He set the photograph aside and opened the letter.
As he read it, he froze in place.
The words were written in an elegant hand, yet they carried a strange force. He began to read, his eyes widening slowly with every line:
"To whoever reads these words… Niklaus… Arthur… it makes no difference.
If you are reading this, it means you have finally reached this point after all those hardships and pains and regrets and tragedy. First, before anything else, you utter bastard—if you act like a fool this time, I will strangle you with my own hands.
The most important thing you must do is remove the magical seal. Go to the Forest of Death. There you will find all the answers… or perhaps most of them.
But I want you to understand this: if you have reached this point, there is no turning back anymore.
In the Forest of Death, Empress Elisia and Emperor Leonard met for the first time there, one year before the Emperor's coronation. And there, this tale that I came to know later began. But it turned out that everything I knew was a lie wrapped in a lie. How deeply laughable, isn't it?
But please… please, do not…"
The last sentence was unfinished, as though the writer had been cut off suddenly. Or perhaps could not bring himself to complete it.
Niklaus remained motionless, his eyes fixed on the words. The only sound in the library was the beat of his own heart, piercing the silence like distant drums.
He tightened his grip on the paper, a strange coldness threading through his fingers.
"You utter bastard…" He repeated the phrase in his mind with a sardonic edge. Who in this world possessed the audacity to address him like that?
Then a thought flickered through his head: And what did he mean by "Arthur"? How does he know my name?
He felt something like a cold knife driving into his chest. No one in this world had spoken that name. No one had written it. It was his sole secret, his last memory from his own world.
How utterly revolting and nauseating.
His eyes moved to the severed sentence: "But please… do not…" The void left by that break was more disturbing than the letter itself.
Who wrote this letter? He seethed with cold fury. If I ever learn who he is, I will cut out his tongue with my own hands and hang it around his neck.
And what did any of this drivel have to do with him? Why were they dragging him into it?
If the Emperor and Empress had met in the forest a year before his coronation, that meant the forest was a place the Emperor knew well and had visited. But there were no documents, not even rumors, of him going there or meeting the Empress in that place. What was known was that their meeting had been during a trade negotiation with the isolated Kingdom of Lokriven, and that Empress Elisia had been none other than a princess of that kingdom.
The disgust had reached its limit with all this nonsense.
He tightened his grip coldly, his crimson eyes staring into the void.
"Nonsense upon nonsense…" he murmured under his breath.
If the letter writer was saying the answers were in the forest, then let him go and see what these answers were that were dragging him into this clichéd story.
First, then, he needed to extract words from the Emperor's own mouth—to confirm he had indeed been there, and that the contents of the letter were not the ravings of a madman.
Niklaus remained in the library until morning, reading books with indifference, waiting for the hour to come when he could visit the Emperor. He was thinking: I will take the words from him, and then… leave this irritating palace behind.
He was certain Ethan would have found the way to the forest by now. Three months had passed with him searching for it.
He knew the Emperor had never shown interest in Niklaus his entire life, so he was not someone he could simply approach and casually question about the past. But he no longer cared. He would find out, and he would pay no mind to these insignificant matters. Though he understood the words would not leave the Emperor's mouth easily, he had to take them without the man realizing.