The truth about the doomsday catastrophe, about why Valyria Dynasty was destroyed overnight, about whether the remaining Demon Dragon are still alive and still wandering in the ruins covered with ashes - all the questions will be stepped on by him this time, seen with his own eyes, and opened with his own hands.
This is a lock that Redd has kept in his heart all these years.
He wanted to know why a civilization with such powerful magic and such a huge group of dragons was completely destroyed in an event called the "Doomsday Catastrophe".
Is it a force of nature, an internal betrayal, or something deeper, something buried deep in that land, that has been mistakenly awakened?
He had too little information.
Those fragments of words and broken artifacts brought back from the edge of the ruins, those descriptions of "smoke and fire falling from the sky", "the earth tearing apart", and "the sky turning gray", those words that were repeatedly repeated in the survivors' records but never explained clearly, were like a pile of dismantled bones, scattered at the edge of his reach.
He needed to stand in the middle of the pile of bones and piece them back together with his own hands, whether it was a complete skeleton or a pile of fragments that could not be restored.
A faint sound of footsteps sounded from behind him and stopped less than a few steps behind him.
The footsteps were very light, as if they were deliberately lightened, not wanting to interrupt the dusk he was watching.
After a moment's pause, the sound of fabric rubbing became clearly audible in the quiet room - first on the shoulders, then on the waist, and then below the knees, the tulle slipped from the surface of the skin and piled on the ground, making an almost inaudible, soft sound that was suppressed by candlelight and dusk.
Mesalia approached from behind and stepped on the stone floor with her bare feet, making almost no sound.
She pressed against his back through her clothes, wrapped her hands around his waist from both sides, and clasped them in front of his lower abdomen.
When the body came close to him, it carried a warm scent that had just been bathed, mixed with soap and body temperature. The side of her face was pressed between his shoulder blades, and her breath hit his clothes and penetrated into his skin through the fabric.
Through the fabric, he could clearly feel the warmth brought by that soft and delicate body.
The feeling undulated slightly with the rhythm of her breathing.
"You're leaving tomorrow." Her voice came from behind, lower than usual, with a sense of swirling around the words that couldn't be said, and the ending sound didn't fall to the ground in a hurry, "Tonight... love me well."
Redd's body moved slightly when she said the last few words.
It is a deeper, instinctive reaction from the body than being provoked by words.
He felt the fire ignite.
He was being ignited layer by layer by her temperature, her breath, and her weight against him.
He didn't turn around, put his hands down from the window sill, didn't push her away, and didn't respond immediately. He just paused for a moment, as if feeling the weight and texture of the moment.
Then he moved.
His right hand reached back and grasped her wrist accurately.
The warmth of his palm touched the skin on the inside of her wrist, and with an irresistible force, he pulled her from behind to the front.
Her body turned half a circle under his pull, the white gauze skirt had fallen to the ground, and her shoulders, collarbone and waistline were completely exposed to the afterglow of dusk.
She didn't make any sound when she fell into his arms, but raised her head slightly, her eyes still clear and focused in the dimming light.
Redd lowered his head and looked at her, his tone flat with a hint of aroused sharpness. "Then it depends on your ability."
Mesalia did not answer in words.
Her fingers seemed to have their own will, knowing where to stop, where to avoid, where the clothes were folded tightly, and where to find the direction of the opening along the gaps.
The outline of the back appeared clear and soft in the dim light coming from the window. The shape of the shoulder blades was slightly raised under the skin, and the line of the spine extended all the way down the center of the back, disappearing in the dim shadow.
Her hands rested on the windowsill for a while, as if she was adjusting to the height and angle of the windowsill and finding the most suitable position.
Then she turned her head slightly and turned her gaze sideways in his direction, neither urging him to hurry up nor inducing him to do anything else, but just to confirm that he was still there.
Redd took a step forward.
His hand fell on her waist and pressed against the warm skin. His fingertips felt that her skin shrank slightly the moment he touched it, like the first ripples in the water after being touched by a stone.
The ripples did not spread out, but spread upward along his fingertips.
Climbing up his forearm to his shoulder blade, she gave a gentle thump deep in his chest. He didn't let her wait any longer.
She didn't say anything complete - maybe because she couldn't form a complete sentence anymore, maybe because she didn't need to say anything.
Recoding the trajectories of those forces into a record that only she can understand.