her to stop. He gently tapped her furrowed brow with his finger. "I can tell you're exhausted. Didn't sleep last night, did you?"

Aurora nodded, sitting down with a bit of frustration. "It's my own fault for neglecting my studies. Yesterday, I was mocked by that werewolf for not knowing some geographical knowledge."

She spread out the note-filled papers in front of her. "So last night, I spent the entire night researching all the information mentioned by the werewolf, trying to piece together all the clues."

Rivern noticed that Acorn Town was circled in large on the notes, and another familiar name was written on a separate piece of paper—Krystiz Wrynn.

This made him look surprised. "Krystiz? You have news of her?"

"That's right. Krystiz is still alive."

Rivern let out a long sigh of relief. "That is good to hear. All these years, I really thought she is already... How is she? Where is she now?"

"She's currently in Togekaze. That werewolf you encountered is her envoy, sent to deliver this to me."

Aurora found the tainted moonstone from under a pile of documents and handed it to Rivern.

Rivern didn't reach out to take it. He seemed to dislike the object. "So the faint dark power I sensed came from this, not the werewolf."

Seeing that he didn't want to touch the stone, Aurora didn't press the issue. After all, no one liked something tainted by such pure dark energy.

Aurora then proceeded to tell Rivern about Krystiz's recent activities, including how she found the tainted moonstone.

When Rivern heard that Krystiz had a lover among the werewolves and that she might have caused some trouble in the beastkin kingdom of Sharuga, preventing her from returning to headquarters to report, he didn't show much surprise or concern. Instead, his expression was more of "just as I expected."

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Since joining the Dawn Prayers fifteen years ago, he had frequently worked with Krystiz. He was quite familiar with her way of doing things.

Krystiz was sent across the Black Jade Sea by the former High Priest, Nafal, twelve years ago. At that time, Aurora was not even ten years old. Although she was already part of the Dawn Prayers, she was unaware of the internal affairs of the guild.

Taking this opportunity, she carefully reviewed the operation logs left by the former High Priest and learned the reason Krystiz was dispatched—to track down the demon responsible for the massacre in Acorn Town.

The Acorn Town incident occurred fifteen years ago. Back then, High Priest Nafal sensed something was wrong in the northern Acorn Town and rushed to the scene with members of the Dawn Prayers, but it was already too late.

The demon had already killed everyone in the town; they couldn't save a single person.

Because of this, Lord Nafal blamed himself immensely and was filled with regret for a long time after the incident.

"In fact, there were two survivors from Acorn Town. Unfortunately, Lord Nafal never got the chance to know this," Aurora said.

"Really?" Rivern asked, looking up.

"Yes, one of them is the werewolf shapeshifter named Shinya," Aurora said, placing one of the notes in front of Rivern and writing another name next to Shinya's. "The other survivor is Nicole."

"According to Shinya, during the demon attack, his father helped him escape the town with Nicole. They were attacked by ghouls on the way, and Nicole accidentally fell from the Selt Cliffs into the Faber River..." As Aurora spoke, she noticed Rivern's unusual reaction; he seemed not to be listening.

Rivern stared blankly at the note, beads of sweat forming on his forehead.

"Are you alright, Rivern?" Aurora asked with concern.

Rivern stood up from his chair and walked to the window, pushing it open.

"I'm fine, just suddenly felt a bit hot."

When he returned to his chair, he was back to his usual gentle demeanor, as if the earlier panic had been Aurora's imagination.

"Go on," he said.

Aurora didn't dwell on Rivern's unusual reaction and continued speaking.

"I checked, and Shinya's description matches perfectly with Lord Nafal's operation log from that time." She found the operation log from the stack of documents on the table and opened it for Rivern. "Lord Nafal's team found a barely alive baby girl on the riverbank downstream of the Faber River. He treated the baby and adopted her in his own name, raising her within the Dawn Prayers, and named her Nicole. Father Ron took Nicole with him at that time and did not follow Lord Nafal to Acorn Town. They just missed Shinya, so when Shinya arrived downstream, Nicole was already gone."

"Shinya said he searched the nearby area for a long time but eventually had to give up. When he returned to Acorn Town, all he saw was the aftermath of the massacre and the priests performing cremation and purification on the victims."

"At that time, Shinya looked at the towering piles of burning corpses and fell into a state of despair. Throughout the entire process, he didn't say a word to the priests on the scene."

She flipped to a page in the log and pointed it out to Rivern. There were a few lines describing the scene at that time—

"A black-haired, violet-eyed boy broke into the cremation site, attempting to pull a middle-aged man's body from the burning pile. The boy had multiple burns from the flames. We intervened to stop him and prepared to heal him, but his body began to heal itself before the Holy Light magic could take effect. Such a powerful regenerative ability is not human. Eventually, he gave up, kneeling there, silently crying as he watched the body burn."

These words moved Rivern deeply. It was easy to imagine that the middle-aged man the boy was trying to pull out of the burning pile was likely the one who had protected him and Nicole during their escape—Shinya's father. The pain of losing a loved one is something only those who have experienced it can truly understand.

"His father was killed by the demon in that battle. He thought Nicole was dead too. In his despair, he could only return to his home in Seagull Town. After staying there for a short while, he went back to his homeland—the werewolf kingdom of Togekaze."

Rivern remained silent after hearing this, holding his head as if he was sharing the same sorrow Shinya had felt back then.

Aurora didn't have the time to offer comfort; the matter was not yet resolved.

She continued, "As Mr. Davin, the owner of the Echowater Town tavern, speculated, Shinya did indeed live in the human world for a long time—nearly thirty years in total. That's why he speaks the common language fluently. Thirty years is nothing for a werewolf with an average lifespan of three hundred years. However, what's strange is..."

Aurora placed a note with a timeline drawn on it in front of Rivern. "When Nicole was found by Lord Nafal on the riverbank, she was just a baby, less than a year old. She grew up in Echowater Town for the next fifteen years. But Shinya said he and Nicole lived together in Acorn Town for twenty-nine years. Where did the time in between go?"

Rivern turned his head, looking at her in astonishment. "That's impossible."

"When Shinya told Miranda and me, neither of us believed him. Shinya wasn't surprised by our disbelief and didn't try to force us to accept his story. He said that even he wouldn't believe it if he hadn't seen it with his own eyes."

"Could something have happened to Nicole?"

Aurora drew a large cross over the number 29 on the timeline. "Shinya said that Nicole's time was reset, causing her to revert from a twenty-nine-year-old adult to an infant. This happened on the day the demon attacked Acorn Town." She put down her pen. "The reason is unknown."

"What?"