"Damn you!" A book was hurled across the room and crashed into the far side wall, where it slid and bounced into a crumpled pile of similar books. "Damn you and damn this place, all to hell!" Following the book came a pillow, and then a candle, and then a shoe.

After hearing from Caelony that his father had been killed, and then putting together the pieces and clues dropped in front of him, as though he wouldn't notice, Eiren had come to realize that his great Lordship, Elmund Van Wyk, had most assuredly killed Sir Kenton.

The information both stunned him, and surprised him in no ways.

The former of his emotions was instinct. A fierce desire to believe in the poetry and beauty of the world had corrupted him in his youth, and stayed in small amounts through his adulthood. It was with this romantic view of the world that he reeled in shock - why would anybody kill his father, the keeper of a lofty post in the Church? To off anybody at all was no great wonder, but to execute so flawlessly a death at the feet of a leader in the Returnist community was a great and terrible accomplishment. As attached to their exclamations of joy and transports of ecstatic celebration as they were, the crime of killing was attacked with a violent fervor. That is, if you were important enough.

Always shoving each other aside for the best seats, the loudest praises, or the most attention, Returnists were little more than capitalists with wide smiles. He had long written the sect off as foolish, but being so forcibly engaged with the heavy and death-obsessed Echoists of Kelfordshire, Eiren was beginning to miss his days in the more carefree world.

Initial innocent shock aside, the killer in question barely moved Eiren's heart. As much as the nature of Caelony's mother had not been secret from the public, neither had been the relationship between the neighbouring rulers of Tottenham Cross and Kelfordshire. Eiren was unsure how their simmering feud began, but the betrothal his mother had arranged with Lord Van Wyk never sat well with Sir Kenton.

You want our son marrying the filthy daughter of that corpse-groveling lunatic? he'd demanded of Lady Kenton, as he enjoyed retelling Eiren after each visit to the Estate. Do you have any idea what you're so blindly ready to marry? The sort of disease you're introducing into my damn bloodline?

If Sir Kenton was as disgusting and unmannered with others as with his own son, Eiren could only marvel at why he hadn't been killed sooner. Indeed, this was the real question that plagued him - why now? What had been so vile that he needed to die now, over all the years of dispute?

Stalking over to the wall and snatching his shoe back, Eiren groaned aloud and twisted the shoe in his hands. The debacle of Caelony's apology yesterday brought forth a great many questions, emotions, and embarrassing memories. He wanted so desperately to cling to his truth, his rightness, but she was bitingly accurate when she admitted her plight.

He put his hands to his ears and screamed without sound, and then threw himself on his bed. His head fell off of one side, and with his hair floating above his chin, he sighed, the breath tickling his nose.

What do you expect of me, she had said, when you leave me and run off? He sniffed and rolled to his side, trying to push the worlds away, and this peculiar guilt he felt. He was not wrong! She had pushed him away, with her antics and her hatred. It was no fault of his that he wanted to live in peace!

I am supposed to stay loyal and still, with nobody to talk to and nobody to treat me like I have desires of my own? He winced and covered his eyes. Was this not his own plight? Was this not how his father had treated him? A tear slipped from his eye, and he pressed his palms deep, until pain and spots exploded across his vision.

"Damn you," he said again, and his voice broke. Eiren did not like being wrong, but there was no doubt that he had repeated the same mistakes his father had, proving Caelony right in yet another regard.

A heavy sorrow pressed down on Eiren for the rest of the day, but by evening - not terribly far off from his emotional admittance, as the sun barely clung to the sky for more than four hours now - he had recovered. I will no longer be my father, he'd sworn with a fierce conviction. I will not let this world kill me, not now!

Ignoring his stomach's plea for sustenance, Eiren instead made his way back to the bowels of the library. Red notebook in hand - the Lord's ironic assistance to this secret rebellion - he combed through the shelves, desperate to find anything that would aid his understanding of life in the history of Kelfordshire.

It was purely by accident that he located the perfect source of information, though he was annoyed to admit that most of his information had been handed to him in this manner.

Picking himself up from the floor where he had tripped, courtesy of a book and a cup of tea he'd left on the floor, he drew himself up to see that he was in front of a shelf of geography. Originally scoffing and turning away, certain that the land would offer nothing by way of facts, the title Kelfordshire and the Walls of Rust snagged his eye at once.

Lurching backwards and staring wide-eyed at the cover, he pulled the book down and ran a hand over the hard, peeling skin. In a small caption at the base of the book was the inscription a study on the grounds and their history of harborage. Was this what he then needed?

Unfortunately, it was not. The book, while providing a helpful amount of vague shapes that the Estate formed, and where each section of the grounds was located, was extremely outdated. It claimed that various locations served as war-time hideaways, or rooms of solace from invasion in centuries past, but then concluded by declaring all of these hidden rooms had been destroyed!

Dariene Van Wyke set fire to the rooms, claiming ghosts and death haunted his dreams and bred nightmares in the chambers. At his command, each of the rooms of refuge was burnt and bricked away, fated to naught more than another support for the establishments on the grounds.

Once he had copied the general shape of the estate in his notebook, and marked the locations of the statues he knew of, Eiren threw the book back into place with a disappointed sigh. The book was, despite all its uselessness for the present day, situated on a shelf of similar make, and contained novels and discourses on the structure, the rooms aforementioned, and mysteries of the Castle.

Eiren pulled down a book, without title, it seemed, and leapt back with a yelp as it spilled forward. Far heavier than it appeared, the weight had slipped straight through his fingers and sent spiraling to the floor dozens of blue and white papers.

As he scrambled to collect them, he began to notice a similarity in all of the folds and lines. He ceased his flurry of desperate movement and bent over one of the blue pieces, and gasped aloud.

This was a blueprint to the entirety of the Estate! Crammed in the corner was a small, but detailed, depiction of even Hatchhanger Abbey, surrounded by a fence and marking the locations of the gravestones in the East-side cemetery. Eiren grinned - if he was unable to learn about anything more regarding the mysterious deaths of the former residences, then these would surely aid his escape from the Castle!

Once he had bunched all of the papers together, he ran to the nearest table and threw the blue one on top. As quickly as he could, he penned a poor copy of the map in his notebook. Though he had just copied the Estate, this blueprint was much more important, for it contained the locations of the rooms Dariene Van Wyke has destroyed some hundred years back.

He threw his pen down and smiled, hands proudly on his hips. The smile lasted only a second, however, as a breathtaking dot and a straight arrow on the map pointed out that there was another room, unmentioned in the ancient work he had discarded, leading directly under the lake.

So hasty in his desire to look closer, Eiren smacked his nose against the book. Rubbing his face, and exceedingly glad that nobody had borne witness to such a silly mishap, he pulled his face to an appropriate distance and slid the blueprint properly into view.

Yes, there was no doubt about it: something was under the lake. The silent, lurking body of water was marked with a thin pen line in a neat box, somewhere between the Western gate that met the woods and the bulk of the Castle.

"Oh, I knew there was something wrong with that fetid pool," he whispered, clenching his fist and bringing it down quietly on the table. He rubbed a fingertip on the short lines that betrayed the tunnel and sniffed. "I'll find out just what you're hiding!"

Eiren hid the papers at the bottom of a shelf he was sure nobody would be looking, at least not in the next hundred years, and tried very hard not to sprint downstairs. The priest, as he was wont to do recently, was outside, hacking away at the leaves and debris that cluttered the Abbey. Small gravestones peeked out of the ground in front of the building, reminding Eiren that not all was as peaceful as it appeared to be with this clean church.

"Eiren," came the grunt of greeting from the priest. He pushed himself straight, leaning on his rake, and regarded Eiren with a tired look.

"Father," Eiren said in an excited gasp, "I've something terribly important to ask of you!"

The priest, while he appreciated Eiren's enthusiasm for something other than moping or crying in his rooms about the unfairness of a privileged life, did not take kindly to the dismissal of his greeting. Gone are the days, when he retained a sense of awareness outside of his own head, he thought somewhat sadly.

"Well, what is it? I have many things to take care of, Mr. Adair."

Eiren bounced on his heels and clasped his hands together, looking very much like a child.

"Have you any idea what is under the lake?" The priest blinked and stared.

"Under... the lake?" Eiren nodded eagerly, far too excited to begin noticing and gathering information to pay much mind to introduction.

"Yes, I was reading about the Estate, and it mentioned something... unfinished, or in construction." Eiren did not know why he paused here and lied, but with the priest's strict character and his absolute adherence to the rules of Lord Van Wyk, he decided he could take no unnecessary chances.

"I haven't any idea at all what you are talking about." The priest raised an eyebrow and began chopping away again at the sticks and dirt. "When was this construction supposed to take place?" Eiren blushed and turned away.

"I... don't know. Sometime before I was born." The priest sighed without looking up.

"As much as I hate to say this," he grumbled, "the best person to ask about anything regarding construction is Mr. Quilby." Unwilling to say as much as this, the priest shooed Eiren away and continued his cleaning in silence.

The sculptor! Eiren forgot the man had any knowledge of the Estate, sometimes. The priest had been so easily accessible and so long-attached to the place, it had never occurred to him the foreigner would know more about anything.

Apparently in a foul mood, or perhaps not as keen on being interrupted as he usually was, Severin had laughed at Eiren's inquires and waved him off.

"I'll not give up my precious secrets, not yet, Mr. Adair. Woo me some other eve with your plight, and I may entertain your queries. Today, leave me be!"

Undeterred - it was, after all, now dark, and he doubted he should like to be bothered so late into his work - Eiren swore to himself that he would find out, tonight if he had to, what hid under the lake, and if Severin Quilby's jest about secrets held any real weight. Eiren would not be a victim, not any longer.

He was going to escape, or die trying.