Lynn stood there for a long time, his eyes roiling with emotions that tore at him more and more.
But he was also doing his best to hold those emotions back.
Because he knew.
In the end, he was only a spectator, a shadow fallen from the distant future. He could change nothing here.
But what had happened afterward?
Or perhaps he already had the answer, because not long after that, she and the entire building had plunged through the flames into those pitch-black whispers.
At that moment.
Lynn abruptly clenched his teeth and swam deeper into the images of her subconscious with almost every ounce of strength he had.
He had to find more fragments of her memories.
He had to understand Miss Doll's entire life before her fall. Why had she lived such a life? Why had she been treated this way? If being alive meant enduring torment...
In an instant.
"Found it!"
Deep in that sea, Lynn suddenly reached for another speck of light drifting with the currents.
At least let me know how I can take you away from this darkness!
At that moment, Lynn plunged headlong into the new memory.
The scene gradually took shape amid the ripples, but this time it was no longer that metropolis filled with luxury and sin. The sky was azure, and snow-white petals drifted everywhere. Beneath his feet lay moss-covered paving stones. People bustled along the road, where steam-powered cars from the early industrial era traveled alongside horses. It was an old-fashioned street that seemed to belong to the nineteenth century.
Lynn stood in a daze amid the passing people and traffic.
Across the road, beneath a great tree surrounded by drifting petals, he saw the figure of a little girl, as pale and pure as a tiny