The day after the Candle Holder Festival was Queen Sophia's official funeral.
At seven minutes past seven in the morning, the Candle Holder Cathedral in the Red Queen District rang out with the solemn Death Knell once more.
After the seventy-ninth toll, no bell in Avalon would ring again for the rest of the day. Black silence shrouded the entire country.
The funeral procession set out from St. Genevieve Chapel, circled the Red White Queen District, and returned to Candle Holder Cathedral.
Seventy-seven pure-white griffins wearing black scarves and seventy-seven silver-armored knights draped in black cloaks guarded the pitch-black coffin at the center. At the very front rode Isabel, mounted on a griffin alongside a minister. Close behind her were Ligeia and Iver, each riding a slightly smaller griffin.
In the past, people might have questioned how two young people who together appeared to be less than thirty years old had earned the right to stand so far forward.
But today, no one would raise such doubts again.
Journalist Dimit—now the Editor-in-Chief of the Glass Staircase Newspaper—had personally taken the photograph, and it appeared on the newspaper's second page.
The Glass Staircase had shattered, leaving the Grand Guardian and his griffin gravely wounded and on the verge of death.
Minister Moriarty prayed with his eyes closed, while the newly appointed Grand Arbitrator held his scepter. They stood behind the Queen, protecting her without a scratch, while the knights of the Arbitration Hall knelt before them for arriving late, repenting with solemnity and reverence.
Under normal circumstances, that photograph would absolutely have made the front page.
It was only because there had been too many major events that day that it had been pushed to the second page.
The newspaper also recorded Iver's deeds in detail, allowing people to learn that