Alderan in summer had shaken off its gloom. Brilliant sunlight, rare enough throughout the year, slanted down from the sky, streaming through the windows and sweeping past the silver lampstands by the window and the delicate carvings on the frames, leaving a succession of dappled patches of light across the floor. Rosetta Augustus sat behind his desk, his gaze passing over those patches of light as he remained silent for a long while.
Within those patches of light, he seemed to see the mortal nations as they now stood—connected by shadow amid the brightness, their intertwined yet isolated parts seemingly forever unavoidable. Yet no matter what, a brighter age had ultimately arrived. Beneath the sunlight, all light and shadow still converged into this flourishing summer.
"Have you truly decided not to interfere in this matter any further?" Diana, nominally the royal head maid but in reality the leader of the Rangers, looked at the monarch she served and asked evenly. "Bard Wendell was once an imperial general who commanded the Winter Wolf Defense Line, and his father and daughter now hold considerable influence within the Empire's military system. Now that he serves Cecil, this matter..."
"He was the Wolf General of twenty years ago, and the Wolf General of twenty years ago is already dead," Rosetta said calmly, glancing at Diana. "To this era undergoing such drastic change, a Wolf General who left the military system twenty years ago and has been detached from normal society for many years holds no meaning. He can neither return to Typhon's military system nor find a place for himself elsewhere in the Empire. Besides..."
He paused briefly. In the afternoon sunlight, he seemed to recall fragments of his youth—but those fragments quickly vanished like smoke, turning into precise calculations and judgments.
"Besides, compared