On a hillside in Cornwall.
Miriam was comforting the prisoners Murphy had brought with the Lightning Raven when Murphy appeared again through lightning teleportation, arriving before Miriam.
She looked exactly like Sophia, except that, after being imprisoned for so long, she was extremely weak and haggard.
Murphy watched her from afar, unable for a moment to tell her apart from Sophia. An absurd feeling even rose in his heart: the empress had vanished in the future—could she, too, have crossed a thousand years of time and come to this moment?
And was this so-called Miriam merely another name she had taken for herself?
Miriam bandaged the wounds of two prisoners who had been stabbed by spears. When she turned and saw Murphy, her eyes suddenly lit up. "You really have appeared again, Lord Murphy."
Murphy came up to her. "You know me?"
"Although you don't remember yet, you once saved my life in the past as well. I have also learned a great deal about your deeds from Sophia."
"Sophia?" Murphy frowned. "What is going on? What do you know?"
"It is a long story," Miriam paused. "Let us go somewhere safe first. I have a small hut nearby."
Before that, however, Miriam first had Murphy send those prisoners to a nearby inhabited village. Only then did she point out the direction for Murphy, who cast flight spells on the two of them. Before long, they reached the little hut beside a forest.
"This was originally a place my grandfather left behind," Miriam said. "He was a hunter. I grew up with him when I was little. Later, after Grandfather passed away, I left. No one else knows about this place."
Miriam pushed open the old wooden door of the hut. It seemed to have been abandoned for a very