Ten minutes later, his patience was wearing thin.
"There's only three left…" he muttered, holding a thick volume in his hands, as if it had personally offended him.
His confidence, which had been decent at the start, had started to crumble, replaced by the quiet dread that the letter was hidden somewhere stupid, like inside the bedframe, or under a floorboard, and he had wasted his time.
'If it's not in one of these, I might have to give up for now, because I'm running out of ideas,' he thought, jaw tightening.
He slid another book out, opened it, checked, nothing, then the second, same result, then he reached for the last one and felt irritation spike again.
'Final one…'
He opened the book, thumbed through the pages, and something shifted.
A thin slip of paper slid out from the middle and fluttered down onto the floor.
Soren blinked.
Then he exhaled so hard it almost sounded like laughter.
"...Finally."
He didn't celebrate loudly, he didn't pump a fist, he just let his shoulders drop and sat back on the bed with the heavy relief of someone who had been forced to spend an hour chasing a quest's sense of humour.
He picked the letter up carefully.
The envelope was already open.
The wax seal had been broken, the edge of the paper torn slightly.
'It was probably the original Soren,' he thought, mild and detached, because that conclusion was obvious, and because the original Soren still felt like a separate person, someone he could analyse without feeling.
He slid a finger into the envelope and pulled the letter free.
Then he paused.
The paper was crumpled, not neatly folded, but crushed and flattened again, and there were faint stains across it, dried marks that looked suspiciously like tears.
Soren's throat tightened for a moment, not out of grief, but out of discomfort, because it was an intimate thing to touch, evidence of someone else's breakdown, someone else's life pressing up against his fingers.
He unfolded it slowly, smoothing the creases with his palm, then read.
His face didn't change much, but his body still went still, a quiet, involuntary freeze that came when something unexpected reached out of the page and grabbed him by the ribs.
"…What is this?"
— To Soren, I have stumbled upon some information that you might find helpful as the person closest to the victim…
The letter began abruptly, with no greeting, no formalities, and no polite dance; it went straight to its point as if the writer had been afraid to waste ink.
— When investigating the scene of Freya Arden's unfortunate passing, we discovered something strange: the corpses of the monsters and demons scattered around Freya…
It detailed suspicion, careful phrasing wrapped around sharp intent, and Soren's eyes tracked the lines without emotion catching, because Freya Arden was simply a name, not a sister, not a memory, or someone he had loved.
Still, the next sentence made his stomach sink in a practical way, the way it did when he realised an opponent had a hidden advantage.
— Through this investigation, we began to believe that monsters or demons did not cause Freya Arden's death, as we had initially believed, nor was it an accident.
Soren stared at the line for a second longer than necessary, then kept reading, because shock was unproductive.
— This led us to look further into this case, and through that, we found something that we want to share with you. I kindly request that you refrain from taking any drastic action upon reading the contents of this letter…
Attached beneath the letter was a separate piece of paper.
A contract.
His eyes narrowed.
'That's the Arden seal.'
His fingers tightened slightly on the paper, then loosened again, because reacting strongly felt wrong; it felt like acting on someone else's behalf.
"Why is that there…?" he muttered, more curious than horrified.
He scanned the names.
Joseph, no family name, a commoner.
And Sofia Arden.
Soren paused again, not because he couldn't understand, but because understanding was unpleasant.
The letter was implying something monstrous, and yet, even as it sank in, he couldn't force himself to feel personally betrayed, because he didn't know these people.
He didn't have the warmth of family to twist into hatred.
He had information.
That was all.
A contract bearing Sofia's name didn't prove everything on its own; it could be forged, coerced, misinterpreted, but then his gaze dropped to the date, and whatever convenient denial he might have entertained evaporated.
The listed date wasn't vague.
It wasn't flexible.
It sat there like a nail hammered into place.
Soren's jaw tensed.
He bit his thumb lightly, more a habit than a self-soothing gesture, then leaned back, staring at the letter and contract together.
It was addressed to "Soren," not "Soren Arden," a deliberate choice in a world that worshipped family names, and the letter called him "the person closest to the victim," as if that closeness was both weapon and weakness.
Which meant the sender thought Soren was either an ally or a disposable tool.
It was impossible not to piece it together.
Soren let out a quiet, hollow laugh, not because it was funny, but because it was absurd.
"He's been abandoned," he said, voice flat, like stating a weather report.
At least it explained some things: the way lower nobles had spoken to him without fear, the way he had arrived at Stellaris Academy with almost nothing, the way his dorm life had felt so close to the protagonists, in other words, a person without the money to splurge.
He didn't need to count coins to know the truth of it.
He had been living on a thin margin, the kind you felt every time you considered buying something unnecessary, and now he knew why.
Soren set the contract down carefully, then stared at the letter again.
'Who sent this?'
He turned it over, checked the back, checked the envelope again, but there was no sender's name, no seal, nothing that would tell him which faction had decided to toss a match into the Arden household and see what burned.
'I guess it makes sense,' he thought. 'If they put a name on this, they'd be begging to be crushed.'
The accusations were aimed at a count family, and even if the family was rotting internally, it was still a count family, and this world didn't forgive those below for getting bold.
"So what now?" Soren murmured.
The sender clearly wanted him to believe Sofia Arden was behind Freya's death.
Maybe they wanted revenge.
Maybe they wanted him to fracture the family from the inside.
Maybe they wanted a scapegoat.
Or maybe, more simply, they had pitied Soren, the abandoned son, and decided he deserved to know.
He didn't know.
He also wasn't sure it mattered.
Soren Arden was gone.
Isaac was here, wearing his face, inheriting his problems, and holding a letter full of poison that belonged to someone else's history.
He didn't know Sofia.
He didn't know Freya.
He didn't have memories that would make this personal, which meant he could only treat it like what it was to him.
A danger.
A clue.
A boundary line.
As a student at Stellaris Academy, he could only leave campus during summer and winter breaks until his third year, and even then, he doubted anyone was waiting for him outside with open arms.
If the letter was true, then the Arden household had already decided he was expendable.
Even if he wanted to confront Sofia, he couldn't.
Even if he wanted revenge, he had no fuel for it.
'I wouldn't be able to do anything anyway.'
He was weak.
He had no connections.
He had two people he could vaguely call friends: one was his homeroom professor, a noble from Einhardt, and the other was Felix, a commoner with ties in Yggdrasil.
Neither of them had reason to involve themselves in Fialovan politics, and even if they did, Soren didn't trust anyone enough to hand them a letter accusing a countess of murder.
Not after a few weeks.
Not with his life still so unstable.
And if anything could have been done immediately, the original Soren would have already done it; the letter's crumpled state said enough about what he had felt, even if Soren didn't share it.
"Well, there's nothing I can do for now," he said quietly, folding the letter again, more carefully this time.
He rubbed his eyes, then glanced back to the quest window, which had been waiting patiently the entire time, as if the system didn't care about grief, only completion.
.
▶ Quest Complete! [The Truth (1)] ◀
[Reward: Book 1, 150 Points]
.
[Book 1 has automatically been added to Unique Skill [Library of Memories]]
.
Soren stared at the last line, then exhaled slowly, almost satisfied, because the connection finally clicked into place cleanly.
'So I was right.'
He hadn't been certain earlier, but now it was obvious.
The system wasn't subtle; it was just patient.
He looked up at the clock in the corner of his room and squinted.
'1:27 AM…'
Exhaustion settled over him like a heavy blanket, the kind that crept in after adrenaline finally gave up.
His chest still ached from Yuli's enhancement hits even after being healed, and his head felt full, not of emotion, but of information he hadn't asked for.
Still, there was one last thing he needed to do.
Not because he was excited.
But because he couldn't sleep while knowing the library had changed and he hadn't looked.
He opened his mouth and spoke.
"「Library of Memories」"
In an instant, the world shifted, and he was standing in the centre of a circular library once again, shelves curving around him into the distance, quiet and endless, and unlike his previous visit, there was a new addition.
In front of Soren stood a lectern.
On that lectern rested a single book.
He stepped closer, reached out, opened it, and as his eyes met the first page, his consciousness began to fade…
————「❤︎」————