Back at the castle, Livia and Elias headed straight for the hidden chamber. It was Livia's first time entering the Marcellus family's secret vault—Marcellus had always subtly avoided mentioning it before. But now wasn't the time to dwell on that.
Once the coded lock was disengaged, the door creaked open, releasing a wave of stale air tinged with dampness and a faint, woody scent of decay.
Following Marcellus's instructions, they soon found the small iron box left by his parents, still resting quietly in a concealed compartment in the corner. Elias crouched down and carefully retrieved it. Inside lay the document—its yellowed pages slightly curled at the edges, yet otherwise impeccably preserved, like a slumbering piece of history awaiting reawakening.
Livia took the document and began flipping through it, her expression growing increasingly focused. Suddenly, as if struck by a thought, she pulled out a small UV flashlight from her bag and murmured, "Secrets like these… would never be written in plain sight."
She carefully shone the ultraviolet light over the paper's surface. Sure enough, faint lines and dots began to emerge on the blank spaces of the first page. The two exchanged a glance, their hearts quickening.
"There's something on every page," Elias said in a low, excited voice, checking the backs of each sheet quickly.
They laid out the dozen or so pages across the table, carefully arranging them in numerical order. As the final page fell into place, a hidden pattern began to appear.
It was a diagram—seemingly chaotic at first glance, but on closer inspection, clearly deliberate. Lines intersected in complex patterns, interspersed with squares and circles. Some looked like coordinates, others like anchor points, though nothing was immediately clear.
Livia narrowed her eyes, deep in thought. "This isn't just a schematic… but it looks oddly familiar."
They scanned the complete pattern with a photo app and took it back to the hospital to show Marcellus.
The three gathered again in the hospital room, seated around a table with the printed image spread before them. Marcellus examined it closely, frowning. "This layout… it's not architectural. It's more like a terrain grid."
"But what kind of terrain?" Elias asked, puzzled.
At that moment, Livia happened to glance up—and her eyes landed on a decorative city map on the opposite wall. It was a detailed layout of the city and its surroundings, tinted in gray-blue tones, with subway lines, hills, forests, and ruins clearly marked.
She froze.
"Wait a second… that map… take a look!" She hurried over and traced a line along the city's main thoroughfare with her finger. "This line—it's almost identical to the horizontal line in our diagram!"
They quickly re-examined the printout, comparing it to the city map in detail. The proportions, the angles—astonishingly, parts of the hidden diagram matched the city layout almost exactly.
Without hesitation, they printed a new version of the hidden pattern to scale and overlaid it on the city map. This time, the match was undeniable: the diagram's lines aligned with roads, rivers, and mountain boundaries, one by one.
"This isn't just a random map," Marcellus said in awe. "It's a concealed overlay—drawn directly over the city."
As they dug deeper into the matchups, one marked cluster stood out: a dense area of symbols concentrated in a remote zone—an old industrial site long since abandoned. Even more troubling, that location was uncomfortably close to Marcellus's castle and now sat squarely within a region under Eryx's strictest surveillance.
Their eyes met. The air thickened.
"We've been close all along," Elias muttered, frustration in his voice.
Livia gave a wry smile and shook her head. "Outsmarted by our own caution. Maybe it was meant to be this way. But at least now, we know—the treasure is most likely in that area."
"And the knowledge of what this map really is… might only belong to us," Marcellus said, his voice firm. "We have to move before they do."
Livia nodded. "This isn't about winning or losing anymore. It's time to act."
In the eyes of all three, a quiet resolve was beginning to take shape—a shared conviction, and an unspoken bond.