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I couldn't say what happened next. All I knew was that when I finally came back to my senses, I was in my old room. The air smelt slightly of disuse, but everything seemed to be exactly where I'd last left it: the covers of the bed were unfolded, the stool at the vanity table pulled out, and the wardrobe door slightly ajar. It was as though Lord Himmel had specially preserved it in its original state, waiting for me to return, knowing all along that I had no other choice.

Anger suddenly flared in me. He had expected me to come back. He'd known that I wouldn't dare to risk Josef's life in exchange for my safety.

But at any rate, I wasn't going to give up without a fight.

I sat on the bed, sinking into its mustiness. A ghost of a silk dress fluttered at the corner of my eye. Then I noticed Elise standing by the doorway, a perfect sentinel to watch over my every move. I stared at her; she stared back.

"Who are you, exactly?" I asked in a whisper.

Her spine stiffened, and she folded her arms. After a moment's indecision, she closed the door behind her and walked over to sit beside me. I didn't shy away, nor did I shuffle any closer to her.

She didn't reply immediately, opting to fold her hands on her lap and look at them. I didn't urge her for an answer. An air of heaviness clouded her, and her eyes were deep with reminiscing. She almost looked like a child, her head bowed low and her figure so small; while I was the wise and all-knowing Magus.

It was an odd sensation.

"You have Anton's lodestone, don't you?" Her words were so quiet that I nearly missed them.

Automatically, I reached into my pouch and drew the lodestone out. It sat heavily in my hand, the weight of the memories contained within crossing my mind.

Elise lifted one hand and let it hover uncertainly over mine. "May I?" she said.

I nodded. Elise gently took the stone in her fingers. She traced its surface, expression disbelieving yet hopeful. Could it be?—but it was. There was an unmistakable shine in her eyes.

Fat tears began to roll down her cheeks.

Shock rippled throughout me. Seeing Elise cry was like seeing Josef in his tortured state. I could never have imagined it—until I saw it actually happening, of course. My mind went blank; I couldn't find the right words to say. I knew why she was crying though: the stone reminded her of Anton, of my father.

Of her husband.

I decided that it was best if I remained silent. Sure enough, she wrest back control over herself after a few moments. However, it was a few more minutes before she drew in a deep breath and finally said something, "I suppose you know my connection to you."

You're my mother, I thought. The idea didn't settle right in my head. It was...strange. And terrifying. A few months ago, I was alone in the world. Then I'd learned that I once had a father—a past.

And now my own biological mother was here with me. Living, breathing, talking.

It was surreal.

And it was terrifying.

She took my silence as an answer, and her head drooped dejectedly. "I—I suppose you think little of me now. Your father...he is—was a brave man."

I ignored the way her voice cracked. "What happened?"

Elise looked about cautiously, gently humming a song under her breath. I felt the air around us shifting with magic, warping reality and throwing an illusion of sound about us.

When she was done, she gave me a long, hard look. "I had been far too effective with my Affinity, it seems," she said.

"What is your Affinity then?" I asked, the same question she had so neatly dodged months ago. I had my suspicions, if I remembered the information Lady Anya had given correctly. Still, it wouldn't hurt for me to confirm the fact.

Another look. A slow, deep breath.

"Memory alteration."

Despite myself, I heard myself inhale sharply. So I was right, after all. And if Elise's Affinity was memory alteration...

"What did you do to my memories?" I resumed.

"Isn't it obvious?" She lifted her chin, violet eyes flashing dangerously. Not for the first time, I found myself marvelling at her effortless beauty. None of which passed on to me. No wonder Lord Himmel hadn't suspected that we were related whatsoever. But it didn't matter. Not anymore.

I tore my eyes away from her. "You altered them," I said. I didn't know if I should be angry or grateful.

"I did." She must have noticed my expression changing, for she tentatively put her hand on my shoulder. I didn't shake off her grip, like I probably would have done long ago.

"Why?"

"You knew too much. You were a liability at that time, and Lord Himmel wouldn't have hesitated to do anything to get what he wanted."

"What did he want?"

She closed her eyes. She was reliving that horrible night, where everything had changed for her and for me. But this was for the best, I reminded myself. We had to dig up everything we knew about the incident in Hamelin, and after that—

Honestly, I didn't know what would come after this. I just knew that learning about my past was a start.

Elise opened her eyes after a few more seconds. They slid towards me, cat-like under the lighting. "You. Or more specifically, your power."

"Mind control?"

"That's right."

A frown drew my brows together. "You altered my memories in order to prevent me from remembering my magic—which didn't matter anyway because the Mayor had banned music in Hamelin entirely. What about the other townsfolk then? Didn't they remember anything?"

"I don't think so. Lord Himmel had always cast a sleeping spell before he began his raids. It wasn't any different for Hamelin."

There was a pause in between. I absorbed all of her words carefully, trying to put the puzzle pieces together. In the end, I said, "Tell me everything. From the start."

Elise only seemed to glad to oblige: "As you've seen in the memory, Anton led the three of us to track down the Pied Piper. I won't go into details on how we finally managed to trace his origins back to Erstürnach, but I will let you know that we only suspected that he was going to be in Hamelin next.

"If you note the maps of Aschein, Erstürnach is somewhere in the middle of the northern region. And if you note the towns that had been ravaged by the Pied Piper, they are all extended into a radius with the city as its focal point. Throughout the years, the circle has become bigger, and the attacks come once in every ten years. That's how we roughly knew that we had to be in Hamelin at a certain time.

"We arrived a few days before the estimated striking time of the Pied Piper. We thought we had plenty of time to prepare ourselves."

Her hands balled into fists, scrunching up her skirts. "We were wrong," she said harshly.

Her eyes were glistening again. But she hastily wiped the tears away before they had a chance to spill. "As you know, Lord Himmel had stolen the magic of Erstürnach's Fountain. He'd somehow managed to hone his skills to a point that his Core is able to contain what would be an impossible amount of energy. He converted this energy into sustaining him for at least a century.

"But then...I don't know what happened, and he started to learn how to steal magic from other Fountains as well. He takes children away in order to sustain his youth. I've been with him for nearly a decade now, yet I still have no idea of why he's doing this."

She took in a deep breath, and I processed the information in my head. "The memory I saw in the lodestone...He'd somehow expanded his Core capacity with the magic he'd stolen."

"That's correct," she replied.

I continued to piece the puzzle in my head. "How did you end up under him in the first place?"

As soon as I raised the question, Elise's face darkened. "As I've said, we thought we were prepared for the Pied Piper, and we were wrong," she said. "That night, if Anton hadn't been alert, we wouldn't even have known that Hamelin was under attack.

"He'd cast a powerful sleeping spell over the whole town. That was how he'd always managed to evade capture. Fortunately, Helene had the foresight to ward all of us as soon as we'd arrived in Hamelin. Even then, we'd barely managed to resist Lord Himmel's spell.

"We fought him. Or tried to, at least." Her eyes took on a faraway quality. They reflected her inner being: she was only physically beside me; in soul, she was in the past, seeing the scene play in her head for what would probably be the hundred thousandth time. "Lord Himmel had subdued Helene and Leon so quickly...they were dead before we knew it."

The flippant way she described Helene and Leon's deaths made me shiver. "How did they...?" I left the question hanging, but she grasped its meaning.

"With his Affinity," she answered.

"Stealing?" I recalled the husks I'd seen in the memory, the way their hollowed eye sockets stared at me, the way their blackened tongues flopped out, the way their skin was shrivelled and scaly. I shivered again.

She shook her head. "Mind control."

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