"Don't you have some time before the Victory Banquet? You could stay longer, my dear." The Marquis looked at his granddaughter, whom he hadn't seen in years, with regret.

The victory at the border had been announced to the public, and invitations to the corresponding banquet had been sent out to all the nobles of the Empire. Everyone from the rank of Count and up was required to attend, with family members from the age of seven and up, regardless of whether they had made their debut or not. Even her second brother would have no choice but to attend.

She had grown up so well, despite the rumors that had reached even him from time to time a few years back. He was a bit of a recluse himself, as of late, so he hardly had access to information. But she was indeed a future Empress, the next mother of this Arlen Empire, so he always knew she would outgrow her immaturity.

As a child, he remembered how much raw potential he had seen in her. It made him proud, even though he knew he contributed little to it in the end.

She felt a small sting when she saw his sad eyes, but she couldn't waste time in the Nerena Territory, even if she liked it there.

With a smile, she let him caress her head gently before saying goodbye. Her brother gave her a sideways glance, albeit brief.

"Will it really be okay for me to stay here and return to the capital alone?" Ava asked. They decided that it would be better for her to return to the capital with Charlotte and Sir Logan so that Charlotte would have someone to take her to the Annex.

"It will be fine. Ask Nelson if there's anything you need at the Marquisate." She put her hand on her maid's shoulder and gave it a quick squeeze. "Make sure you have the girl and my Annex ready for when I return with Norina."

She had told Ava the story of her colleague's little sister in an abbreviated manner, trying to trust one more person on her watch. It wasn't much more than what she'd already gathered, since she'd also told her grandfather about Charlotte.

Coincidentally, Rowena also thought it would be better to have less personnel with her in Eisenwacht, since her plans required her to show some of her cards to others. Ava already knew a lot, but it didn't have to be more than necessary for now.

"Of course I will!" At those words, Ava's eyes lit up as she, too, said her goodbyes so as not to get in the way of her mistress by wasting her precious time.

'Sorry, Ava.' Rowena sighed as she boarded the carriage, her eyes meeting Sir Sean's as she nodded to signal their readiness to leave.

Rowena certainly didn't miss the feeling of her butt, aching from the constant rocking and bouncing over uneven forest paths. She looked out the window, alone with her one remaining maid. It was a peaceful atmosphere.

"There is one thing I am still curious about," the noble girl said as she tried to see past the endless amount of trees surrounding them.

Caught off guard, the blonde maid blinked in response, then tilted her head. "What would that be, my lady?" There was no one else she could talk to.

Of course, she knew there could have been another person, but Norina didn't understand the connection between a human and a Numbered well enough to guess that much. It was something that Rowena would have to explain to her in order for her to understand what would happen to her sister from now on.

'Speaking of which,' she thought, "It's nothing grand. But when your sister regained her age, while it had lost some color due to her failing health, her hair was a reddish hue."

"Ah... Yes, that is true, my lady." Her face clearly showed how clueless she was as to the reason for this question.

Although she was no specialist, genetics was something most people in Celia's world understood.

A girl with reddish hair and a girl with blonde hair - it was different down to the texture. It wasn't impossible, but it certainly wasn't common. They also didn't look much alike in other respects.

"Are you related by blood?" she asked without further ado.

There was a silence that lasted about three minutes. "We are not."

When Rowena looked at Norina, she could see her face drawn to the floor, her hands clutching her knees, and the tension she exuded.

"I don't know what you're thinking, but I didn't ask because I wanted to make you anxious." There was something she had to check for certainty. "But I need you to give me your hand for a moment."

Confused, the maid immediately held out her hand, not knowing what to expect. It wasn't that she expected the kind and slightly clumsy lady to do her any harm, but she couldn't always tell what was going through her mind.

Rowena took the offered hand with hers, closed her eyes and let her freshly regained Mana flow into the body in front of her. It passed through open pathways and returned with foreign energy attached.

It was crude, unused and a bit clogged, but it was as she had feared. It even looked as if someone had worked on them before. "Indeed, you are one."

"Excuse me?"

"Hm," Rowena let out, "that's a bit odd."

Nervously, the young maid began to sweat a bit. "Is something wrong? Was it something I did?"

"No, no, you're fine," her mistress reassured her faithful servant, "I was just checking your Mana compatibility."

Now even more surprised, Norina's eyes widened. "Amazing. You can even do that?"

"It's not hard, once you are able to control Mana in the first place. You just need to learn how to do it." Of course, that wasn't a simple process, but Norina didn't need to know that yet.

"I didn't know. It's still an amazing feat in my eyes, my lady."

It wasn't surprising that she didn't know much, since it was a kind of knowledge that the Church of Aurora had seized and kept for themselves.

"In any case, Norina," Rowena began in a serious tone, "you have the ability to use Mana."

When the blonde girl heard these words, she couldn't just answer them. How could she? It was the first time she had heard something like that.

Not quite the same as the body she had found in Rowena, but a good amount of paths had already been formed and were now lying in vain. She would have to train hard to clean up the mess she had made by opening them and yet learning so late, but it wasn't impossible.

No, that wasn't the problem. "How likely is that now?" she muttered and looked at the astonished maid.

"What is it?" the maid asked, confused, before flinching at the unhappy look on her mistress's face, "I do apologize, my lady, that was rude of me."

"What? No, I was just lost in thought," the lady replied, sighing, "I was expecting it because I felt it just before, but I never really confirmed it until now." She only wondered who would have opened up her paths that way.

"Is there something wrong with my condition?" It felt like something was wrong, but she couldn't put her finger on it, so she was worried.

"It's not that, I was just wondering," the noble began again, "how likely it is for two commoner girls to become sisters and both have the physical abilities to use Mana when trained. How did you come to call Charlotte your sister, Norina?" Now, she finally looked at her maid intently.

Norina, on the other hand, decided to look away. "When we were little, we were street rats."

"So you lived in the slums?" Rowena knew that it was something terrible to admit, especially in front of a noble and the person giving you work, but she had to know the truth.

"Yes," she said, her shoulders hunched, "we often went into the Territory's capital to beg for food or pickpocket money when we had to. I was part of a group of kids that always roamed the same back alleys."

"And Charlotte was part of this group?" Rowena mused.

But to her surprise, Norina shook her head. "No, she wasn't," the girl explained, "but back then I sometimes got closer to the main square than others. That's where I met a man who gave me food and sometimes talked to me. It was Mr. Nelson."

She was referring to the shopping district they had visited together recently. "So that was how you met him."

"Yes. In any case, I waited for him one day, but he didn't show up. It was around the time when the former Grand Duchess... When the Marquis and his wife were in terrible sorrow and had to leave the territory for some time, so everything depended on the overseer to run things properly."

'When the Grand Duchess died.' It was strange to think about. Rowena felt a little stuffy, so she sighed again and tried to shake off the thought. "So it was about eight years ago?"

"Yes, when I was nine or ten," the maid confirmed hastily, "during that time I sometimes waited all day with my friends, but life had become so much harder for us, until that woman appeared in front of us."

"What woman?"

"I don't really know. Her name was Sylvia, or at least she claimed it was. She sat down, gave us food and held our hands in the cold, even though we were mere filthy rats." Her eyes narrowed at the memory. "Sylvia would even ask if there were other children like us, because she wanted to help them too."

"What a charitable lady."

"We thought so too," she said, "of course we were wary of her at first, but she was so kind, we let her give us food, and talked to her. Then, after a week, she came back and told me to come with her. Just me, not the others."

'I knew it.' Rowena snorted with a grim expression. "She checked to see if any of you had Mana abilities, and you must have been the only one."

Norina nodded, though she had never known the reason why she was really chosen, and continued her story. "She told me it was an orphanage she ran," she said, "that I would never know hunger again and that I could find a new mom and dad."

"It's normal to fall for that as a child," Rowena reassured her maid, seeing her shoulders shake in the uncomfortable position. "Especially when you are in a desperate situation." As Celia, she knew exactly how that felt, so she could empathize.

No, even the real Rowena seemed to know her fair share of desperation. All the money in the world could not cure all your worries sometimes.

Her shoulders slumped a little at her words. "No, I was foolish," the maid whispered, "I met Charlotte at the orphanage and stayed there for about a year. A lot of children had been adopted by then, and since we didn't see any of them after they left, Charlotte was frightened when she was chosen."

'Surely, adoption is the prime goal of a child in an orphanage, but it feels like that's not the kind of story she's telling here. I have a bad feeling.' Though she didn't let it show for the time being.

"We begged to meet the new parents, which we were never allowed to do, because we wanted to beg them to take me as well. It was selfish, I knew it. But it was all too suspicious and Charlotte didn't want to be separated from me".

"What happened to make a child suspicious?"

"We weren't treated so well when we entered the orphanage. The older children took care of the younger ones. We were fed just enough to walk around, but at the same time, a doctor would come and check us once a week."

"I'm sure it was not a doctor you would regularly find on the street."

"It was someone they knew personally, I think," Norina said, still not really understanding what had happened, "but the most suspicious thing was the one door we weren't allowed to open. It was under the stairs and would lead to a small storage compartment, or so they claimed."

"Do you know what was in it?"

"Yes. The night I ran away with Charlotte, I heard them open the door when I went to see if the others were all asleep. When I looked, I saw it - it was a basement."

Rowena's eyes widened in shock. This wasn't the capital, creating a cellar this far from the Marquise's mansion was tantamount to an act of terror. It should have caused an immense amount of damage.

"We fled together, running into the streets where I had always waited for the nice man. It was a gamble, but in the early morning hours, before they would have noticed that we were missing, Mr. Nelson found us. I was distraught and told him about the orphanage and the basement I had discovered."

"I'm sure the Marquise took good care of it."

"He did. But when they reached the house, it was empty."

"Hm." Rowena already found it strange how easily they could run away. "They took kids off the street, so they probably didn't think anyone would believe them or even listen to them. And not many would have run away after being taken care of, however badly, to return to the worse life they had before."

Yet, when Charlotte and Norina weren't there in the morning, they packed up and ran. They underestimated the children, yet they took measures to run if needed.

'The people running the orphanage were not the people behind the incident, so there's more to it than just a few people up to no good.'

"I was told the same thing by the knights who were in charge of me. When they searched the house, they found human remains in the basement, though I don't know the details, I just heard them say that much. It was a miracle that nothing worse happened."

"Do you remember anything about the cellar?"

"Not much. It was too dark. The stairs were steep and made of rusty metal. It smelled of seawater, too."

So they didn't dare raise the Surface by building a staircase, which could one day be part of the foundation, and sprayed seawater to keep Visitors away.

'But why a basement? And what about the human remains? Whose remains?' None of this sounded good to her ears.

"I found out later that this place... it was a Factory, they said. Though I don't know what that means." She seemed confused, it must have been the first time since then for her to say these words out loud.

But Rowena knew very well what she was talking about. She always hated it when her bad feelings turned out to be reliable.

"Well, shit." And that was putting it mildly.