Ferdinand left the room. Rosetta stood where he was for a while before breaking the silence as if speaking to himself. "Everything truly is as you said."
The moment his voice fell, an invisible wind suddenly rose in the empty study. Within it came a whisper that seemed like several voices overlapping, drifting in from all directions. "Of course—perhaps our time together over the years has not been particularly pleasant, but there is one thing you must admit: when it comes to the domain of the gods, the knowledge I have given you has never been wrong... So long as a cooperative relationship is established, I have always been sincere."
Rosetta narrowed his eyes slightly. Others might not have been able to see anything, but in his line of sight, specks of starlight had already begun to eat away at the surrounding walls and floor. Countless gazes seemed to lurk within the purple-black shadows. The floor-to-ceiling window beside him was pouring in a dusk-like glow, its radiance cast across the ground and mingled with cloudlike shadows.
Amid the overlapping, distorted light and shadow, an abstract eye woven from curved lines slowly opened before him. Its hollow pupil stared in this direction without the slightest trace of humanity.
If an Ordinary Person saw this sight, even by accident for only an instant, they would be driven mad by that eye and the endless knowledge it contained. But to Rosetta and the members of the Augustus Family, this eye was already an "old friend."
"Sincerity..." Rosetta said softly, the corners of his mouth seeming to lift slightly. "You should actually know very well that I have never truly trusted your sincerity... For mortals, the price of trusting something like you is simply too high."
"...That is true." The eye fell silent for