"I really didn't know…" Marcellus's voice trembled as he spoke, barely above a whisper. "I think I'd already lost my mind back then. I wasn't thinking clearly… I'm not trying to make excuses for myself. But the truth is—I never truly considered telling you the truth."
His hand slowly covered his face, fingers whitening as they pressed against his skin, as if trying to block out the shame, to hide the guilt and the past he had never dared to confront. His shoulders trembled faintly, and the heaviness of his emotions thickened the air, like a damp, suffocating curtain that wrapped around the room.
Perhaps it was because she was not Livia—Alia, watching from a slight distance, could see it more clearly.
She looked silently at the man before her, consumed by regret.
If the Holy Grail's power was truly as the legends described—capable of disrupting will and eroding reason—then perhaps Marcellus's secrecy and hesitation weren't born only of cowardice, but rather, a distorted survival instinct. A magnified evasion, twisted by the Grail's influence.
But even so…
Can it really be forgiven?
"Then…" Livia's voice was taut, as if she were grappling with the unknown depths of her own memory. Her fingertips clutched the corner of the hospital bed, her eyes sharp and uneasy.
"Who was it that caused my coma and memory loss?"
"I don't know." Marcellus lowered his hand, face pale, bitter.
"I used to think I knew. I thought it was Elias—he always had his eyes on you, always watching with that… obsessive madness. At first, I truly believed he had gone insane and tried to take you away by force. But after everything that's happened recently… I'm more and more certain it wasn't him."
He paused slightly, as if struggling to untangle the web of confusion in his mind.
"Then I began to suspect your father, Edgar," he continued, "But… it didn't make sense. He had no motive. Or maybe I just didn't want to believe it. Maybe I instinctively avoided facing the truth. That entire time, I was drowning. The more I struggled, the deeper I sank. And when you lost your memory… I actually…"
He gave a bitter laugh, voice growing quieter, more raw.
"I actually thought it was a good thing. Like fate had helped me erase everything. Looking back now… I can't believe how wrong I was. How shameful I became."
His words were barely audible, like they were scraped from the depths of a soul long buried.
"Could it… have been the Grail?" Livia asked, her tone calm and analytical, but a flicker of ice and uncertainty glimmered in her eyes.
"I don't know." Marcellus met her gaze, his voice hoarse and exhausted.
"If it were the complete Grail, then—according to legend—yes, it might be possible. But all I had was a fragment. And even then… something that powerful? It seems too unbelievable. If it were truly capable of that… then the fragments we've gathered by now—would've already killed us."
A crooked smile tugged at the corner of his lips. It was bitter, ironic—half self-mockery, half a laugh at the absurdity of fate.
Silence fell between them.
Only the soft ticking of medical equipment remained in the room, and the whisper of the night wind tapping against the window glass.
Livia lowered her head, lost in thought.
Her instincts no longer pointed to Marcellus as the culprit—but the truth still lingered, unresolved, like mist that refused to clear.
Could it really have been the Grail?
That ancient artifact spoken of in myth, said to alter destinies and raise the dead… Did it truly hold such unimaginable power?
Her eyes drifted to her tightly clenched fingers.
And then—
A sudden, piercing thought cut through her heart like a blade.
She, Alia, was revived through the Grail fragment, awakened in Livia's body.
And it was after that night that Livia had fallen into a coma.
Was there… a price? A trade? An unavoidable exchange?
Perhaps it was her resurrection—that unholy miracle—that pulled Livia into the abyss of sleep.
The realization struck her like ice.
A chill crept up her spine, quietly, slowly.
She couldn't be sure. She might never be sure.
But fate—intricate, merciless—was already turning its hidden gears, leading them to a place she once could never have imagined.
And now, all she could do…
Was keep walking forward, peeling back the layers of truth, one by one.