When she woke up, the underworld library no longer looked like the library of the underworld. Instead light emanated from bright crystals and made her eyes ache. Was it morning, she thought? Was it finally the time to see things? She had never been so excited about seeing the morning light before, except she realized it wasn’t morning light at all.

The entire library was lit up with some sort of light that seemed to emanate from these crystal rocks from all sides. She had not noticed them at all before, but now that she saw them, they were everywhere. The fonts in the books now looked brighter. Their colors more vivid. The floor in the entire compartment glowed, along with the balcony. To Reina’s big relief, there stood no one, and as it was before, she seemed to be all alone in that huge place.

But now that she could actually see, she saw that the entire library was actually a tower lined with helical staircases from the inside. There were many other compartments like the one she was in, and just four floors below, there was a circular veranda instead of a bottomless pit. What caught her eye were these cubicles that seamlessly went up and down like like an elevator. They looked like the types of boxes where witnesses would be interrogated in courts, only much more luxurious, and were mostly filled with books...except for one. It was brief, but in one of those cubicles that was going up on the same side as the compartment’s balcony, she saw a person. Their eyes also met, but in the next moment, the cubicle had carried him up, and Reina Aurwood was there left standing.

That was a person, right? Suddenly she had this heavy urge to run down. She had to leave! But where was the exit?? She went back to the place she came from that was just one floor below. She arranged and rearranged the books, but to no avail. How did she enter again? Yes, a fox! The image of a fox! But where was the image of a fox??? She ran down all the way to the veranda to look for it, but the only thing she saw was the sculpture of a sleeping fox with its cubs at the center of the veranda. A large wooden table surrounded it from all sides, perfectly concentric to the shape of the veranda that had tall stone pillars at its circumference. Those pillars separated a whole other section of the library from the tower. Perhaps the exit was in that section, she rushed, but before she could run in there, something caught her eye.

There were exactly two helical staircases starting from two points at the sides behind the circular table. One went around clockwise, and the other anti-clockwise. But exactly below the point where crossed each other, and right behind the sculpted fox was a large map that stretched from one side of the tower to the other horizontally. The Northern Province it was titled.

To its west were the western and north-western provinces. To its east was a delta, and plains stretched in the south. There were roads, main settlement areas, and villages. There were also rivers, rocky mountains, and occasionally valleys. But what caught her attention were not those elements nor the map itself. Reina Aurwood went closer and let her hands reach out for a castle at the north east of the province. “The Aurwood Residence ” it was marked, “Twinspeak Castle”. There were many such castles throughout this map, but this one was very prominently indexed, and marked in the emblem of of a red fox.

There was no way this was the very castle she was in... Reina Aurwood was in utter disbelief. After all, it was almost as if she had actually appeared in a different world with tangible lands and borders. Did such things even matter in the world of the dead? She thought, but before she could process anything else, she heard the sound of someone crash. She had briefly forgotten about it, but she was actually running away from this person, who had literally come crashing from the sky. His hair looked as messy as a pigeon’s nest, and his spectacles had fallen off his face that boasted such intense bags under his eyes, one wondered if he slept at all. He looked aghast, and the books he was carrying had now scattered everywhere inside and outside his lifting cubicle.

“M-M-M-My Lady!”

He got on his knees immediately. First he had thought it was a ghost but there was no way he could mistake that red cape and green eyes. What was Her Ladyship doing in the library at three in the morning? He was horrified.

Reina Aurwood, however, was cautious. She had just witnessed something that shattered her perspective, and now she felt sick. Plus, this library had an attendant the whole time she was here. An attendant that walked around in the dark - what a weirdo.

“My Lady,” he said, looking aghast, “What are- ahem –you doing here?”

His voice had failed him.

“I…,” Reina calculated what she was about to say.

“I happened to sleep walk all the way here…,” she replied. She knew she was pushing it, but it was better to act like a fool in front of weirdos than show any trace of knowledge and awareness. She still did not know how to leave this place, and it seemed like there were only the two of them there.

“Oh…”

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His face looked pale for some reason. Maybe he did not buy it, she thought.

“It’s a side effect of my illness.,” she then clarified.

But before she could ask him any further questions, the boy did the most surprising thing ever. He got on his knees and started to break down.

“My Lady ! I am very sorry!!! Please forgive this lowly servant!”

“I had not slept in four days,” he started crying , “ and I miscalculated the charge in the core! ”

He gasped.

“I swear I didn’t mean to leave the library without power! I only fell asleep for two hours! I swear! I thought the core was charged enough for today, but it seems I miscalculated! I did not mean to fall asleep! I am very sorry, My Lady!”

To Reina Aurwood it was just one thing after the next. She thought he was weird, but this was just extreme.

“If Her Ladyship wishes, ” he boldly stood up, “This Lowly servant will not sleep a wink another day in my life!,” he declared.

Reina Aurwood was horrified.

“I-It’s alright…,” she slowly said. She had to do something to appease this burning fire. Goodness, the library boy was pitiable, she thought.

“It happens sometimes…”

“R-really?” the boy, however, seemed to have doubts.

“Yes…,” Reina collected herself, “I trust you won’t tell anyone that I was here today either, will you?”

His eyes suddenly glowed, and tears seemed to fill all over them. He took off his specs, wiped them, and nodded violently.

“Thank you, My Lady... I can’t afford to lose this job! ,” he started to cry again...which made Reina pity him a bit more, even though he was still a weirdo.

“Why are you the only one here? Does no one come to study here at night?,” she took the chance to ask more questions.

“Um…,” the boy hesitated to speak, “There are very few people who are so studious, My Lady. And none of them are in the castle right now.”

Actually, most of them had left because they could not stand Reina Aurwood’s authority or position. But of course, he could not say that out loud.

“I see…”

In fact, he himself had only heard about the Lady in rumors. He had heard that she was the most spoiled Aurwood out of all the Lord’s children: she was merciless, rude, and cared more about her dresses than her people. The North was ruined, people said, when she became the Interim Governess. But now that he had seen her, he thought that may be she was not that bad. After all, rumors also had it that no librarian had seen her step into the library since she was ten, but how can that sort of thing even be true for a person who held the position of the Interim Governess, right?

An awkward silence fell between the two of them in the large library.

If Lady Reina did not want other people to see her, he couldn’t call the Knights for her. Given that it was the case, why wasn’t she leaving on her own though? The clock kept ticking at three in the morning, but Reina Aurwood showed no signs of leaving. Instead she seemed like she was looking around, looking for something. Was it a book? Did she change her mind and decide to study, he thought? The rumors must be false after all...Even though Reina was not nervous or excited, the boy definitely was, so he had to ask.

“My Lady, is there anything I can help you with?”

Finally, he asked, Reina thought. She was tired of looking for fox images, but did not want to appear ignorant by asking him directly.

“Not really. I .just ..I cannot seem to find…,” she said, hoping he would say something, “ A door…”

“A...door to which place, My Lady?,” he asked, genuinely confused.

“You know ...the door through which I came in...”

“The door…”

Suddenly it dawned on him.

“Of course,” he cried on the inside -there was but one exit in this whole library, but multiple points of entry- you could enter as long as the core recognized you, but to leave, you had to know the way outside.

It thus made sense that you would forget how to leave the place if it had been almost a decade since you had last been here.

“ My Lady, of course...,” he told her, withholding his internal plight.

“I will show you the way…,” he said, believing wholeheartedly that the North was indeed done for.