Egon looked at us, his expression unreadable. With self-assured calm, he set his coffee cup aside.
His gaze wandered to my neck, where I was still wearing Sofia’s coin necklace. Then, slowly and deliberately,
he reached into the pocket of the jacket hanging over a chair.

His fingers closed around a thick silver chain. He hesitated briefly,
then placed another coin necklace onto the polished steel table. The Roman numeral "I" stared back at me.
Instinctively, my hands went to my necklaces; I was already wearing Sofia’s coin around my neck.
The other one—Anja’s coin, bearing the Roman numeral "II"—was still tucked deep inside my pocket.

I pulled out the chain with a jerk; my fingers trembled as I laid it down next to Egon’s coin.
Stefanie watched in silent horror as all three coins lay side by side—“I,” “II,” and “III”—gleaming coldly in the sunlight.
Egon touched his coin. “Tanja,” he murmured, his voice heavy with unspoken history.

“The eldest daughter. I am… her descendant.”
Before Tanja died, her child was taken to safety, along with a portion of the treasure.
In exile, my ancestors built a new realm in a new land. That was centuries ago.
The coins lay there—three silver coins whispering of betrayal and survival. Egon’s gaze
darted between them and then met mine.

“Your grandmother,” he began in a low, intense voice, “she was a descendant of Anja—the middle Rubens daughter,
the one who became pregnant far too soon during the orgies. Sarah—your grandmother—she fled from her husband,
taking her coin from Romania with her. But she returned… decades ago.” My breath caught in my throat.
That explained the box in the attic. That explained her warning.

Egon leaned closer to me. “She was looking for answers. She was looking for *him*. Eugen Rubens has long been dead,
and Lucian too, but his later descendants… they still guard Rubensburg Castle.
They still hold the feasts when the hunger torments them.”

Stefanie whimpered and clung to her coffee cup. “She went back?” I whispered, a shiver of horror creeping down my spine.
“Why?” Egon’s expression was grim. “To break the curse. Or to fulfill it.”