Children of the Rune – Winterer - Chapter 557

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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 9.
The Noble Daughter and the Detective (9)
In the dream, I never spoke. Not once. I only listened. Mother didn’t know the sound of my voice. If I opened my mouth, she might think I wasn’t her daughter. Then she might turn and leave.
‘Drink.’
Charlotte gazed down at her clasped hands. There was still nothing there, but she slowly mimed drinking. The girl in the lake did the same.
Mother laughed. With a face that resembled my own. Eyes as blue as ice shards looked down at Charlotte. Long black hair drifted slowly in the wind. No—she didn’t resemble me. A mother never resembles her daughter. It is the daughter who resembles the mother.
‘From this moment, you are no longer my daughter. Nor am I your mother. We are those born of nothing. Nothing in this world shall bind you. It was the same for me. Not even you, lovely as a small maple bird.’
Charlotte listened to those words. She didn’t understand them, but she felt she had to accept them.
‘We are connected only through this gift, this sacred gift alone.’
Mother turned and left. The mother in the lake did the same. Charlotte stood there, wondering what she had drunk. It was water burning like fire. It was breath frozen like frost. A sharp gift pierced and burned through my entire body. The lake remained still. When a few drops of rain fell, the girl in the lake trembled.
Left alone, Charlotte repeated to herself: Older Brother, why are you doing this to me? Why did you leave me this secret? I don’t understand what this is.
Why did you leave without explaining?
Why haven’t you come back?
“Charlotte?”
It was a young man’s voice. At first, I thought it was Older Brother. But he never called me that way. Little bird, my little Alouette….
“Are you awake?”
Caught between hope and reality, Charlotte clenched her teeth for a moment. Then, surrendering, her eyes snapped open.
Ash-tinted brown hair, different from Older Brother’s golden locks, came into view first. It was Lorang. He stood at the head of the bed, looking down at me. Charlotte stared up at him with the blank expression of someone seeing him for the first time. Their eyes met, but no emotion crossed her face. Then she slowly became aware of her surroundings.
It was a quiet chamber with morning light streaming in. A wooden house. I lay in a bed, still wearing the Trainee Soldiers’ uniform, with only my cloak and boots removed.
After a moment, Lorang spoke.
“You seem to have forgotten who I am.”
Lorang sat in the chair beside the bed. Bandages were wrapped around both his hands. He looked down at his hands for a moment before speaking.
“Yesterday you were so desperate to save me.”
After a long pause, Charlotte spoke.
“What happened?”
Her voice was devoid of emotion. Her eyes seemed to lack focus, as if gazing at something distant. Lorang raised and lowered his eyebrows, pressed his lips together firmly once, then spoke quickly.
“Well, it turned out fine. You survived, I survived, and the others are all fine except for one with a broken arm. The Captain is of course perfectly fine. Everyone is resting well. There’s no problem. But why am I irritated? My temperament is really strange.”
Lorang’s gaze fell to Charlotte’s hands. Bandages were wrapped around her right hand as well, but she didn’t seem to notice. It was as if she had forgotten everything that happened yesterday and returned from another world.
“Where is this place?”
“An empty room the Island people built and wanted to lend us for free.”
“It seems those people rescued us.”
A strange expression crossed Lorang’s lips, then turned into a bitter smile. He tilted his head to one side and asked.
“Who did what? Did you forget?”
“Forget what?”
“You saved us.”
“Me?”
Only then did Charlotte gradually regain her sense of reality, her expression becoming puzzled. The face of the spirited and determined Trainee Soldier Charlotte returned. Lorang felt inwardly relieved, yet suddenly wondered if that was a mask. If so, then the face he had just witnessed might be the true face beneath the mask.
At that thought, he felt somewhat bitter. Yesterday, when only the two of us remained, we fought with our lives on the line to protect each other, but perhaps the Charlotte beneath the mask had no interest in such things at all.
“How did I do that?”
“You… borrowed my dagger and stabbed the wall to make a hole, remember?”
Charlotte nodded and gazed upward at the ceiling, as though searching through her memories.
“And then….”
“Yes, and then, well, after you shouted that word… you don’t remember what came next?”
“Shouted? What do you mean?”
Lorang didn’t explain but instead directed his gaze into empty space, as if expecting me to recall it myself. It wasn’t that I’d never spoken such words before, but saying them in front of a noblewoman felt awkward for some reason. Of course, the lady had said them first… but who in the world taught me such things?
“I do remember that part. The broken stones clumped together and transformed into something like a massive tower. But… what happened after that, I’m not entirely sure.”
“A great deal happened after that. What I mean is, I don’t know what it was either, but you unleashed an enormous power and swept away everything in that chamber. They all burned in an instant, as if struck by lightning. That’s how it ended.”
Charlotte, bewildered by this revelation, swallowed the words she’d been about to speak. After a brief pause, she managed to ask.
“…Really? Are you certain I did that? It’s not a misunderstanding?”
Their eyes met. Charlotte’s expression was one of pure astonishment, but Lorang’s gaze held something more complex as he replied.
“Yes. It seems you don’t know what it was either. In any case, thanks to that, we survived, so the escort mission was a success. Full marks.”
“….”
Charlotte blinked silently for a moment before asking.
“What were those things that attacked us? Have you figured it out now?”
“No, I haven’t. Is there even one person on This Island who can explain things properly? They can’t even speak the common tongue. Well, one thing I do know—they did this deliberately.”
“They did?”
“The people living on This Island. They spouted nonsense about investigating some artifact, lured us here, and committed this insane act. I can’t just kill them on the spot, and the situation is truly infuriating.”
As he spoke, Lorang noticed Charlotte staring intently at him. He hesitated, wondering if he’d said too much, but then recalled yesterday’s events and thought, ‘What pointless worry.’
Charlotte rose with a thoughtful expression, bracing herself with her right hand, then flinched and grimaced. Only then did she notice the bandages wrapped around her hand. Lorang held up his own similarly bandaged hand and spoke.
“Be careful with that. We were both clearly out of our minds yesterday.”
While fighting desperately, neither of us had noticed, but we’d both sustained lacerations even through our gloves—our hands were scraped and wounded in several places. Our shoulders and arms ached and throbbed. Charlotte sat and stared at her hands for a moment, then looked back at Lorang, about to ask something. That’s when a knock sounded.
The door opened to reveal only elderly figures. The Elder Woman leading them wore a crimson tunic with shoulders that spread like bird wings, and carried a rather large wooden box in her hands. Lorang rose abruptly and stepped forward, asking.
“What is this about?”
“….”
There was no answer. It was only natural—they couldn’t speak the common tongue—yet Lorang kept forgetting this. Instead of speaking, the Island Elders dropped to both knees and bowed their heads in a gesture of submission. It was a degree of deference I’d never witnessed even at Orlanne Court.
“….”
They then spoke, but of course, I couldn’t understand a word. Charlotte looked at Lorang in confusion, and he replied.
“I recall there was an interpreter before, but this time they’ve vanished without a trace. There’s a Trainee Soldier who understands their language somewhat, so I had him listen, but all they said was to wait—that everything would become clear once you awoke. After they nearly killed us by trapping us in the Cave yesterday, they offer no explanation whatsoever… Honestly, I was planning for us to simply leave once you woke up. But how did these people know you’d regained consciousness and come rushing here?”

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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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