Children of the Rune – Winterer - Chapter 453

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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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Episode 223.
The Face of an Angel and
the Blood Flowing Through a Demon’s Heart (32)
“A monster appears, and you’re saying it’s reassuring to have a Ghost nearby?”
It did sound strange now that I heard it aloud, but Maximian shook his head in disagreement.
“I don’t know. Stop trying to scare me for no reason and just tell me why. If it’s a legitimate reason, I might consider letting you go.”
Kelsniti had been disappearing just fine without Maximian’s permission anyway, but he spoke gently nonetheless.
“There is a legitimate reason. Please look over there.”
Maximian thought he would look in the direction Kelsniti was pointing, so he naturally glanced at Joshua instead. But Joshua was looking at him. Maximian sighed once and turned to look behind. The lamplight revealed an arched entrance without a door and a corridor. There were two such entrances.
“It appears that from that point onward, there is a barrier preventing the entry of beings like myself. I do not know precisely what magic it is, nor do I understand why such a thing exists. Perhaps those who preserved this place deemed its conservation so vital that they sought to prevent even the intrusion of invisible entities like myself.”
“Magic isn’t something I’d understand anyway, but if something like that exists, doesn’t it also mean there’s something important inside?”
Maximian, having arrived at quite an optimistic interpretation, nodded as if convincing himself. Joshua spoke.
“What if living people can’t enter either? If they’re going to block invisible beings, it seems obvious they’d need to block visible ones too.”
“I’d say all the living people were filtered out back at that Stone Door. Except for a creature like you, of course.”
Maximian’s words were correct. Kelsniti spoke.
“One appears to slope upward, while the other slopes downward. Which direction would you like to explore?”
Joshua answered without hesitation.
“I’ll go down.”
“Then I shall wait here. Should things become dangerous, please return to this place if possible. I hope nothing goes amiss.”
“Nothing going amiss won’t do. We’ve come this far—we need to discover something.”
Joshua stood before the corridor, stepped forward, then turned back to look at Kelsniti.
“But I have a bad feeling about this.”
Maximian answered in his stead.
“You should know that saying things like that out loud is utterly pointless.”
The corridor had scattered lights burning along its length. Drawings similar to those on the entrance stairs ran along both walls, but they soon ceased, giving way to barren stone. At least there were no side chambers blocked by Iron Cages. Instead, small round chambers appeared several times along the way, connected again by narrow passages. All the chambers were circular, like beads strung on a necklace. The corridor descended in a gentle spiral downward.
“We’ve come quite far.”
Maximian, walking beside me, gave a slight twitch of his chin—his way of acknowledging a statement of the obvious.
“Are we already underground?”
A similar response. Joshua muttered after a brief pause.
“Nothing’s appearing, so I’m getting anxious.”
“That’s because you’re idle, amplifying in your mind what you’ve imagined.”
Joshua, who had walked in silence for some time, suddenly spoke.
“Do you know what I’m imagining?”
“Something horrible, probably. Corpses, bones, that sort of thing.”
“No….”
At some point, the corridor had begun to curve distinctly, and we were both unconsciously trying not to bump into the corners. Our arms kept brushing against each other. On the fourth collision, Maximian spoke.
“Do you think such imaginings will be of any use?”
“It’s not a matter of usefulness. I simply cannot help but think. I would forget if I could, but you know well that I cannot forget.”
“Not forgetting and obsessing are different things. I know it’s not a trivial matter. But I understand you and yet I don’t. Because I have no Father, no Family Clan, no ancestors.”
Joshua’s pace seemed to slow. He spoke.
“You really do know, don’t you.”
Maximian didn’t respond and continued down the corridor.
Before the final chamber appeared, a premonition came first. It wasn’t because something had changed. There was simply a smell. My pace, which had slowed without my noticing, passed through the final entrance, and there it ended. A Round Room, as always before. But far more spacious. The ceiling was high as well. There were no more passages.
Lamps were installed along the walls, but half of them were extinguished. By misfortune, only those on the same side were dark, casting shadows that obscured that section. The two boys, their hair still damp, felt a slight chill. This chamber carried a colder air than the corridors they’d traversed before.
In the center of the chamber stood a stone pedestal that looked like half a pillar had been cut away. Upon it sat a large stone vessel carved from rock, and peering inside, I found it filled roughly halfway with clear water.
“Who put this here?”
It would dry up in mere tens of days if left alone—a strange thing indeed. Yet there was no hole at the bottom of the vessel where water might seep through. The two looked up almost simultaneously. The ceiling was dim, its outline difficult to discern. After a moment, Joshua realized the identity of the points shining on the ceiling.
“Those are stars.”
It hadn’t been night when we entered. Because night had fallen while we walked through the Tomb, I hadn’t recognized them immediately. There was a hole opening to the sky in the center of the dark ceiling.
Maximian pointed at the ceiling and spoke.
“How did that hole get there? We thought we’d been descending the whole time.”
“The Spiral Corridor we followed must have encircled this chamber. We spiraled inward toward the center.”
“We could have just lowered a rope from there instead of struggling to get through the Stone Door.”
“Perhaps. But I have a feeling that opening is also part of this structure. If we could enter from there, the Stone Door wouldn’t serve to filter visitors at the entrance.”
That reasoning made sense. Maximian fell silent in thought before speaking.
“If we’d taken the upward passage instead, would we have arrived there? Since we can see stars, it must be outdoors—maybe that’s the Garden with almond blossoms in full bloom?”
Had we come the wrong way then? The two peered into the water vessel again. And they discovered several floating petals. This strengthened the conviction that a blooming Garden existed above.
“But they wouldn’t be almond blossoms. It’s summer now.”
“Hmm, what do we do? Should we go back up there?”
Joshua didn’t answer immediately, instead plunging his hand into the water vessel. He meant to fish out the petals and identify what flower they were, but that intention vanished entirely. Joshua gasped in surprise and recoiled. Maximian did the same.
Light surged from the water vessel. It rose like a pillar, touched the hole in the ceiling, then stretched further. The surroundings became bright as midday. The two saw countless white petals floating in the white light—as if the entire chamber had always been filled with petals.
Water dripped from Joshua’s hand that had been in the vessel, falling to the stone floor. Though it was stone, it swelled slightly as if alive. Soon it cracked open, and a sprout pushed through. As the two boys watched with widened eyes, the sprout shot upward, extending a slender stem until it became a small tree. The same happened elsewhere. In an instant, several small trees stood between them. Even as they watched, the trees seemed to strain upward, stretching to grow taller.
“What, what, what is happening?”
“I didn’t do anything….”
Even as I said this, I plunged my hand back into the water vessel and withdrew it, scattering droplets into the air. The water drops flew like colored seeds and fell. Once, then again—the trees that received the water shot upward anew. Fresh sprouts emerged. From all directions they pierced through the stone floor, pushing their heads through. The events of spring and summer unfolded in the span of a few blinks. Only they, unchanging, seemed to move against time itself, frozen in place.
“At this rate the entire floor will crack apart.”
Maximian murmured, watching as the swollen Tree Roots split through the stone floor and spread outward. After a moment, he rubbed his forehead and removed his glasses, wiping them on his collar. In the eyes of this realist, such a landscape had never appeared before. Putting his glasses back on and turning around, he found Joshua about to climb into the water vessel.
“What are you doing?”
“Making room.”
“For the trees?”
The rim of the stone vessel was wide enough for a person to stand on, and the vessel itself was heavy enough that it wouldn’t tip over. Rather than follow, Maximian simply looked up. Joshua’s hand, arm, and left cheek that had entered the light shone pure white. Petals flew between them. Bending at the waist, he scooped water with both hands, turned, and scattered it. The moment the water droplets touched the trees, hundreds of white blossoms unfurled their petals.
“….”
Maximian could say nothing, watching as flowering branches filled the space in an instant. His head felt dizzy. Perhaps it was the fragrance. Or perhaps not. The sensation of his thoughts momentarily stopping might not be due to such reasons. It might be because his mind was too cold to keep pace with magic and miracles.
But his eyes beheld the white flowers. He didn’t know where the wind came from. The ceiling? The flowering branches swayed and settled, then whispered as they swelled again. Simultaneously, a cool fragrance poured forth. The petals within the pillar of light drifted upward slowly. Stars shine outside, but here, flowers illuminate the darkness.
In such circumstances, Joshua, having grown rather composed, called to Maximian.
“Could you pick up just one stone fragment from the floor?”
Maximian gathered a handful of stone fragments from the shattered floor. As he moved to hand them over, Joshua shook his head.
“Put it in the water vessel.”
He hadn’t intended to do so, but the stone fragment slipped from his hand and fell into the vessel. The two peered inside. By the time the ripples subsided, the stone fragment had become a seed. No—there was no trace of it at all. A sprouting branch burst through the water’s surface from within the vessel and reached outward.
Maximian offered his observation.
“This is maddening.”
Perhaps due to the abundance of water, this tree’s growth far outpaced that of its neighbors. And it hadn’t stopped at a reasonable height. It had grown so tall that it towered well above Joshua’s head as he stood upon it. Nearly simultaneously, they arrived at the same realization and their eyes met.
“Do you think so?”
Though the branches sprawled so densely that there was scarcely room to set foot, Maximian managed to climb up nonetheless. To avoid falling, he had no choice but to embrace the tree as he gripped it. The moment his hand closed around the trunk, something twitched beneath the bark—as though he’d grasped the arm of a small child. With that peculiar sensation, Maximian began ascending the tree.
“Come quickly.”
Joshua followed close behind. Though not quite as swift as Maximian, his movements were remarkably nimble. Maximian glanced down and spoke.
“All those lessons climbing the Pasture have proven their worth.”
Children of Rune – Winterer
Author: Jeon Min-hee
Publisher: 14 Months Publishing
The copyright of this book belongs to the author and 14 Months Publishing.
To reuse all or part of the contents of this book, you must obtain written consent from both parties.

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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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