CHAPTER 629: A CLOSED DOOR

I ignored him, set the journal down on one of the messy tables, and hurriedly went down the floor.

I looked through the different pages he had used to create the map and picked one.

I snatched it and jumped back on my feet, riding to him.

"Look at this!" I pointed at the paper.

He raised a brow. "What am I looking at?"

I looked back at the paper and realized I was holding it from behind.

"Sorry," I said quickly as I flipped it back to show the drawing of the map. "Look at this now."

"I still have no idea what I’m supposed to be looking at." He shook his head. "I drew the map, remember?"

"Look! You’ve been saying you’re stuck and unable to move, drawing any more maps, didn’t you?" I asked him. "Even though you’ve deciphered the languages already, right?"

He gave a light shrug. "I guess? Perhaps"

"And the map is drawn following the constellation, isn’t it?" I pressed.

He grumbled. "Yes. Jasmine, what does this have to do with anything?"

He rubbed his still red eyes.

"From what Hildegard had just told me." I continued. "We live in different time zones. Predominantly, the royal pack, at least yes?"

He rolled his eyes, trying to understand where I was getting at.

"Yes." He folded his arms.

"Good." I nodded my head. "And I was also told that the constellation armed shaped differently. I mean, they are the same thing. But when someone is looking at Selene’s star in the Fire pack, they won’t be looking at it here."

He rubbed his back, bored.

"You don’t see it?!" I demanded excitedly. "We’ve been drawing it wrong this entire time! Whoever wrote the languages to be deciphered didn’t do it here. I mean, the books were with Xaden’s mother, and that’s far away in the crescent pack."

He snapped his finger.

"Do you now understand what I’m saying?" I asked.

He smacked his hand on his forehead. "Goddess! Why didn’t I think of that?"

And he went back down to the floor and began to scamper through the pieces of paper.

He picked up a half-drawn map and came to me.

"So this means we have done it wrong the entire time." He said after looking through the paper.

I gave a slight shrug and swallowed hard.

"I think so." I managed.

He started to swear in anger.

He threw swear words that I doubted I wanted to know what they meant.

After a few minutes of his tantrum, he calmed down.

He was breathing hard, still frantic.

"So now we have to start again," I said quietly, discussing the elephant in the room.

All our hard work for the past days had gone to waste.

I personally wanted to lose my mind because we had hoped that finishing the map would somehow lead us to finding my uncle.

Now I didn’t know much about that anymore.

I dropped onto a chair weakly, my shoulders giving up in defeat.

I heaved a heavy sigh and looked back at an angry-looking Otto.

"Well." I tried to give a smile that wavered. "On the bright side. We know where to start and how to end. Regardless of how long it’s going to take."

"We don’t!" He snapped at me.

I was taken aback by how sharp he had been.

He saw my reaction, and his face pulled with sympathy.

"I’m sorry." He said, rubbing his temples. "I’m just..... It’s just that I’ve been doing these so much, I finally put in full hope that we’re going to do something about it. I was going to finally prove my theory that the other side actually does exist and isn’t just a legend or some boring story."

In a way, I did understand what he was saying.

Having everyone look at you from a specific perspective.

You try so much that you give up.

In his own case, everyone saw him as the madman whose wolf had gone rabid.

This was his chance to prove that he was always right, and now, all of a sudden, he was back to square one.

I got up from my feet. "Hey, don’t worry. I know how it feels. And I understand you want to prove everyone wrong. But it won’t change anything if you’re so beat up about yourself. Trust me, I’ve learned the hard way. We made a mistake, didn’t we? But we found the solution."

He ruffled his messy hair. "That’s the thing, Jasmine. We don’t have a solution."

I blinked.

Hadn’t he heard a word I had said about the different constellations?

"The constellations here are different, yes. But it’s also different from every other pack." He said. "We have about nine different constellations. Some packs within the same proximity see the same constellations. Others don’t."

I wanted to lose my mind.

If this were true, would that mean we had to translate and map all nine constellations?

I put her fingers through my hair and began to rake in frustration.

"If we use our books and draw up the constellation for the nine different packs." I began.

"Eight." He said quietly. "We just started with the Royal pack, and we know it’s not the right one."

"Eight." I agreed numbly. "We can’t do. If we try it, it could take-

"Forever." Otto and I sat together.

We both moaned in exhaustion.

I wanted to pull out my eyes in frustration.

"And is there any way we can know which pack the translations came from?" I asked, hopeful.

Otto knew everything.

He had to know something about this.

He shook his head. "That book is thousands of years old. Somehow got into the hands of Xaden’s mother. The odds that it came from the crescent pack? Very, very slim."

I had nothing more to say.

"I’ll try to figure some things out." He assured me, as he walked over to the table, that I had dropped the journal and handed it back to me.

I collected it weakly.

I didn’t know if we had a way out of this.

The moment I turned to leave, the golden leaf from Xaden’s mother’s journal fell on the ground.

I picked it up and was about to leave when he stopped me.

"Woah woah." Otto said putting his hand.

I paused and turned around.

He brought his finger tips towards mine and I handed it to him absentmindedly.

"What’s that?" He asked me.

I looked down at the golden leaf in my hand. "Oh this?"

I wondered if I should even tell him about it.

Or maybe he would think I’m crazy.

He snatched it from my fingers before I even handed it over.

"Okay? Yeah just take it." I mumbled to myself.

He looked at the leaf and examined it closely.

He began to sniff it and he did the weirdest thing I expected him to.

He licked it and seemed to process the taste.

My face grew in complete horror.

"Where the hell did you get this?" He asked me once he was done processing the leaf.

I looked at him still bewildered.

"Jasmine. Where did you get this from?" He asked waving the golden leaf before me.

"To be honest." I said my hands on my waist. "I have no idea."

"What do you mean you have no idea?" He asked as he headed back to one of his filled desks.

He pushed everything that occupied the table and sat down on a chair right in front.

He used a magnifying class to examine the golden leaf.

I started to speak and he shushed me as he continued to look at the golden leaf.

After a minute of him checking everywhere he turned back to me and said.

"This is from the Drasil tree." He pointed out.

"The what?" I said lost.

"The Drasil tree." He repeated. "It’s the distant relative of the Yggdrasil. You know what that is don’t you?"

"I have no idea what you’re speaking on." I stated bluntly.

He sighed heavily. "In the many stories of creation the Yggdrasil tree was the source of our life a gift from the goddess. There is only one of it. No one knows where it is. But the Drasil tree is a distant relative of it. The closest to what we know it would ever look like."

He showed me the golden leaf and said. "The Drasil tree does not grow in these parts. They’ve tried it. But it has never succeeded. So where did you get this from?"

I itched the back of my hair.

"I woke up from sleep and found it in my hand." I said.

He looked at me like I was crazy.

Uh-huh.

I knew that was going to happen.

"I swear that’s how I saw it." I explained. "Maybe it started growing here. Or something. But I woke up last night and found it in my palm."

He shook his head. "You’re lying to me because that can never happen."

"I swear it! I was having a dream that I was in a tree with golden leaves and then when I woke up I saw it." I stated.

He blinked at me. "You’re dream-walking."