Most people panicked when they heard the news; Edelgard was Adrestia's new emperor, and she declared war on not only the Church of Seiros but anyone who aided them. Rhea called a portion of the knights back to the monastery, and told everyone nearby to leave if they couldn't fight.

The Officers Academy students were not allowed to return home. Many wished to, he knew—whether to avoid ire with Edelgard or to save their own skin, they went about their days terrified of the imminent attack. They had until the end of the month to fortify the defenses and plan some kind of offensive measure; although a few students did manage to leave the monastery, after a week the knights guarded the entrance to Garreg Mach, claiming to be on watch for any imperial soldiers.

Hanneman and Manuela attempted to continue classes as per usual, but barely anyone attended them. After a week, they stopped trying—the option was still offered to anyone who wanted a distraction, but otherwise they weren't required to do anything. The instruction wouldn't be needed if the Imperial army succeeded, after all—they wouldn't graduate if the monastery belonged to the church's enemy. It gave Dimitri more time to think, and eventually he came to a conclusion.

He waited until everyone left the dormitory before he went to her room. Dimitri opened the door hesitantly, at first, before he took in the sight of it.

Clean and neat, like she had planned for her departure. Only a single paper was on the desk—practice for a now-canceled assessment—alongside a pile of dried white roses. He could remember seeing Dorothea, Bernadetta, and Petra talk as they arranged them, Linhardt offering tired suggestions on the placement; the memory gave him both anger and pleasant nostalgia.

Dimitri entered the room, leaving the door open behind him. The more he looked and found nothing, the more his mood changed; curiosity or hesitance to hatred. To him—to them—absence of evidence must make it true. He kept looking regardless, through every drawer and behind every shelf, growing more conflicted as he went on. That conflicting feeling became anger, and that anger led him to be louder than he intended as he rummaged through his stepsister's—that murderer's—things.

He barely noticed that someone came by the doorway until they spoke.

"You should leave destroying Edelgard's room for, say, a knight who might not ruin possible clues."

"Go talk with someone else, Claude. I need to do this."

"You need to do…what, exactly?" Claude asked skeptically. "Brood by yourself all day? Avoid everyone? I know you and Edelgard used to be friends, but—"

"That woman is not who I once knew," Dimitri replied firmly. He pulled out one of the desk drawers, hesitating for a moment. "Or maybe she is the same, and I just never noticed. Perhaps she never cared—or she could have, once, and she changed her mind. I don't know if she's a murderer, a pawn, or just a victim; I still don't want to fight her, but they're so sure it was her."

Claude cast him a curious glance. "Who are you talking about? No one really knows what Edelgard is after—aside from the Crest Stones and the Central Church, anyway. No one's looking forward to her attack on Garreg Mach, either."

Dimitri didn't answer; he had no way to explain it. Not without losing focus.

He leafed through the papers, finding nothing but old tests and a few scattered pages of absent-minded drawings. He couldn't even say he was able to determine what her weaknesses may be; by all accounts, she was an excellent student. Frustrated, he shoved the drawer back in, and pulled out the drawer beneath with enough force that it fell to the ground. He bent down to observe the papers, all while Claude continued to give him wary looks.

At first, those papers were the same. Near the bottom, however, was a portrait of two people—a couple, by the looks of it. He only recognized one face as Patricia's—or rather, Anselma; the man must be the former emperor. Dimitri sat aside the papers that had covered it, finding similar drawings of varying quality—some were nothing more than children's scribbles, while others were professional pieces, each one showing one or more people. Any that he could recognize as having Edelgard held other, unfamiliar faces as well—a collection of girls making rose garlands, and a single picture containing what he imagined must be the entire imperial royal family.

Underneath the drawings were more papers, only these had scribbled notes; several names, a list of dates—when the people must have been born and when they died, he realized—and another list of names where some had been crossed out, with scribbled months written next to them. Dimitri wondered, for a second, if Edelgard was like him; driven by revenge, or some other strong emotion.

But she couldn't. Why would she cause more suffering, just to ease hers? Commit matricide? Ultimately instigate the murder of so many people from Duscur? No, she must have been aware—Dimitri knew what revenge and justice looked like. Edelgard's actions were crueler than that; perhaps mourning was simply what she wanted to use to hide her crimes, and in truth all she wanted was to inflict harm on others.

They were fairly certain that was correct.

Dimitri found nothing else in that drawer, so he stood and left everything on the floor.

"Maybe you've had enough privacy invasion for one day?" Claude asked, frowning still.

"If you truly cared, you would have stopped me," Dimitri shot back coldly.

Claude fell into silence, and then left while muttering about gathering others. Dimitri preferred one less set of eyes watching him anyway.

He went to another drawer in the desk, once again finding the top one full of school papers and the second one holding notes underneath other documents. Those notes, more blatantly than the others, were about the Tragedy of Duscur. Dimitri leafed through them carefully, their contents giving him grim satisfaction and reviving his anger.

It all involved Patricia; when she left the Empire and who asked her to come to the capital, when she married Lambert, who she spent the most time with. There was a small timeline of every event leading up to the Tragedy in a ten-year span—Cornelia was among the only names he recognized. There were a few other notes as well; a point in Ordelia territory's past were several children went missing, and another quick scribble regarding Lord Arundel ceasing donations to the church and the alleged reason.

This was what he had been looking for. Dimitri found it hard to believe that some of this would come by mere research—he has been trying to figure out what happened for years, and even his observations were not as thorough as this. Edelgard must have had some kind of inside knowledge, if she didn't commit the crimes themselves.

Why she would have left such things behind, he didn't care. He only knew that, unlike her, he would not keep valuable information like this at the monastery. Dimitri collected all related papers, and carried them with him as he left the room.

He passed by Claude and some of the Blue Lions as he walked away, barely noticing their worried looks. Dimitri returned to his own room, denying any offers of company or falsely-placed solace, and slowly connected everything back to Edelgard—everything back to a group her notes once call 'those who slither in the dark,' with whom she is surely affiliated.

He found no reason to believe she had not been directly involved with any tragedies she listed among those papers. With that, Dimitri knew who he would have to kill to finally avenge them.

Any remaining hesitance faded completely upon their insistence, and he gave in to the whims of the dead.