"May 30, 143. Clear skies. When I reported last night's incident to Miss Viève, I learned what the surname 'Tamara' meant.
"It belonged to an ancient family whose origins could be traced back to the Tudor Dynasty of the Fourth Epoch. The empire had five great noble families at the time, and the Tamara Family was one of them. Only after war and catastrophe transformed the entire Northern Continent, the old dynasty fell, and the four present-day nations rose did they disappear from public life.
"Of course, a family with such deep roots was unlikely to die out just like that. After the nation they served was destroyed, these descendants of the Tamara Family most likely went into hiding, relying on the potion pathways they controlled to carry on their legacy to the present day.
"According to the Church's internal records, the Tamara Family had some command of the powers of the Arbiter, and even had a number of high-sequence Beyonders. During the Tudor Empire, they also maintained marriage ties with the Abraham Family, another of the five great noble families, for a long time. They might therefore have inherited the powers of the Apprentice pathway as well. That pathway, in turn, pointed to the Aurora Order, a secret cult that only became active in the Fifth Epoch-what a tangled history. Any one family could lead to another, eventually forming a web of relationships that no one today could possibly reconstruct. No wonder Mr. Morvan was so interested in history.
"Still, judging by this, the black-haired man who followed me yesterday and called himself Tamara should have been a Beyonder of the Arbiter pathway. Given his extraordinary powers, he was definitely above Sequence 7, most likely a 6 or a 5, stronger than Nikolai, the Conspirer who could suppress an