He quickly cupped her head with his large hand so she wouldn’t knock it against the wall.

It was a touch more careful than handling glass.

At that moment,

“Phew…… don’t come near me…… I’m scared……”

Shiloh furrowed her brow and let out the warning-like words, and Kyle flinched.

“Hmm?”

“……”

Mercifully, it was Shiloh talking in her sleep.

Kyle had tensed up completely, then let out a belated hollow laugh and muttered with an embarrassed expression.

“What kind of dream is she having……”

Kyle lifted her up in his arms.

“……”

Holding Shiloh against him, he climbed the stairs to the second-floor attic one careful step at a time.

Kyle let out a quiet laugh at the sight of her sleeping with her mouth open, dead to the world.

He set Shiloh down on the worn bedding.

In the dark and the quiet, only the sound of her breathing tickled the air.

The crumpled feeling in his chest eased into something warm and cozy, like a blanket freshly smoothed out.

Kyle sat on the edge of the bed and didn’t get up right away.

He sat for a long while in the dim moonlit room, watching Shiloh sleep, and only returned quietly to the palace when it was nearly dawn.

*

To make the canelé and the other pastries for the ducal banquet, Shiloh put egg whites and sugar into a large bowl and began beating the meringue.

“Ow, my arm……”

Shiloh grimaced and shook out her wrist repeatedly.

She was making a soufflé cake, famously requiring a thousand strokes of the whisk.

A soufflé was a sweet, fluffy pastry that wrapped the heart in warmth like a cloud.

Personally, she preferred a soufflé made with mascarpone cheese over cream cheese.

The tanginess of cream cheese was no match for the nuttiness of mascarpone and the soft, full flavor that filled the mouth, which suited her palate perfectly.

Fortunately, her customers’ tastes were no different.

But her wrist and arm were growing increasingly sore, and beating the meringue was becoming more and more of a burden.

“Phew, maybe I should stop selling bread that needs meringue……”

The one thing she had missed about her previous life in moments like this was having machines.

“An electric mixer would finish this in no time.”

Muttering to herself, Shiloh took another deep breath and whisked rapidly until her face went red.

But before long.

Crack.

With a snapping sound, the manual whisk broke clean in two in an instant.

“Oh no……!”

She stared down at the broken whisk handle in dismay.

‘Just a little more and the meringue would have been ready……’

She bowed her head in disappointment.

At that moment,

The tools from the box she had brought back from the dream lake suddenly came to mind.

“There was another whisk, wasn’t there?”

She had never once used the cooking tools from that lake.

They were so exquisitely made that she had felt she shouldn’t use them carelessly, and had been keeping them like treasures in a corner of the attic.

Shiloh took the whisk from that box and washed it carefully and thoroughly at the nearby well.

Despite being hundreds of years old, it never rusted and gleamed like new every time she saw it, which she found mysterious.

Shiloh set the whisk over the bowl and rolled her arm to steady her breathing.

“Just a little more effort!”

She prepared herself mentally for the meringue beating and picked up the whisk.

She put the whisk into the thin egg whites, and just then.

A strange sound came from the whisk.

—Pleased to meet you, Miss! Beginning meringue beating!

“What……”

Shiloh flinched and instinctively stepped back.

The manual whisk suddenly began spinning madly on its own.

Zing.

Shiloh stared blankly at the whisk spinning noisily.

The transparent egg whites transformed into opaque, pure white foam.

The whisk, having stopped spinning, floated horizontally in the air and showed the foam clinging to it.

Dense foam without air pockets clung firmly to the tip of the whisk.

—Shall I make it fluffier, Miss?

“……”

Shiloh drew in a sharp breath and shook her head belatedly.

-Then it passes?

“……”

Shiloh nodded blankly.

—Thank you!

The whisk, now in high spirits, shook itself joyfully.

The sudden movement sent a splatter of foam flying onto Shiloh’s temple.

“……”

Shiloh wiped the meringue from her face with the back of her hand, at a loss.

—I’m sorry, Miss. It’s been so long since I’ve seen you that I got too excited and made a mistake…… are you angry?

—I told you to compose yourself! Keep acting up and you’ll get put away again.

“……”

The spatula sitting on the counter thumped and growled at the whisk in a threatening manner.

—I’m sorry, Miss. You’re not going to leave us again, are you? Sob……

—Enough.

The spatula kept reprimanding the whisk, and the whisk fell silent and only sniffled.

Shiloh’s mind was going blank from the sheer confusion of what was unfolding before her.

“Who’s leaving? Who got put away?”

—We don’t know, Miss. We don’t know anything, so please don’t ask.

“……”

Shiloh raised her eyebrows, thoroughly confused.

So the cooking tools in that bronze box were artifacts.

But ‘Miss’……

Were there artifacts that talked like people?

Well, it was up to the creator’s design, she supposed.

Shiloh tilted her head and added the remaining ingredients to the egg white meringue, then picked up the spatula.

—I’ll do it, Miss. Please just stand there.

This time the spatula moved on its own and blended the baking ingredients together smoothly.

Shiloh couldn’t close her mouth.

She couldn’t quite organize what was happening before her eyes.

But one thing was certain: baking was going to be far easier from now on.

Shiloh was curious about who had made these extraordinary artifacts.

And about the intentions of the ancestor who had left them behind.

That day, Shiloh washed every part of the artifacts until they shone and stored them carefully inside the cabinet.

*

Shiloh visited Marcelline Convent.

Click click.

She ran after Sister Mellis down the corridor, the nun walking ahead with a folder of documents in her arms.

“Sister Mellis, I’ve finally found you.”

“……”

Mellis turned her head, and her eyes were unfocused, as if she were under some kind of influence.

“I came because I absolutely need to know the reason Shuriel passed away.”

“Go see His Holiness the Pope in the parlor. I don’t know anything.”

“……”

Something was off about Sister Mellis, but there was no time to dwell on it.

Shiloh rushed to the parlor in one breath, where Pope Daniel was seated before an elaborately laid formal dinner.

“I’ve been waiting. Please, eat.”

The wrinkled-faced Daniel sliced into a steak with blood running red and smiled.

Shiloh sat down across from him with a stiff expression.

“I came to hear about the reason Shuriel passed away.”

“……”

Daniel quietly set down his fork, let out a stifled laugh, then pressed a napkin over his mouth and began to chortle in convulsions.

The sound of his laughter grew loud enough to fill the parlor.

Goosebumps rose all over her body.

“Is this something to laugh about, Your Holiness?”

“It is because of you.”

Shiloh stared sharply at him, but Daniel answered without any change in expression.

“Because of me? What a terrible thing to say.”

“If you had become my ally, none of this would have happened.”

He dabbed the corner of his mouth with the napkin and curved his lips into a twisted smile.

“Pardon?”

The smile vanished from his face in an instant.

“So become mine.”

“……”

Shiloh’s eyes went wide.

“haaah……!”

Daniel thr*st his face forward and opened his mouth wide like a snarling beast.

His face twisted grotesquely and began to blacken and rot, transforming into something corpse-like and strange.

He climbed onto the table and crawled toward Shiloh like an animal.

The eyes of Daniel, reaching his arms out toward her, were covered entirely in white.

“Aaah!”

Shiloh screamed and her eyes snapped open.

“Hah…… hah……”

She was drenched in cold sweat and breathing in shallow gasps.

An inexplicable unease lodged itself in a corner of her heart.

Shiloh tapped the corners of her eyes with her fingertips to wipe away the tears.

The pillow had grown damp and crumpled from the tears she had shed in her sleep.

“He said I’m the reason Shuriel died?”

At that moment, a light broke through from her hand and flashed like a bolt.

“Huh?”

At the same time, a tingling sensation like an electric shock ran through her fingertips and she flinched.

Shiloh looked down at her palm and her heart lurched.

‘Did I see something in my half-asleep state?’

Shiloh rubbed her eyes, closed them, and opened them again.

The strange phenomenon she had seen in her hand a moment ago was no longer visible.

She squeezed her eyes shut and opened them, drawing in a deep breath.

*

‘Let’s try an outdoor lesson this time.’

After Shiloh moved into the larger shop, Owen had come to reinstall the warp gate and proposed a special lesson.

Owen had been helping with magic training here and there in the meantime.