The Duke stood there, the heat rising in the room and Julian cleared his throat.

"Lay him on the bed, Your Grace," he whispered, stepping forward to pull back the heavy blankets on the bed.

The Duke approached the bed and leaned down. It was a clumsy movement, which seemed harder to do than holding a sword. He groaned.

He didn’t know how to transition the boy from his shoulder to the mattress without scaring him or waking him. Julian reached out, his hands guiding the Duke’s larger, calloused ones. Together, they lowered Lucius onto the pillows.

For a moment, the Duke didn’t pull away. He stayed bent over the bed, his face inches from the sleeping boy’s.

In the dim firelight, the resemblance was undeniable—the same nose, the same stubborn set of the jaw. But Lucius’s face was soft in sleep, free from the shadow of guilt that usually haunted him.

Duke Alaric reached out, his thumb hovering over the boy’s forehead before he caught himself and pulled back, tucking the heavy blankets up to the boy’s chin with a slight uncertain tug.

"He is... small," Alaric murmured, almost to himself but Julian heard it.

"He is growing," he replied softly. "I assume you were this small when you were his age."

"No, I’m certain I was bigger." The Duke said and that wasn’t just him trying to save his ego. He looked at the child and felt that his stature was a result of his mother’s delicate genes.

Thinking about it, his eyes arrived and he straightened up, his mantle swirling around him.

The moment of fatherly tenderness immediately vanished as soon as he thought of his wife, so he turned his piercing blue eyes toward Julian.

It was already past midnight. It was time to see this tutor work his magic.

"The time," the Duke said, his voice dropping into something almost threatening and dangerous. "You said midnight. And you said to change the venue. We are in his room, Julian Von Astrea. Do not tell me the ’activation criteria’ has changed again."

Julian felt the Duke’s breath pulse into his veins, a freezing, silver vibration. His heart thumped. He didn’t get it. He wasn’t doing anything wrong, and he definitely didn’t decide the Duke, but why was his heart racing like he had committed a crime? Like... He was guilty of something.

He immediately tore his gaze away from the Duke’s, clearing his throat.

"That is true." He said. "And nothing has changed, don’t worry, your grace."

He reached into the air and pulled out the crystalline hourglass from his inventory. It glowed with a pale, celestial light that made the shadows in the room dance.

The Duke frowned.

"Is that also magic?"

Julian flinched. Shoot! He completely forgot he wasn’t supposed to just take the item out of the inventory in the open. Now the Duke was looking at him with weird eyes.

"Well, let’s just say it is," Julian said.

Magic was legal in the Empire so he didn’t need to worry too much about one magic trick or two.

He was no magician, but it would be a lot more suspicious if he claimed he wasn’t one after what he had done in the hall with the Phoenix stone and then this.

"But I must warn you once again, Your Grace. This is not a resurrection. It is a memory given form by your own soul. She will see you as you are now, and you will see her as you remember her to be. Are you ready for that?"

The Duke’s breath hitched. He looked at the hourglass, then at the empty space beside the bed where a mother should have been.

"I have lived in a tomb for seven years," Alaric rasped. "I am ready for anything but this silence."

Julian nodded and handed it to him.

"Turn the hourglass, your grace."

The Duke looked at the little thing in his hand that seemed to weigh a ton. Was it the weight of his memory? He wondered.

Then, without much hesitation, he turned the hourglass.

Julian watched keenly. Even though he didn’t know exactly what would happen, he wished the system description wouldn’t fail him now.

The silver stardust didn’t fall; it leaked out of the glass like smoke, swirling into a pillar of light at the foot of Lucius’s bed. The air grew sweet—not with the lemon scent of the South, but with the scent of winter jasmine, the Duchess’s favorite.

Slowly, the mist dispersed and what appeared was a woman, her form shimmering like moonlight on water. She was beautiful, her dark hair cascading over her shoulders, her purple eyes reflecting the starlight.

The first thing she did was look at her hands and touch her face, unable to understand what was going on, but then her eyes fell on the sleeping Lucius first. Disbelief coursed through her, but then a soft, heartbroken smile touched her quivering lips.

"This..." She spoke, her voice as pristine as the Duke remembered it to be. "Lucius?"

Thud!

Duke Alaric fell on his knees and this forced Bellanora to turn to him.

He stared, his eyes wide and tears gliding down like rushing tap. He was really seeing her. Bellanora.

Even Julian was shocked.

This was far from just a memory surfacing... It was really the ghost of the dead Duchess. She was here and had consciousness.

This was no different from dark sorcery.

He gulped and then the system chimed a notification.

>[Moonlit Echo Activated]

>[Time remaining: 4:58]

In other words, the Duke had only five minutes to talk with his wife.

"Your grace," Julian called, but it looked like words could not reach him as he reached for his wife’s hand and held it, clasping it to his tear-streaked face as he began to apologize repeatedly.

Julian watched this heartbreaking scene and knew that telling the Duke he was on a timer would make him feel horrible, but not telling him would be even more dire if the time ran out and he had not said all he needed to say.

He sighed and placed a hand on the Duke’s shoulder.

"Your Grace," he called again and the Duke looked back, with a haunting gaze sending goosebumps all over Julian’s body. "Um, you don’t have long, so say whatever you need to."

The Duke looked down, feeling the hand of his wife, and then looked at her face, the tears trickling down gradually.

"How long do I have?"

"Less than five minutes." He said and the Duke nodded.

Julian thought the Duke would demand more time, or become unreasonably hard to handle, but to his surprise, he said,

"Thank you."