Three months had passed since the night Desmond sealed that room.
The Doll Room now lay locked behind the ancient stone walls of the Carpathian mansion inside Wolfram state.
No footsteps echoed there anymore.
No whispers lingered in the corridors.
Yet that silence existed only in the waking world.
In sleep… everything still returned.
Every night, Desmond dreamed.
But these were not ordinary dreams.
They felt like memories that did not belong to him.
He did not watch them from a distance.
He lived them.
As though seated in a dark theater, forced to witness another life through someone else's eyes.
In those visions, the world felt older.
Far older than anything he had ever known.
The sky hung low and gray.
A stone fortress rose along a northern cliff.
The wind carried the sharp scent of salt and iron.
And within that ancient world stood a woman.
Her long crimson hair burned like embers beneath the pale northern sun.
Her gaze was sharp… yet somewhere deep within it lay a sorrow too quiet to be spoken.
She was a queen.
Mireya.
Yet the strangest presence was not the woman.
It was the man standing before her.
A man of middle years.
Handsome in a quiet, severe way, his jawline carried the strength of old European blood. Dark hair brushed the wind of the northern coast, and his eyes held a kind of intelligence neither soldier nor noble possessed.
He was not a king.
He was not a warrior.
He was an alchemist.
In the dream, Desmond watched them step closer to one another.
No grand declarations.
No dramatic words.
Only silence.
A gaze that lingered too long… too deep…
like two souls who had known each other long before the world itself had taken its first breath.
Mireya lifted her hand slowly and touched the man's face.
Then they kissed.
Not with hunger.
Not with desire.
But with the quiet resignation of two souls who already knew the world would never allow them to belong to it.
The kind shared by two people who knew the world would destroy them…
yet chose each other anyway.
Time itself seemed to pause.
The northern wind whispered across the stone.
Then Mireya spoke.
Her voice was barely a breath.
Yet within the dream, every word was perfectly clear.
"I carry your child…"
She looked at him with eyes trembling under the weight of love.
"…your child, Adrian."
The name echoed through the dream.
Adrian.
Then the world shattered.
Desmond jolted awake.
His body jerked upright as if dragged from the depths of water.
His breathing came fast and uneven.
Cold sweat clung to his skin.
His shoulder-length black hair fell forward across his face as his hands gripped his head, trying to steady the fragments of a memory that did not belong to him.
The room was lit only by a few trembling candles.
Their light cast his silhouette across the walls like a living statue carved from shadow.
Desmond's body was tall and solid.
His muscles were defined like weathered stone—not excessive, but forged by a life that had demanded endurance. Broad shoulders, a firm chest where faint veins traced beneath pale skin.
His abdomen was tight and controlled.
His legs powerful, like pillars meant to carry something far heavier than flesh.
Even beneath the flickering candlelight, he looked less like a man…
and more like something shaped by the darkness itself.
He sat on the edge of the bed.
Still breathing hard.
"…Adrian?"
The name tasted unfamiliar in his mouth.
Like a word remembered from a life he had never lived.
"Who… are you?"
Before the question could settle—
BRAAAKKK!!!!!
The window burst open.
A violent gust of wind tore into the room.
Snow exploded across the wooden floor as the candle flames trembled wildly.
Desmond rose immediately.
He grabbed a heavy robe draped over a wooden chair and pulled it over his shoulders before striding toward the window.
Outside, the storm raged.
The Carpathian mountains had vanished beneath a furious sea of white.
With effort, he forced the window shut.
But as he turned—
THUD!!
A sound echoed from the floor below.
A knock.
Someone was striking the front door.
Desmond froze.
The mansion stood alone among the mountains.
In a storm like this…
no one should have been outside.
The knock came again.
THUD!! THUD!!
Weaker this time.
Desmond stepped into the corridor.
He descended the great spiral staircase at the center of the mansion—the ancient stone steps twisting downward like the spine of some long-dead creature.
Each footstep echoed quietly.
Below, the massive wooden door trembled against the force of the storm.
The knocking came once more.
Soft...
Almost…
like someone who had no strength left.
Desmond stood before the door.
His hand wrapped around the iron handle.
Yet he did not open it.
Something felt strange.
The mansion suddenly fell into perfect silence.
Even the storm seemed to pause.
As if the world itself were holding its breath.
Desmond pulled the door open.
The storm exploded inside.
Snow and wind surged through the entrance hall.
And within the chaos of white—
stood a woman.
Her pale blond hair clung to her face, strands frozen with ice. Her skin was pale as fragile porcelain. Snow clung to her lashes.
She wore a simple white dress of old European wool, its delicate lace now stiff with frost.
Her body trembled violently.
Her fingers were rigid with cold.
Yet her eyes…
Her eyes were blue.
Deep blue.
The woman looked at Desmond as though she had finally found something she had been searching for all her life.
Her lips moved faintly.
"Help me…"
Then her body collapsed forward.
But before she struck the floor—
Desmond caught her.
She felt impossibly light.
And terribly cold.
As if she had wandered through the snow for far too long.
For a moment he simply stood there, staring down at the pale face in his arms.
She did not move.
Unconscious.
The storm continued to howl outside.
Slowly, Desmond shut the great door behind them.
The wind disappeared.
Silence returned.
He carried the woman to the main hall and knelt beside the great fireplace.
Within moments he had lit the flames.
Warm light filled the stone chamber.
Desmond wrapped his robe around her fragile body.
His large hands closed gently around her frozen fingers, trying to return warmth to them.
That was when he noticed it.
A small pendant hung around her neck.
An ancient symbol.
One he did not recognize.
And yet…
for reasons he could not explain—
it felt disturbingly familiar.
In his arms, the woman's breathing slowly returned.
Deep within the mansion…
behind the stone walls sealing the Doll Room…
something stirred.
Something that had been waiting.
Waiting for this exact moment.
And within that deep silence—
a whisper moved through the darkness.
"At last…"
the whisper breathed through the darkness.
"…you have finally come back."