The estate had finally quieted by the time Soline returned to the upper floors.
Everything was in motion. The D'Arcel estate was in uproar.
Somewhere below, servants still moved through corridors carrying reports between offices while officials remained trapped in discussions that would likely continue until dawn returned again.
Lucien's office, which is hers now, remained untouched when she entered. No one had dared rearrange anything yet without her permission.
The desk still carried stacked documents left exactly where he had last placed them. The fireplace had burned low into dim orange embers. Tall windows overlooked the estate's distant skyline while moonlight stretched across the floor in pale silver lines.
Soline shut the door behind her then immediately dropped onto the chair behind the desk.
"…I hate this room already."
The chair creaked softly beneath her weight. She leaned backward farther than Lucien ever would have allowed himself to and stared at the ceiling above her. The memories had not stopped since the succession. They quieted sometimes. Slowed enough for her own thoughts to breathe properly. But they never truly disappeared. Every movement, every conversation, every glance toward a document triggered another fragment from someone who had sat in this office before her.
Strategies.
Wars.
Political agreements.
Executions.
Centuries layered over centuries until even simple objects carried inherited memories behind them. Soline closed one eye tiredly, groaning.
"…How did father tolerate this for so long?"
The answer surfaced before the thought even settled completely because eventually, it stops feeling foreign.
Lucien's voice. Echoing inside her brain as memories as she recalls the answers to her question.
Soline grimaced.
"That's worse."
Her fingers drummed once against the armrest.
Then another memory surfaced.
Silver.
The office disappeared around her as inherited memory pulled her backward into something older.
Cold air struck first.
Then screaming.
Soline's eyes narrowed slightly as the memory stabilized through Lucien's perspective.
The Great Silver Hunt.
The version most witches and supernaturals her age had already forgotten and changed to better suite the narrative.
The streets were burning. Not metaphorically but literally. Entire districts had collapsed into fire beneath moonlight while silver smoke drifted through the air thick enough to choke ordinary humans.
Vampires ran across shattered roads alongside werebeings caught midway through incomplete transformations.
Hunters followed behind them relentlessly.
Barebloods.
Human militias, mercenaries, civilians, anyone capable of holding silver weapons long enough to swing them.
Soline could feel Lucien moving through the chaos calmly. Faster than human eyes could follow. Yet even he avoided direct contact whenever silver appeared because silver was never just metal.
It interrupted the mana flow itself. That was why everyone associated with the Witching Hour feared it. Why werebeings screamed when cut by it. Why witches refused prolonged contact with enchanted silver constructs altogether.
It poisoned the supernatural body from the inside outward.
And during the Great Silver Hunt, humanity mass-produced as much of it as possible. Weapons, ammo, even going as far as armor.
The memory changed once more. This time however, there was a child.
Small.
Crying.
A vampire boy was trying desperately to wake someone already dead beside him while hunters approached through the smoke. Then, they killed him as they grinned.
"Motherfucker!"
They shouted at the boy, as they stabbed it multiple times. All the boy could do was cling to the dead body beside him.
Soline's jaw tightened slightly.
Then the perspective moved again.
Lucien kept walking.
Not out of cruelty.
Because stopping everywhere meant dying everywhere.
The Great Silver Hunt had not started because humans suddenly became righteous.
It started because the supernatural races had lost control of themselves. Most of the vampire bloodlines were siding with the Scarlet Floret and some just wanted the blood and meat straight from the source, hunting it and giving them the thrill of the hunt. Feeding frenzies wiped out entire settlements. Werebeings, who were also very feral and disassociated with anyone not their pack, retaliated against expanding territories of both the Barebloods and the Supernaturals.
Smaller supernatural species were hunted by both sides while witches tried desperately to preserve balance before the entire hidden world collapsed into open war.
Then came retaliation.
And retaliation became extermination.
History later simplified it into a conflict between monsters and humanity because simpler stories survived more easily.
Reality had been uglier.
Everyone had blood on their hands.
Then another memory came flooding her once more, violently.
Soline inhaled sharply.
Bodies.
Dozens of them.
Some humans. Some vampires. Some werebeings she couldn't even identify anymore beneath silver burns and torn flesh. Blood covered entire streets in dark pools reflecting moonlight like cracked mirrors.
And above all of it—Flowers.
Red.
Blooming directly from corpses.
The Scarlet Floret.
Even inherited memory reacted strangely when the name surfaced. Like instinct itself recoiled.
Soline finally understood why.
The Scarlet Floret had not simply been strong. He had been contagious.
Not physically.
Ideologically.
A vampire who believed coexistence was weakness and who turned desperation into recruitment. He appeared during the worst point of the Hunt, gathering abandoned vampires, starving werebeings, and rogue faes who got hit in between into organized massacres that spread across both the Witching Hour and Bareblood territories alike. With how charismatic of a leader he was, such a thing was possible for him of course.
The memories surrounding him felt wrong.
Too red.
Too loud.
Too hungry.
Soline watched through Lucien's eyes as entire villages were found emptied beneath blooming blood flowers growing across walls and corpses alike.
Actual flowers.
His Birthright.
Blood was manipulated into blooming constructs that exploded outward once enough mana accumulated inside them. The very same birthright that Renard had inherited himself without knowing.
Entire districts vanished beneath those detonations.
And every massacre pushed humanity further toward extermination.
The Scarlet Floret made peace impossible and to the point even the witches had went out the shadows to help the Barebloods in exterminating all vampires for good.
Which was exactly why Lucien hunted him.
The memory lurched again.
This time, Lucien wore different clothing.
Simpler.
Human-like.
Soline blinked slowly as understanding settled. He had disguised himself as a Bareblood hunter.
For years, Lucien moved among human militias carrying silver weapons despite the damage it caused him just by prolonged contact alone. When it got rough to the point his skin had burned enough, he had to hide it to let his inborn regeneration help him, hiding it from the other Barebloods.
Witches aided the operation as well, though none openly attached themselves to the conflict. Going in and out like the wind.
Contracts existed even back then.
If witches assisted humanity during the Hunt, their involvement would never enter official historical record.
No public acknowledgment.
No written alliance.
No shared blame afterward.
Soline could feel Charlotte's predecessors hidden throughout the memory.
The memory sharpened once more.
Rain.
Lucien stood within a ruined cathedral overtaken by blood flowers climbing across broken stone pillars.
The Scarlet Floret stood ahead of him, smiling calmly while bodies covered the floor around them.
Not just humans.
Vampires too.
He was cannibalizing his own kin for the sake of power, which is now called the Succession Ceremony. He went out of the bounds that the vampires had made taboo.
The feeding of own kin without remorse.
With that, the Scarlet Floret was regarded as a calamity in itself.
Soline felt disgust rise through Lucien's memory.
"You sided with them? A vampire?" the Scarlet Floret asked.
His voice sounded almost amused.
Lucien said nothing.
The Scarlet Floret laughed softly while blood flowers bloomed wider around the cathedral.
"They will hunt us forever regardless."
Lucien finally answered then.
"That's not true."
A pause.
"Peace is an option. We can live side by side with everyone. No more conflicts."
Then the fight began.
Soline felt it only in fragments because even inherited memory struggled to process the speed afterward.
Blood flowers detonated throughout the cathedral while Lucien moved through them under collapsing stone arches and silver-lined explosions.
Then suddenly—
Silence.
The Scarlet Floret knelt forward slightly.
Lucien's hand had pierced directly through his chest.
Blood dripped across shattered stone.
The Scarlet Floret stared at him for several seconds before smiling weakly.
"…You ate vampires too."
Lucien said nothing again as the Scarlet Floret laughed echoes throughout the cathedral.
Then with that hand still inside him, he consumed him.
The memory shattered apart immediately afterward.
Soline inhaled sharply as the office returned around her all at once.
The fireplace crackled softly nearby.
Her hand had unconsciously tightened hard enough against the armrest to crack part of the wood.
"…Damn."
She leaned forward slowly, rubbing once against her temple.
Now she understood why Lucien rarely spoke about the Hunt directly.
Not because it was a secret but because there was no clean version worth telling.
The Great Silver Hunt was the foundation of modern coexistence between races, but it had only been achieved after enough bloodshed that everyone involved quietly agreed to stop discussing details afterward.
Humanity remembers monsters in myths. Vampires remembered extermination. Witches remembered compromise.
And everyone buried the rest.
Soline leaned her head backward again. For several long seconds, she simply sat there breathing quietly while inherited memories settled deeper beneath her own thoughts once more.
Then she laughed once under her breath.
"…No wonder father always looked exhausted."
Somewhere within the inherited consciousness surrounding her, Lucien sighed again.
Soline pointed vaguely upward afterward.
"Yes, yes. I understand now."
The presence withdrew slightly.
She sat there a little longer before eventually standing from the desk.
The office suddenly felt too crowded despite being empty.
Too many memories.
Too many dead people lingering around thoughts that no longer belonged entirely to her.
And too much paperworks still in need of being processed.
Soline crossed toward the tall windows overlooking the family's estate.
The courtyard stretched endlessly beneath the moonlight. The beautiful landscapes of Romania where the estate was located. The people walking around at night, smiling in peace.
Peaceful.
At least from this distance.
And all of it existed because history had been carefully rewritten into something easier for later generations to live with.
Soline stared quietly for a moment longer.
Then sighed.
Not every truth needed to be resurfaced.
Some histories only survived because everyone involved agreed to leave them in darkness.
Soline turned away from the window afterward and finally stepped out of Lucien's office for fresh air, leaving behind the inherited ghosts still waiting silently within the room behind her.