Children of the Rune – Winterer - Chapter 531

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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 301.
Beneath the Almond Tree (44)
Boris approached the hearth and stirred the ashes a few times.
“Don’t ask me how I came to be in such a place. I’ve experienced things I cannot speak of. I’m telling you this now only because this matter of the Wish Mirror seems extraordinarily important to you. This friend you call Kelce—is he perhaps a spirit?”
Joshua nodded.
“Kelce has been with me since I was twelve years old. He was a Sworn Ally of my ancestor, murdered at a young age in my family’s castle. After that, he remained bound to the castle as a earthbound spirit, and centuries later, he encountered me, his descendant. He cared for me, followed me, and protected me.”
Boris spoke quietly.
“I understand your desire to save him.”
They gazed at each other. It was an answer that should have been difficult to arrive at so easily for such a complicated matter, yet Boris had said he understood. Joshua couldn’t fully comprehend the feeling behind Boris’s words, but in that moment, he sensed his sincerity. He knew it was no casual, thoughtless remark.
Joshua asked.
“Is there any way for me to reach the place where that Wish Mirror you saw exists?”
Boris shook his head.
“There isn’t. I myself could never return there again.”
….
As Joshua’s gaze fell, Boris spoke.
“But I’ll tell you this much: if one can pass through the Wish Mirror, both spirits and people can go anywhere. Anywhere that exists in this world. Perhaps even to places that don’t exist in this world.”
The next day, Joshua met Tichiel in the courtyard before the dormitory before classes began. He asked if he could borrow the airship again.
When Tichiel heard that he intended to go to Sunset Island, her eyes filled with concern.
“I’ve heard stories about that person from Father. Her life is truly worthy of respect. But to be honest, I’m uncertain whether she could maintain the mental clarity to make fair judgments after enduring such terrible suffering for so long. That’s why I can’t readily support your choice.”
“Thank you for worrying. I’ve certainly thought enough about the problem you mention. But no matter what dangers might be anticipated, I cannot turn away from this situation. This is both a duty given to me and a debt imposed upon my very life.”
Tichiel leaned against the wall, avoiding the dry ivy, and thought for a moment. Yet she could not reach a decision easily.
“I can’t judge this alone. To ask Father about the airship matter, I’ll need Aunt’s help. Let’s meet at the Vineyard during lunch.”
Joshua appeared in class. However, unlike usual, he sat far from Maximian and remained absorbed in other thoughts throughout. Noble-born students, thinking it was an opportunity to speak with him, hovered during every break, but their efforts bore little fruit. They couldn’t even hear polite responses in return.
The moment lunch began, Joshua stood and left, and Maximian called out to him.
“Hey, Jo.”
Joshua paused at the entrance, started to leave, but ultimately turned back.
“Come here and sit for a moment.”
All the noble-born students despised that arrogant fellow for addressing the Young Duke so casually. What they disliked even more was that the Young Duke actually listened to him.
“I’m here. Speak.”
Instead of speaking, Maximian pulled a bundle wrapped in cloth from his pocket and handed it over.
“Fix this.”
Maximian stood abruptly and left first. Joshua unfolded the edge of the cloth slightly and looked inside. It was a Sacred Chant Tradition score.
Professor Leomentiis, as always, wore a cold expression. Even as Joshua revealed the story about Kelsni and the secret hidden on Sunset Island, she gazed out the window like a painting.
After a moment, the Professor disappeared beneath her desk. Joshua now knew there was a space beneath it. He also knew that instead of a bedroom, the Professor’s chamber contained a large research laboratory.
Professor Leomentiis, reappearing shortly, spoke to Tichiel.
“It will take a couple of hours for an answer to arrive.”
Tichiel grasped the hem of her skirt and bowed—her characteristic, refined manner of greeting.
“Yes. I understand. Thank you.”
The method was to send a faint magical signal to where Juspian was expected to be, and one had to continue until the other side detected it and responded. Communication was only established when an answer came back. If they hadn’t set up a resonance system with each other, this was the only way. And it was only possible if both were mages with the skill to send or detect signals.
Joshua also spoke.
“Thank you.”
Professor Leomentiis—known far more often by the epithet “the Witch of Nenyaple” than by her formal name—was a figure whose reputation only intensified as students advanced in their studies and committed themselves to the path of magic. Freshmen never attended her lectures and thus remained oblivious to her true standing, but among the upper years, her name alone could make even the most composed lose their appetite or jolt awake from sleep. She was also the professor whose name appeared most frequently in the graffiti scattered throughout Nenyaple.
Whispers circulated that she was over a hundred years old, rumors that she was a hybrid with something inhuman, yet she made no effort to refute them. Meanwhile, her merciless academic oversight of students facing expulsion and her iron-fisted management of Vineyard access—turning away even researchers in the midst of their work—only continued to elevate her infamy day by day.
Yet regardless of whose request had prompted it, Professor Leomentiis had aided Joshua considerably over the years. As Joshua straightened from his formal bow, the stern glint in her eyes softened slightly.
“Any mage who cannot bear to share that person’s burden must inevitably condemn themselves.”
Joshua hesitated for a moment before asking.
“I too wish to avoid hindering that person as much as possible. Do you happen to know the method for creating a wish mirror?”
Her head shook. The faint hope I had harbored extinguished without a sound. The Professor continued.
“A wish mirror ordinarily exists in the form of a cornerstone and only manifests when one comes to make a wish upon it.”
Joshua blinked, and an unexpected statement followed.
“That cornerstone once lay within your family’s territory. It has since vanished.”
“Vanished?”
She was undoubtedly referring to the cornerstone that had supposedly been in Periwinkle. Joshua had never seen it with his own eyes—he knew of it only through Kelsni’s accounts and through what Kelsni had shown him in dreams. He had simply assumed it still existed, believing at most that its power had faded from centuries of disuse. He had never imagined it had disappeared entirely.
“Had it still existed, we might at least have attempted to restore its power.”
“I… I believed it still existed.”
A puzzled light flickered across Professor Leomentiis’s brow.
“Why would you think that? Did someone from that island tell you so? Its disappearance occurred a very long time ago.”
Joshua found himself at a loss for words. Now that he thought about it, no one but Kelsni had ever told him about that cornerstone. It would certainly have existed during Kelsni’s era. Even if it had vanished afterward, Kelsni—bound to Jade Ring Castle—would have had no way of knowing.
Yet Kelsni had later traveled to Periwinkle with Joshua. So he too must have learned that the cornerstone had vanished. Perhaps, over the centuries, someone had destroyed it, and Kelsni, believing there was no way to restore it anyway, had deemed it irrelevant. In any case, Kelsni had not sought to repair the cornerstone there; instead, he had attempted to enter the Ancient Ganapolie Lands. Perhaps he had concluded that since Anarose had not repaired it in life, no one else could.
“That cornerstone had already lost its power long ago. I did not know it had vanished, but even if it still existed, there would likely have been no other way.”
Professor Leomentiis tilted her head slightly.
“That is not so. In Ganapoli’s records, there is no mention of a mirror cornerstone’s power simply fading on its own. Even abandoned and left as a children’s playground, once power has taken root, it does not disappear. The only issue is that the conditions necessary to awaken a stone that has slumbered so long were never fulfilled.”
Hearing this alone made my chest tighten. Joshua’s voice trembled as he asked.
“Conditions? What kind? Do you know what they are?”
“A potent magic that no longer exists in this world. As you have said, that person on Sunset Island—who has survived for centuries and fought against the Instrument of Malice—possesses precisely the kind of power required: mighty, purified, and concentrated magic.”
Joshua’s gaze remained fixed on Professor Leomentiis, but his focus had already drifted elsewhere. His thoughts spiraled. Then did Anarose truly possess the power to remake the mirror, yet deliberately chose not to?
Tichiel asked instead.
“Have you been researching mirrors all this time, Professor? Is that how you reached such a conclusion?”
“Do you imagine that while your father was researching airships and puppets, I was idly bickering with children? But it is the same with puppets. In this world where Ganapoli has vanished, the clean and potent magic they wielded no longer exists, making complete creation impossible. Such magic disappeared into the ‘Origin of Extinction’ that the Ancient Princess cast to protect the continent.”
Joshua raised his head and asked.
“Then how does that person on Sunset Island possess such magic? They were born after Ganapoli’s fall.”
A cold smile played at the corners of Professor Leomentiis’s mouth.
“Before you told me, I did not know precisely who that person was or what task they were accomplishing. But how could there be no records in the Vineyard of a mage so great? I have seen records deep within the Vineyard of one called ‘the Witch of Sunset Island.’ Yet that person’s power must have originated from the magic that once supplied all of Sunset Island during Ganapoli’s age—that is, from the Instrument of Malice. We call it the Instrument of Malice, but that name was given by those whose world nearly perished. The power within the Instrument of Malice is no different from Ganapoli’s magic. The only difference is that even Gitisi, the mightiest mage of our world at that time, could not contain such suddenly manifested power alone.”
“If it is not evil, then why must that person dedicate such years to sealing the Instrument’s power?”
“Evil is not a mark one receives at birth. In a world that cannot accept such power, it is merely evil. Must all great strength become evil? No one can answer that. Yet even a storm without malice becomes evil to those who lose their lives within it.”
Though this differed from my usual thoughts, I could not refute it. Even if this were merely Professor Leomentiis’s personal view, I—not being a mage—had no way to discern right from wrong.
After a moment, Professor Leomentiis suddenly gazed upward into empty space and released a heavy sigh. Then she turned and descended into the research chamber below her desk. When she returned some time later, she did not appear to be in good spirits.
“Tichiel, go down and speak with your father. I do not wish to discuss this further.”
Tichiel rushed down as if flying, and Joshua waited. Professor Leomentiis held her head in both hands for a moment before asking.
“Do you believe that even a soul can pass through a mirror?”
Joshua smiled weakly.
“That mirror reads the heart, or so I’ve heard. Being a wish mirror, it will surely divine the desires within my soul.”
Children of Rune – Winterer
Author: Jeon Min-hee
Published by: 14 Months Publishing
The rights to this book belong to the author and 14 Months Publishing.
To reuse all or part of this book’s contents, written consent from both parties is required.

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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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