Children of the Rune – Winterer - Chapter 91

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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 91.
Blood That Does Not Fade (4)
Perhaps it had been a mistake. In life, their names were never abbreviated—they may have been sacred in their very essence.
The object Endymion had left behind lay some distance from my feet. It was a broad bronze vessel, and inside it were roughly a dozen smooth, round stones the size of pigeon eggs.
Water droplets fell somewhere in the distance, as if measuring time itself.
I lay deep within a cave, the black night sky visible beyond the rounded entrance. The walls were damp, and the air around me was thick with moisture. It seemed the rain had only recently stopped.
I wondered how long I had remained here. The fact that I felt no hunger suggested it had not been as long as I might have thought.
Yet with nothing changing but the endless sound of dripping water, there was no way to gauge the passage of time.
I pushed myself upright and pulled the bronze vessel toward me from where it lay at my feet. The vessel was far heavier than I had imagined.
I picked up one of the stones. It was a mysterious stone with a pale, lustrous surface adorned with fine silver crystals.
As I rolled it between my palms, memories gradually resurfaced.
The Spirit Boy Endymion and his companions had said that my existence must not become known to the ‘adult spirits’ of this place—they had tried to explain it in a way I could understand.
The existence of a sword that pierced through the Alternate Space, which should have remained divided, was exceedingly dangerous to them. They warned that I might have the sword taken from me, or I myself might be captured and never escape.
When I had accepted everything and grasped the hand Endymion extended, the landscape around me shifted, and I found myself standing within this cave.
I was relieved to see that the moon hanging outside the cave looked the same as the one I had always known. It was in its last quarter.

“It would be best if you rested here for a while. You cannot eat the food of this place, and this world will always appear as night to you. So sleep. It is safer that way. In the meantime, I will search for a way for you to return.”
Why had I understood so easily? Like an obedient child, I lay down on the straw mat of the cave and fell into a deep sleep. And I dreamed.
According to Endymion, those dreams flowed from the stone spheres in the vessel he had placed at my feet. The first thing I saw was absolute darkness.
Then a brightly shining desert came to mind. Having never seen a desert before, I did not understand why it gleamed so. When I approached and touched it, the sand was extraordinarily fine.
I dreamed of another vision. There was an old well in ruins similar to the hallucination I had witnessed upon first entering the Island.
No—looking more carefully, it merely felt similar. It was not ruins. It was simply empty, and therefore decaying.
After several more years, it would eventually become ruins. I approached the well and examined my surroundings. Black moss grew from the bottom and climbed the well’s walls. Soon I peered into the well itself.
Inside the well was nothingness. And it opened somewhere far, far below.
“You have awakened.”
A voice reached me as I was revisiting the dreams one by one.
Moments later, a familiar form slowly materialized in the empty space. By the time it had become complete, Endymion was already sitting before my resting place.
His translucent hair shimmered like heat haze, then settled.

「Did you dream?」
“Yes.”
Endymion gazed at the stone sphere Daphnen held, then pressed a single finger against it. A fleeting image materialized and dissolved—within it lay a well.
「That was your final dream. It’s called the Old Man’s Well.」
“What is it?”
「A well that transforms those who gaze into it into the elderly. Though not always—only on certain special days. Some age in face, others in spirit. Those who peer in seeking the wisdom of age emerge with weathered, wrinkled skin, while children desperate to grow up lose all interest in the world’s affairs.」
“Then why would anyone look into it?”
「Because everything one must never lose, yet has lost, dwells within its depths.」
I turned to see Endymion’s face, but instead caught sight of the setting moon beyond the cave’s mouth. The boy, his visage surrendered to that moonlight, gazed at me with eyes that seemed to search for some lost corpse.
His blue eyes were mesmerizing.
Night had finally descended upon the waking world.
The three priests gathered at the Town Hall in the dead of night to perform a brief ritual. Only Priestess Despoina remained to await the answer, while the other two priests returned to their respective homes.
Nauplion still pushed through the door bearing the sign “No Visitors,” and finding the lamp in its familiar place, he lit it, illuminating the room.
Then he froze.
An unexpected visitor sat waiting inside the room.
It was startling that she had boldly entered despite the master’s refusal of visitors, but compared to who had come, that was nothing. She was someone who should never have come.
For seven years since that incident, the two had lived as though they existed yet did not exist for one another.
“It’s been a long time.”
“What has been a long time?”
Isolet rose from her chair and glanced at the wreath of Azelda flowers hanging on the opposite doorknob. Nauplion offered a weary smile.
“You finding me.”
Though they lived on the same island and often had the chance to encounter one another, they would pass quickly without either seeming to avoid the other.
Even when they occasionally exchanged words, it was only when there was simple business to attend to. How long had it been since she came like this and sat in his home?
“I didn’t come looking for the priest.”
Nauplion gestured lightly for her to sit back down.
“Yes, I thought as much.”
Suddenly, silence fell between them. Rather than awkwardness, it was as though they had exhausted all words to say, as if there had never been anything to say from the beginning. They averted their gazes from one another.
Out of habit—or rather, habit that had become ingrained—they tried to pass by each other, but this was inside a home. They were visitor and host.
Should he, like an ordinary host, offer her something to drink? Or should he broach a serious matter and let the sentiment of this meeting after seven years slip away unspoken?
Or should he simply wait, until she spoke first, as though nothing were amiss?
“Where has Daphnen gone?”
The silence was brief.
“He’s not here.”
“You’re not going to claim he went for a walk, are you?”
“No….”
They were two people with far too much to say if they were to speak at all. Yet neither sat down, standing face to face.
Isolet kept one hand in the deep pocket of her white linen skirt, studying Nauplion intently.
“You’re hiding something.”
Nauplion spoke slowly.
“You broke the taboo you thought you’d keep your whole life—for that child’s sake.”
Isolet’s golden eyebrows twitched slightly.
“I am Daphnen’s teacher. And when a child who was perfectly fine that morning has been so ill that he hasn’t left his room for five days, I naturally found it strange.”
“So you’ve reached a conclusion?”
The conversation was flowing in an odd direction. They should have been worried about Daphnen’s whereabouts, yet between these two people who were instead working harder to justify their own actions, there lay a secret difficult to shake off.
“Don’t deflect. What happened?”
“Are you worried?”
“Of course. Is that strange?”
“Ah yes, right. You said you came as that child’s teacher.”
…
The words kept missing the mark. But then Nauplion suddenly shook his head vigorously, running both hands through his hair several times before pressing his temples.
The confusion vanished from his face, and his eyes changed. Isolet simply watched him in silence.
“Yes. Since I’ve already looked inside and examined things, you understand the situation? It was all a lie. Daphnen isn’t ill—he’s missing. We couldn’t find him anywhere on The Island.”
Isolet gazed at Nauplion with clear, wordless eyes.
“I suspect that child was swept up in some kind of corrupted force and stepped into an Alternate Space. Priestess Despoina is currently attempting to sense the child’s location. And only I, Priestess Despoina, and Morpheus know this fact. As the fourth person to learn of it, you must absolutely keep this secret. For Daphnen’s sake. Because…”
At that moment, Isolet’s voice cut him off.
“It’s because of that sword, isn’t it.”
Nauplion stopped his rapid explanation.
“How do you know?”
“The sword that child always carries. The one you permitted him to possess.”
Throughout her time with Daphnen, Isolet had never once brought up Winterer in conversation. Yet she had never overlooked it either.
Whenever she taught Daphnen the Sacred Chant Tradition, singing it phrase by phrase, she had continuously observed a strange, indescribable aura emanating from Winterer placed nearby.
It would vanish the moment the song ceased, but while her voice reached it, it created an unnatural disturbance in the air, as if trembling with anxiety—whether exhaling or inhaling.
Several times she had considered bringing it up, but since it disappeared as soon as the song stopped, it was difficult to say definitively what it was. Even whether it was something good or bad remained unclear.
Yet one thing was certain: the sword harbored a strange aura, and it weakly resonated with the magic dwelling in the chant.
“Then that darkness that day was also connected to that sword?”
Struck at the heart of the matter, Nauplion fell silent for a moment.
In that instant, he was thinking that he could not trust even Isolet carelessly. No—precisely because it was Isolet, it might be even more impossible.
Judging by how she had come all this way, she seemed to have some affection for Daphnen, but her father, Ilios Priest, was a man who had given his life to protect The Island.
There was no way Isolet could be insensitive to the safety of an island protected at such a cost.
Moreover, she was a daughter who had inherited her father’s rigid temperament exactly.
As Nauplion remained silent, Isolet spoke.
“I see. So that’s why you’re going to such lengths to protect that child.”
Though Isolet had not formally studied magic, her knowledge of it far surpassed Nauplion’s. From the fragmentary exchange of words alone, she could more than discern the outline.
Nauplion suddenly asked.
“You… Isolet, what do you think of Daphnen?”
Isolet appeared momentarily flustered. A tremor crossed her pupils.
“What do I think? Are you asking me to repeat what I just said?”
Nauplion shook his head.
“That’s not it. How much do you like that child? To what extent has he won your favor? Enough to protect him from others? Enough to overlook the potential threat he carries? Even knowing how dangerous that is?”
Isolet exhaled softly, closing and opening her eyes.
“Do I look like I would suggest driving Daphnen away from The Island?”
“I don’t know. So tell me now.”
“No.”
The answer was brief. Nauplion pressed further, as if seeking confirmation.
“No? Then you’re saying you have the desire to shield that child from harm?”
Something about his phrasing struck me as odd. Isolet shot Nauplion a suspicious glance, but he merely smiled wearily before speaking again.
“Tell me.”

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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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