There were far too many circumstances that aligned for it to be dismissed as mere speculation. If he had been someone who knew nothing of Adelia, the suspicion would never have taken root in the first place.

But he had watched both Luna and Adelia for over a decade.

It was too early to call it certainty, but it had already gone too far to simply let pass.

In the end, Demian began searching the Lutenberg manor’s library for answers.

Before long, he found several worn old volumes abandoned on the deepest and highest shelf in the library.

Opening the pages, he found them densely filled with unfamiliar characters.

The contents were thoroughly encoded, and at first he could not read them at all, but Demian had always had an interest in deciphering codes, and he began bringing in various reference texts to compare them one by one.

The records he painstakingly decoded contained something he had not expected.

Records from an age when magic flourished, before the persecution began under the name of heresy, from a time when that power was used as a matter of course.

And within them, a forgotten past was preserved in full.

Among the old volumes was a document containing the origins of the Lutenberg Marquis family. In an age when magic once ruled the world, the Lutenberg family had been among those who led the suppression of it.

According to the records, they had been granted a title by the imperial family in recognition of their merit in subduing the heretics and black mages who had driven people into terror at the time, and the title of Marquis Lutenberg, bestowed then, had been passed down through the generations ever since.

The history of magic’s suppression.

The further he read, the more a feeling of unease he could not quite name refused to leave him.

And the last thing he found was a set of pages scrambled in a complex code that was not easy to decipher even with effort.

The interpretation did not finish before nightfall, and it was only after several days that he managed to find the thread. After long hours of painstakingly working through the aged text, the moment he finally unraveled it, Demian’s eyes shook violently.

“In that process… the Marquis Lutenberg, having obtained the source of the black mage’s mana… sealed the remnant in the form of a brooch… and passed it down to future generations.”

It was no ordinary passage.

Everything was recorded there: the process by which the brooch Luna had taken came to be the Lutenberg family’s heirloom, and whose it had originally been. Alongside a history written in blood, there was also the account of how it had been handed down exclusively to the Lutenberg heir through each generation.

And then the final page.

“The mana sleeping within the brooch devours the human body… and the power dwelling within it transcends all limits. Furthermore, on the day the black shadow devours the light, it becomes possible to interfere with the flow of souls and exchange the spirits of two separate beings……?”

Exchange souls……?

Demian’s gaze stopped on a single sentence.

In that instant, the scattered pieces began to fit together in his mind.

Adelia, who had always chafed at life as a noble young lady and longed to go somewhere far away. Luna, who had vanished without warning, taking the family’s treasured brooch with her.

And the Adelia he had met again after her marriage was completely different, changed so thoroughly she seemed like an entirely different person.

If these records were true and the power described in the brooch truly existed… then everything that had defied explanation until now would finally make sense.

Demian stared at the same passage over and over, barely breathing, like a man who had forgotten to blink. His eyes moved unsteadily across the printed words, and the fingers gripping the worn paper tensed with something close to dread.

[The Woman in Memory]

A few days later.

After discovering the decisive clue in the Lutenberg manor’s library, Demian’s eyes had changed unmistakably from before.

The gaze that had always been calm and composed now carried something close to resolve.

He was firmly convinced that the Adelia of the present was Luna.

The handwriting she let slip without thinking, and the painting style revealed in the way she held her brush. These were not the kind of things that could be imitated simply by trying.

On top of that, even her food preferences were far too similar. The spices she was particularly fond of and the foods she disliked were identical down to every last detail. Most decisive of all were the expressions and manner of speaking she revealed without realizing it.

The habit of laughing briefly, the tendency to look away when flustered. Even the small, barely perceptible twitch at the corner of her lips when she was irritated.

No matter how hard a person tried to hide, they could never perfectly conceal their true self.

Looking back, Demian himself had already been treating her like Luna, drawn by a familiarity he could not explain.

And so today, Demian intended to confirm it one last time.

After a moment of quiet thought, he cleared his throat softly and spoke to Noah.

“Would you please inform Her Highness the Grand Duchess?”

“The physician has arrived, Your Highness.”

“Show him in.”

Demian stepped into her room without a word.

From the moment he had learned the hidden truth, a heaviness had settled in one corner of his chest. How long had Luna been holding on alone all this time?

He could not begin to imagine how lonely and painful it must have been, to live concealing even her own identity without being able to tell a single soul.

Only now did everything become clear.

The awkward smiles she had worn, the inexplicable familiarity he had felt. And the reason his gaze had kept returning to her.

Demian looked at her the way a person looks at a long-lost love they have barely managed to find again. His eyes held a tenderness and longing that had never been there before.

“How are you feeling…?”

“Perfectly fine. I’ve even put on weight, thanks to you. At this rate my dresses won’t fit.”

A very faint smile crossed Demian’s lips as he watched her make the light joke.

“You never had much interest in dresses to begin with, did you?”

Luna blinked at the sudden remark.

It was not wrong, in truth. Her past self had been interested in things like the lessons a noble young lady received, painting, books, but she had never had much enthusiasm for elaborate dresses.

Adelia, on the other hand, had been someone who bought expensive dresses and jewels whenever she was stressed.

Recalling that, Luna quickly composed her expression and laughed as though nothing were the matter.

“Wh, what are you talking about? You know dresses and jewels are my favorite things. Have you already forgotten?”

Demian’s eyes shifted almost imperceptibly as he looked at her for a moment.

Seeing how much tension and fear were woven into even that brief excuse, it only made his heart ache more.

Demian quietly lowered his gaze, then continued in his usual composed voice.

“How could I forget?”

Demian was somehow different today. The way he looked at her and the way he spoke were so layered with something unreadable that it raised questions.

“He was like this last time too… why is he acting this way……”

His manner had been strangely gentle lately. Adelia and Demian had never been this close to begin with… she was curious about what might have happened, but Luna pressed the thought down and swallowed it.

A short while later, Noah brought in the decoction and pills for Luna to take.

Luna tipped the medicine into her mouth with practiced ease, and Demian immediately handed her a sweet candy from beside him. The gesture was too careful and too natural, and it made her tense.

“Do you remember? There was a time when the three of us climbed the hill behind the manor together. Luna slipped and fell.”

“Did that happen……”

“Yes. We were all young then… in the end I carried Luna down on my back. She cried so pitifully that my back was soaked through with her tears and snot.”

Luna remembered it perfectly, of course. She had been terribly timid as a child. She had mistaken a long branch lying on the mountain path for a snake, recoiled in fright trying to get away from it, and fallen flat.

Not only had she been scared of a branch like a fool, but she had also cried the whole way down, sobbing over her scraped knee.

“Why is he bringing this up now?”

Luna blinked slowly, as though the memory didn’t come to her.

“That was so long ago. I’m not sure I remember.”

Demian watched her quietly, then opened his mouth again.

“And there was another time, when we were playing near the lake without permission and Luna almost fell in. She grabbed onto my sleeve in a panic and cried for a long while then too.”

Why would she not remember? Between the three of them, who had been together since childhood, there were countless memories she could never forget.

But now, with things as they were, all of it felt like a past impossibly far away.

Luna feigned indifference and spoke with a composed air.

“I can barely remember what happened yesterday. It’s all so hazy, maybe because it was so long ago. And Luna is someone from my past now, someone who has come and gone. I know you were close with her, but… for the sake of what’s ahead, wouldn’t it be better to… forget her?”

When she finished speaking, silence fell over the room.

Demian looked at her without saying anything for a long moment, then slowly opened his mouth.

“I can’t do that. Because I… had feelings for Luna.”

Luna’s fingertips twitched almost imperceptibly.

The candy rolling around in her mouth nearly went straight down her throat. She swallowed a cough and stared at Demian with wide eyes.

“Wh, what?”

But Demian’s expression did not waver for even a moment. His eyes held a sincerity that was remarkable, as though the words were neither a joke nor something said on impulse.

“The truth is… I still do. Not being able to tell her in the end is what I regret most.”