She didn't feel comfortable staying there, watching someone mourn in the dark, so she quietly left the scene and ran back. Climbing her own wall proved to be more complicated than she had imagined, but it was a manageable effort.

She hadn't lost much now, but she hadn't gained anything either. It was clear to her that she would have to return at an earlier hour than this time. She had to plead more, she assumed, because this couldn't be the end.

She had to get that sword, no matter what. But she couldn't go officially, and even if she could, they wouldn't approve of her getting her own sword.

Fidgeting with the hem of her sleeve, she weighed her options. It was still not daybreak. It had taken her about an hour one way. She didn't stay very long either. Should she just go to sleep and get what she could out of the rest of the night?

She tucked her bag between her cushions before grabbing the letter from earlier and unlocking her door to sneak out of the room. Making as little noise as possible, her feet moved slowly down the hall to get to the front door.

There was no one to see her, the house was asleep after all, while the guards outside patrolled sporadically and could be easily avoided. At least until Rowena was only a few steps away from the large front door, hoping it wasn't locked from the inside, and she felt as if she had stepped on a land mine.

A shiver ran down her spine, but she pretended not to feel it. It was worse than before, because this one must have been newer. She hadn't even noticed that it was there. But it was already too late.

"Stop right there, young lady." The voice sounded tired but insistent. "I knew something was up. You think you can fool me?"

Rolling her eyes with her back to him, she turned around, a surprised expression on her face.

Shock was clearly visible in her eyes, or at least she hoped it was, as she watched the guy standing on the platform at the top of the double staircase, looking down at her in disgust.

'I knew it from the beginning, but it still feels so disappointing,' Colin thought at this moment, 'I let my guard down and she got into my head.'

If Rowena knew of his thoughts, she would probably wonder what he was talking about, but instead she just stood there, her rosy lips quivering. "Why are you here?" she asked, voice cracking.

"Because of you, obviously."

"How did you even know I was here?"

He walked down the stairs as if he owned them, strutting in her direction. "Have you forgotten who I am?" the young master replied, puffed up with pride, "Of course you wouldn't understand, since I used magic to keep an eye on you."

'He's so gassed up, he'll have to drop anchor before he takes off,' was the thought he actually instilled in her, 'he better work on those airplanes while he's up there.'

He hadn't even done anything very advanced. Okay, she could admit that he had the stamina to pour a lot of Mana into two places and stay connected, but that was it. He had used very little fine-tuning.

With a surprised look on her face, she just stood there, as if frozen stiff at being caught. Colin walked towards her at a pace so slow that she began to whine inwardly, wanting nothing more than to go to sleep at this point.

"What were you trying to do?" It wasn't as if there had been much for her to do.

Now that he was here, he actually wondered how he could have been right to suspect her if he had just tried to find fault with her for the sake of it. He knew that as well.

"I... Nothing," the younger sister replied, subtly hiding the letter in her hand behind her back.

But of course, her brother couldn't be tricked that easily, could he? "Don't lie to me," he shouted and took the letter out of her hand, which he had seen with his keen eyes.

The letter was hidden in an unmarked envelope, sealed with golden wax and no hallmark on it. "To whom are you writing?" He didn't try to make it sound condescending, but it came out that way anyway as he raised an eyebrow and opened the seal.

She had no right to leave the chateau, at least not without notifying someone, because that definitely meant she was up to no good. Sure, she wasn't known for causing trouble in that way, but when she was younger, she'd always tried to run away.

Until that one time she had gotten lost outside and was found crying, which was very uncharacteristic of her originally. After that, she spent her days confined to her room in the annex, not even allowing the servants to take proper care of her.

If she suddenly decided to come to the north, the home she hadn't been to for half a decade, there must have been a reason. Perhaps she was planning to flee to the Principality of Nathos, who knew?

His thoughts came to a halt as he looked at the letter he had pulled out of its envelope and unfolded in his hands. It was a very straight, tense-looking handwriting. It looked like the handwriting he had seen from Rowena, but also a bit different.

"Good evening, Your Grace," it read, "this is your daughter, Rowena. I have arrived safely in the Territory. I don't know how to thank you enough for the opportunity you have granted me, by letting me go to travel…" He had to pause every now and then as he read about her efforts to find some peace in the north; to distance herself from the pressures the capital was putting on her, with rumors and gossip spreading among the nobles.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

Of course, much of it was just nonsense that Rowena had made up on a whim. She had written whatever sounded good to her. She spiced up her lies with a piece of known truth, like her inability to cope with her mother's death and the Duke's remarriage.

"...I am aware of the fact that I could not fulfill my duties as your daughter the way I should have, but my recent outburst had made me open my eyes to my misbehavior. I realized that only distance could create the environment I needed to gather my thoughts and realign myself with my position." Luckily, he had already looked down to read the letters, or someone might have seen his lips thinning as he pressed them together, thinking about what he had done. "I hope you will be understanding and allow me a few days of peace before I return to the capital to rectify my own past mistakes through action. Until then, I pray to Aurora for your and Mother's health. Sincerely, Rowena van Varnhagen."

He put the letter back in the envelope and shoved it at her. "You can send this out tomorrow, you don't have to do it sneaking around in the middle of the night like a thief."

"I didn't want anyone to know. It's no one else's business."

It stung in his ears. And not just his ears. "All right, just reseal it and give it to me tomorrow, I'm going to be out for a while, so I'll take it with me. Is that acceptable to you?" He couldn't look her in the eye.

The thought that his troubled sister was actually trying to make peace with the family - with the world - and he was here, sabotaging her, made his heart heavy with guilt.

Seeing her hurt expression, he could only turn and leave. "Good night," he said, not looking at her again.

"Sleep well, Young Master Colin," he heard her say in a cold voice.

And with a mischievous smile on her lips, she went back to her room to sleep, but not before resealing the letter to give it to him in the morning. This had, in the end, been a more fruitful night than she had expected.

"You are going to spend the day inside your room again?" Norina asked, sounding worried.

"I just want to have some time to myself, it was a bit too much for me," the lavender-haired mistress responded in a sullen tone. She didn't have to answer her maid, but she didn't like leaving Norina hanging like that.

It was still early in the day, right after breakfast, so she went back into her room to meditate, then reclaimed some of that sleep she hadn't gotten the night before. After that, she went to fetch a snack and returned to her room.

It was barely half past two, so she would be in Eisenwacht at four if she hurried now. It had to be a little earlier today so she could still catch some sunlight. Coming in when it's dark again would simply be impolite at this point.

The trip was even more arduous than before, since she couldn't run at full speed in the middle of the busy streets of Vandenberg in broad daylight. Rooftops were her way out, but even that proved to be a bit trickier when it was light out.

Sweaty and annoyed, she arrived shortly after four o'clock. Eisenwacht was now wide awake, covered in snow, and dozens of people were swarming about. She hadn't even seen the large clock in the small marketplace they had near the entrance to the village.

Without people, she hadn't even known there was a marketplace. Smiling, she walked past some of the villagers in the direction of the forges she had visited earlier.

But as her feet carried her further into the mountains, her eyes looked in another direction. 'Just for a minute,' she told herself, as she changed direction and walked toward the place she had earlier left from.

There was a certain innate curiosity that she knew was uncalled for, but she just couldn't help it. Before she went to the couple and tried to bargain with them again, she had to see if what she saw was really a gravesite.

And yes, as she got closer, it was obvious. There were a few normal gravestones, a few plain wooden crosses sticking out of the ground, flowers and candles lying on the white snow, and some covered by it as well.

But half of the graveyard was filled with smaller stone slabs. She approached the one Iris had kneeled before. She knew these slabs because they were used in her old world, but they were mostly used by people with little money.

If you had enough to get a big stone and pay for the space in the cemetery, you could have it. It wasn't like paying rent, but it was a higher fee if you didn't really need the space but used it anyway.

Of course, Rowena was thinking of graves for people who had fallen victim to the Visitors. Many people had been killed by them during the Great Cataclysm, when suddenly a much larger number of Visitors had begun to invade, leaving humanity helplessly fighting a losing battle.

But in reality, just because a lot of people died at the time, which was about three to four hundred years before Celia was even born, it wasn't as if everyone in the world had tons of people dying because of the Visitors. 'In fact, there might not even be one person you know who has fallen victim to them.'

But a Visitor's victim wasn't in one piece afterward. The danger of a Visitor was his ability to simply take the Life Force out of a living body. That in and of itself may sound abstract to someone who had never seen it happen, but what it essentially meant was that all life was taken from an individual.

They did this by clawing or biting their victim, but instead of sucking something out, it looked like they were poisoning whoever they managed to hit. The places where they scratched or bit would turn black, they would necrotize, slowly but surely a part of the body would perish.

In the end, that part would become black and hard until it turned to dust. Sometimes it would affect the whole body, if given enough time, and take all of one's Life Force, but other times it would just take a small amount of a person's essence.

'I remember seeing it for the first time and feeling reminded of sitting in front of a laggy computer, hitting backspace like a maniac, in order to erase a single line of text when nothing moves along.' The memory of what she had experienced made her shudder. 'Then you wait, and suddenly your text starts vanishing letter by letter, without you knowing how much was actually deleted until it stops at some point.' People who were talking to her a second ago would just start to grow a black spot that widened and withered until they decayed.

Sometimes it would stop at a limb. Other times, the entire body would turn to dust. In cruel cases, they would only be able to suck out a tiny amount of Life Force, but they would manage to hit the head, heart, or neck area, sealing their victim's fate either way.

Scowling, she looked at the tiny tombstone used for graves with nothing in it, while her breath created small clouds of fog in the air, reminding her of her last moments as Celia. "There's nothing on it."

Unlike the grave she had seen in her last moments, there were no pictures and no writing on it. Just a simple date, a date of death, she assumed. No date of birth, not even a name.

"Because it didn't have a name yet," was the answer to her unspoken question as she jerked and turned to look at the emotionless face of the woman with the black hair and silver streaks she had followed here the night before. Now it seemed as if she was the one who had been followed.