Where else could this be? This was Mutsumi Nishikawa's former beautiful dream, her longing for wealth and glory. It was also now her nightmare—a nightmare that made her unable to stop remembering whenever she so much as saw a flickering open flame.
This was the bedroom of the Mamiya Family's eldest daughter.
Magnificent curtains, elegant decorations—everything expensive and beautiful, every lovely thing that represented status, looked the same amid the flames.
Mutsumi Nishikawa, lying on the floor, pressed a hand tightly over her mouth to restrain the urge to scream hysterically before staggering to her feet in utter disarray.
The flames burning silently throughout the room suddenly surged fiercely as she stood. The strange smell and blistering heat made sweat pour down Mutsumi Nishikawa's horribly disfigured face.
Without thinking, she instinctively reached for the wall sconce, scorching hot in the blaze, and turned it twice.
After living here for so many years, she had long since learned every winding secret passage in the castle by heart. Naturally, she knew how many exits this deadly tower had and how to escape safely.
Four years ago, she had escaped the sea of flames in exactly this manner and faked her own death.
As the mechanism in the wall turned, the tightly sealed wall behind her did indeed rotate open. Mutsumi Nishikawa did not even have time to determine where the space beyond led before she stumbled backward into the revealed passage.
Yet as the hidden door completed its rotation, the light before Mutsumi Nishikawa's eyes refracted and warped amid a dizzying haze, as though the whole world had begun spinning along with the door.
When her vision returned, a blazing inferno still lay before her.
This time, it was the tower's servants' quarters—the place where Mutsumi Nishikawa had once lived.
The Mamiya