Journal Entry 79
27.09.2026
Damien and his security team maintained their watch over the grounds surrounding the King’s cabin as Jonas and I continued working to decipher Line Three.
All day, I could not shake the feeling that we were being watched. It was not that I suspected tiny cameras hidden inside the cabin. It was something more instinctive—the sense that unseen eyes were following our every move.
I suspect I tested the patience of Damien and his men. Unable to settle my nerves, I ventured outside several times to ask Damien to have the grounds searched again. At one point, I insisted that the cabin itself be searched, from every closet to the attic.
Both Jonas and Damien assured me that we were safe.
I did not believe either of them.
By sunset, Jonas and I believed we had cracked Line Three’s cryptic code:
13 §175 Cob 13
13 – Pentecost Sunday, 13 June 1886—the day King Ludwig II of Bavaria and psychiatrist Bernhard von Gudden were found dead in the shallow waters of Würmsee, now known as Lake Starnberg.
§175 – Paragraph 175 of the German Imperial Penal Code, which criminalized sexual acts between men. It took effect in Bavaria in 1872, bringing the law into unsettling focus alongside accounts of Ludwig’s attraction to men.
Cob – This was the first of the four clues to lead Jonas and me down the rabbit hole. After ruling out food and building materials, we discovered that a cob is a male swan. That gave us a name: King Ludwig II—the Swan King.
13 – We understood this to refer to the thirteen men of the commission sent to depose Ludwig and take him into custody. Doctors and government officials acting against their own king. A coup? Jonas and I could not help wondering whether this clue also pointed to Dorstenland’s former Prime Minister, Hans Northcott, who had attempted a coup against Jonas.
The first three lines of the cryptic letter I burned all point to royalty and homosexuality. Jonas and I can see the pattern, but we still cannot understand what someone is trying to tell us.
Perhaps once we decipher the fourth and final line, the picture will finally come into focus.
