A moment later, the five colors had been blended one by one.
Angel carefully picked up the brush and filled the missing hues into the blank spaces of the oil paintings.
First, he restored Starry Sky's deep-indigo nebulae. Then he filled Forest's emerald-green canopy, Beacon's missing bright violet of lightning in the dark night, Princess Castle's faded ivory of dolls, and Flower Window's lacking fragrant red.
With every stroke, the colors in the blank spaces fused perfectly with the surrounding image. Even the transitions of light and shadow looked as natural as if they had always been there.
The final stroke stopped at the missing corner of Flower Window.
When that missing corner was filled, all five paintings trembled at once. Then, before Angel's eyes, they slowly floated into the air. With Starry Sky as the doorframe and the other four paintings as doorposts, they finally formed a wooden door built from oil paintings.
Standing at the doorway, he could see a pocket space.
Inside stood a massive withered tree, flourishing to the point of decline, its shape resembling a skeletal firework after it had bloomed.
Though it was a dead tree, its branches were not bare. They were covered in withered flowers and leaves reluctant to leave.
From afar, it seemed as though it were still in its season of greatest splendor.
Only upon closer inspection could one see the rot within it, like a noble whose ancestors had once been glorious but who had now fallen into poverty, yet still stubbornly maintained an outward appearance of prosperity, managing a human stage where people had gone and tea had turned cold, insisting on preserving a false dignity even in death.
This was the final hidden space.
Angel gave it a deep look, then turned and left, striding upstairs.
Since