Aya Ran Away - Chapter 20

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 20
A low, muttering voice echoed through the air with an eerie resonance.
One of the Elders flinched at that unsettling figure and turned his head away.
The young administrator standing beside him had lost all focus in his eyes.
When had the sharpness drained from them?
When had they begun to wear such hollow expressions?
What little rationality flickered in their minds seemed nearly extinguished, and their humanity shaved away like a strand of thread worn thin to breaking.
As an ominous premonition of catastrophe settled over everything, rain began to fall on Levar.
* * *
‘Rain.’
Aya, curled into a ball on her bed, turned to look out the window.
As she slowly pushed herself upright, a dull, heavy ache flared through her legs.
“……!”
She let out a low gasp, her body trembling.
‘Why all of a sudden?’
The pain was bad enough to make her shudder.
Aya reached out and felt along the surface of the table beside her.
Moments later, she grasped a bell and shook it.
Ting-a-ling.
The clear, bright chime filled the room.
Yet no one came to look in on her.
Ting-a-ling, ting-a-ling.
Aya shook the bell again.
Still, no one appeared.
Aya curled her body tight and waited for the pain to subside.
She massaged her legs gently, coaxing the stubborn ache to fade.
Each touch sent sharp tingles shooting up through her lower back.
‘Much better than before, at least.’
Aya exhaled a long, weary breath and wiped away the cold sweat beading on her forehead.
She had been moving around far too much lately.
Creeping about in hiding to shake the Evil Spirits clinging to the Elders’ bodies had taken its toll on her frame in ways she hadn’t fully recognized until now.
‘The Nurse mentioned bringing analgesic pills.’
Aya recalled the Nurse’s proud remark and crawled down from the bed.
Since no servants answered no matter how many times she called, she would have to find them herself.
‘The Nurse probably left them in the adjacent room.’
The Nurse had a habit of placing all manner of valuable things in the adjoining chamber, which was prepared for Yesili’s use whenever she entered the palace.
Though the Nurse would hand them over whenever Aya found them, she almost never stored anything first in Aya’s own quarters.
It was hard to fault her for it, since the room Yesili used was also part of Aya’s palace, leaving little grounds for complaint.
Leaning on an old wooden Walking Cane that stood beside her bed, Aya moved slowly and carefully forward.
As she stepped through the doorway, something bright and luminous stood at the far end of the darkened Corridor.
‘What is that?’
At first glance, it looked like a person holding a Lantern.
Aya narrowed her eyes and studied it, then tilted her head.
‘A palace servant? Did they hear the bell?’
With that thought, Aya deliberately tapped her Walking Cane against the floor as she walked, making a distinct sound.
‘Hmm?’
Though she was certain it would have sensed her approach, the figure did not come toward her.
Aya gazed at the motionless form ahead and slowly made her way toward the light.
When she drew near, she found a young girl standing there.
The girl had a thin, small frame and wore a long white dress.
‘A new servant girl? She looks quite young. But there’s something strange about her……’
Her face seemed familiar.
Aya’s eyes narrowed as she looked more closely.
Yes—it was a face she knew.
She had seen this face somewhere before.
But where?
“Why are you still doing that?”
The girl suddenly spoke to her.
Aya startled, not expecting the child to address her.
‘Does she not know I’m a princess?’
Aya caught the disrespect in the child’s tone and questioned it in her mind.
But it made no sense.
Aya tried to examine the child’s face more carefully.
Yet strangely, the more intently she stared, the more the child’s features blurred and shifted, becoming indistinct.
An eerie sensation washed over her.
She was looking directly at it, yet somehow could not see.
‘What?’
Noticing something wrong with the child, Aya stepped backward.
Looking again, she saw that the child held no lantern.
“Find it quickly.”
As the child spoke, only its lips remained sharply defined against the murk.
‘Find what?’
Aya’s silent question hung in the stillness.
Then the child answered.
“Search for the voice.”
The last words seemed spoken directly into her ear.
Startled, Aya dropped her Walking Cane.
Clang!
She caught herself against the wall just in time, barely avoiding a fall.
When she straightened and looked up again, the child had vanished.
Where an inexplicable white light had been, the pale glow of dawn now rolled in like blue waves, flooding the space.
Aya stood bewildered, retracing what had just happened.
‘Did I fall asleep standing up?’
Disbelieving, she pinched the back of her hand.
Pain flared across her skin.
It was unmistakably real.
‘Or was it an illusion I saw? Or could it have been an Evil Spirit……?’
The questions multiplied without end.
She could find no way to explain this strange experience.
As she dwelt on the child’s pale, indecipherable face, a voice reached her ears.
“……Your Highness!”
Her consciousness snapped back like a fish hooked on a line, shooting upward into wakefulness.
Aya gasped, warm breath escaping her lips, and lifted her head.
Yesili stood before her.
‘Why is she here at this hour?’
Tilting her head with that thought, Aya blinked.
Yesili’s hand, patting her back, was remarkably tender.
“Did you have a nightmare?”
At the question, Aya’s brow furrowed.
A nightmare?
Aya grasped at her fading awareness and looked around.
A room.
She was not in the Corridor but in her own chamber, lying in her bed.
She lay in the center of the mattress, a bell clutched in her hand.
Her entire face was drenched with sweat as if she had just washed.
“What kind of dream did you have to cry out like that? I was preparing dinner when I heard the commotion and came running.”
Dinner?
As Aya turned her head, she saw sunset burning beyond the window.
The Nurse at her side picked up a cloth and wiped Aya’s brow.
‘That was all a dream? All of it?’
She could not accept it.
Then what about the pain?
“Does your leg hurt?”
The Nurse asked Aya.
Aya nodded faintly.
She was responding more from disorientation than actual pain—the boundary between dream and waking still felt unsettlingly blurred.
The Nurse deftly adjusted Aya against the pillows for comfort and began to massage her legs.
“Every time it rains, you suffer so……”
The Nurse spoke as she brushed away wet strands of hair clinging to Aya’s damp forehead.
“I do hope the rain stops soon.”
The Nurse murmured in a flat, matter-of-fact voice.
Neither Aya nor Yesili caught the faint guilt threaded through the edge of her words.
Perhaps Aya’s limp was the Nurse’s doing after all.
The Nurse had desperately tried to convince herself that one of Aya’s legs had always been wrong since birth.
But the truth was, she knew.
When Aya was only a newborn, the Nurse had dropped her once—just once—onto the floor.
After that, Aya had fallen gravely ill, and one of her legs had twisted slightly.
With proper treatment, it might have healed cleanly.
But the Nurse never told anyone that she had dropped the princess.
Since no one paid attention to the princess anyway, no one in the palace had noticed her condition except the Nurse herself, and it was easy enough to hide.
Still, the faint remnant of conscience that lingered sometimes tormented the Nurse.
The Nurse’s face twisted subtly as guilt resurfaced.
Discomfort crept in, and she could no longer bear to touch those thin legs.
Withdrawing her hand, the Nurse spoke to Aya as though giving an order.
“Don’t wander about until the rain stops. Stay in your room.”
Startled by the sudden harshness in her tone, Aya looked up at the Nurse with confusion, but that was all.
She was too shaken by the revelation that it had been a dream to think much of the Nurse’s manner.
Aya turned her head toward them and gestured for them to leave.
“Then rest now.”
Yesili, the last to leave, closed the door behind her.
‘Phew…….’
She had been caught in a dream so vivid and chaotic that reality and sleep had blurred together.
Shaking her head, Aya’s eyes fell upon the Walking Cane standing beside her bed.
‘What?’
On the handle of the cane, where iron had been worked into the surface, there was a scratch she had never seen before.
She used it every day—there was no mistaking it.
The thin metal inlay had been dented slightly inward.
‘It must have happened when I dropped it.’
Goosebumps prickled up the back of her neck.
Then it hadn’t been a dream after all.
If that was true, then what on earth had it been?

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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