Seizing the Light

The aircraft landed on the private platform on the top floor.

Eve was the first to walk down the gangway, then turned and reached out a hand to her mother.

The gesture came naturally—so naturally that both of them froze for a moment.

After stepping into the main building of the Ancestral Land, Cassandra found that the layout here had scarcely changed at all.

The gray-white stone walls were still just as she remembered, and the corridor lamps had kept their original style.

Even the marks she had carved into the Stone Pillar as a child were still perfectly intact, not repaired away.

But the differences in the details kept reminding her that a very long time had indeed passed.

There were many plants in the Garden she did not recognize.

Those purple vines and silver shrubs carried a small, refined aesthetic logic that was not her style.

The way she arranged the Garden had always been utilitarian.

A few plants with ornamental value, many with medicinal value, and the remaining empty space left for experiments.

Now, this Garden had clearly come from Eve's hands, its color combinations producing a gradated effect across the different seasons.

Even under the moonlight, the designer's care was plain to see.

Cassandra walked and looked, her steps growing slower and slower.

Her gaze swept greedily over every corner, trying to make up for seventy years of absence in the shortest time possible.

When they reached the hall, portraits of the clan chiefs through the generations hung on the wall facing them.

Cassandra's footsteps stopped before the portrait wall.

The one on the far left could, of course, only be Hector.

His portrait was as "improper" as ever; the man in the painting toyed with the crown in his hand and made a face.

It