By Zephyria “…….”
What on earth does this girl’s sister do? Leonardo stared at Signe, asking with his eyes instead of words.
The letters sparsely engraved on the stone slab were clearly in Ancient Language. However, the sisters in the story who had navigated this maze were clearly both young. It was hard to believe that they could interpret Ancient Language at that age.
“How did your sister know Ancient Language?”
“She was smart and could speak other languages since she was young. Not perfectly, though.”
“Then you must know what the contents written here mean too, right? You would have heard it from the side.”
“Uh… well.”
Signe scratched her cheek, rolling her eyes upwards. Leonardo, who was watching her awkward gesture, hardened his expression and threatened.
“If you say you don’t remember, I’m really going to―”
“Ah―, it’s not that I don’t remember, but it’s not like I remember it in detail either. That was already several years ago! And don’t lower your voice like that. It’s creepy like a training instructor!”
“…Is that the problem? Think carefully. We have to get out of here.”
“Okay, just wait a minute, let me think. Let me think.”
Signe replied brusquely, squatted down on the spot, and stared intently at the contents of the stone slab. She also rubbed the star-shaped mark engraved on the side with her hand. She even furrowed her brow and groaned, as if trying to return to that moment in the past.
After groaning for a while, she suddenly clapped her hands.
“Ah, right! There was a word that was uniquely repeated on each stone slab, so we just kept following the places where that word appeared.”
“A repeated word? Are the contents different on each stone slab?”
Leonardo’s fingertips touched the surface of the worn stone slab. Signe, who had been hesitating, replied in an uncertain tone.
“…Probably different. If they were the same, my sister wouldn’t have stopped and read them every time.”
“Hmm….”
“I remember the repeated word as meaning ‘gift’. But that gift wasn’t the gift we’re talking about now, but a somewhat ambiguous word expressed in an ancient sense. Mu… mu… what was it?”
“Muṛiël.”
“Oh yeah, that’s right! It’s the same pronunciation my sister used! And she also talked about the words ‘present’ and ‘time’, and my sister said that all three were connected. I still don’t know what it means, though.”
Present, time, gift.
It was a combination that seemed to come straight out of ancient mythology. On the other hand, it was also proof that her sister knew Ancient Language properly.
If you connect the three words, in context, it completes a saying that often appears in philosophical books, such as ‘The present time is a gift’. ‘Muṛiël’, which means gift in Ancient Language, also has the meaning of the moment of existence, the flowing now. In the end, the proverb completed with that one sentence could be expressed with just one word, Muṛiël. It’s a similar context to how ‘present’ is referred to as ‘The present’ in today’s language.
Philosophy has traditionally contained the essence of human groups or history, truth, etc., so it wasn’t too strange that such a word was engraved on the stone slab.
‘But what does this mean?’
Leonardo looked at the stone slab in front of him again. There must be a reason why a sentence made up of Ancient Language is written here. Like the inscriptions on the steles erected in the four directions based on Beacon 118 in the peninsula, it must have a purpose….
The problem was that, unlike the letters at the time, which were relatively easy to interpret, the Ancient Language in this stone slab was at a considerable level of decoding. Ancient Language has several words and meanings derived from one word, which is why even if they look similar, the meanings are clearly different, or even if they are the same word, they are used ambiguously, so the direction of interpretation was diverse.
Not only that, but unlike the steles erected by the gatekeepers of the peninsula to widely publicize the will of the Sun King, this stone slab was unfamiliar and difficult, as if trying to hide its meaning.
It was like writing down high-level wordplay that only intellectuals could understand. Nevertheless, a few clues were caught, so the sentence began to be read sparsely with shallow knowledge. Fortunately, the sentence wasn’t that long.
“Time is a broken piece….”
“Time is not a broken piece. It is a flow that continues around the present.”
Just as Leonardo was about to stammer and continue, Signe added the following content from the side.
The two were silent for a moment. It was Leonardo who turned his head to look at her first.
“What was that just now?”
“When I heard you say that, I remembered the sentence my sister said.”
“…Is that the content of this stone slab? Is there anything else you remember?”
“…Hmm.”
Signe blinked again with an awkward expression. The silence continued for a while.
That sister complex, she doesn’t seem to know anything but her sister. Leonardo sighed without showing it and got up from his seat. Then, he headed to the place where he had found another stone slab on the way.
Signe, who was left alone, shouted in surprise.
“Theo! Where are you going? What if you get lost!”
She limped after Leonardo as if she were walking with three or four military packs on her back. In the meantime, Leonardo began to cut through the field that Signe had trampled on with her military boots on the way. Unfortunately, most of the contents of another stone slab that appeared soon after had been erased.
He tried to read it as much as possible based on the clues from earlier, but he only managed to recognize a new combination of ‘God’s gift’. Since there was the word gift and the marks left by the sisters, it was correct to be heading in the right direction based on the past. However, it was frustrating because there was no further progress. Leonardo roughly swept back his hair and muttered.
“Ha, damn… I need to see something to interpret it….”
“I remembered, I remembered! Go a little slower!”
Signe, who was panting and grabbed Leonardo’s arm, collapsed downwards as if she was falling. Leonardo, who barely held her up, carefully sat her down on the floor and asked back.
“What else did you remember?”
“Huk… You asked earlier if the word ‘romance’ was related to this area. So I thought about it, ha, my sister said this maze is a riddle. You have to solve the riddle to get out.”
At that moment, Leonardo’s eyes hardened subtly.
‘A riddle?’
Alec Siles is a very fond of elements. It was the moment when he was convinced that even this situation where he was wandering around the field was Alec’s trick and experiment. Leonardo wiped his eyes with his dry hand, sat down next to Signe, and leaned his face in and asked.
“What does that have to do with ‘romance’?”
“You can reach the gift if you say the name of the owner of the gift. But we didn’t know the name of the owner, so we just kept following the word gift.”
Signe took a breath and added.
“At that time, the letters on the stone slab were clearer than they are now. My sister said that the contents of this stone slab were like a love letter. You know, like lovers give each other gifts and write letters. It says that this gift is all for you, and there are phrases sent to the recipient….”
When a really random topic came out, Leonardo only questioned it with his expression without saying a word. Beginning and end, Bermuda, disappearing corpses, distorted space-time, philosophy about time, God’s gift… While all sorts of profound elements were popping out, suddenly a love letter? For a moment, his head was dizzy, and it took quite a while to accept her story.
So does that mean they are wandering in someone’s love letter that has crossed several centuries? Are those words, the present time, God’s gift, their ardent serenades?
He couldn’t understand it at all, but the meaning implied in ‘romance’ in the memo was similar to that, so Leonardo couldn’t say anything for a while, only moving the ends of his lips.
“I actually thought my sister was lying because she was afraid I wouldn’t go because I was scared. So I had completely forgotten about it… Where did you hear the word romance from?”
“…From the guy who called me here.”
He soon sat side by side with Signe in front of the stone slab and stared at the scenery beyond the swaying wildflowers. He watched the vast lake, the stagnant sky, and the foggy area beyond. As he recalled the word ‘gift’, he instinctively thought of the old castle that would be there and the treasure it held.
No, if you had to define the scope of the gift, it would be no exaggeration to say that the entire majestic scenery unfolded by this stone slab was included.
‘Then is even the distorted space-time a device created by the person sending the letter? To prevent anyone but the owner of the gift from approaching.’
Leonardo murmured blankly in the wind that swept over his hair and cheeks.
“…The scale of the love letter is huge.”
The letters and gifts he had given to His Excellency were a drop in the bucket. To present such a magnificent land as a letter to someone, it must have been a great aristocrat or royalty at that time.
“I know, right. If this is a real letter, I want to receive something like this too.”
Signe, who was next to him, listed her great wishes. She seemed to be in better condition than before, judging by the silly things she was saying.
“But the content of the riddle itself may have been misunderstood by my sister. I had found a sentence that could be inferred that the owner of the gift was ‘God’. So I said all sorts of names of gods that my sister and I knew, but nothing happened at that time either. The road was still like a maze.”
Leonardo, who was taking in the scenery, turned to look at Signe. She brushed the hair that stuck out from under her beret to the side and continued.
“Or was there a correct answer among the names we said, so we were able to reach the old castle?”
“The owner of the gift is God?”
“Yeah. That’s how my sister interpreted it. I heard that people used to offer sacrifices to God….”
His golden eyes narrowed.
“Are you sure? The order hasn’t changed, has it?”
“Huh? It could have changed. My sister was young too. She didn’t know everything.”
Leonardo once again stared at the stone slab placed in front of him and Signe. The only phrase he could recognize was ‘Ėxⱥnîr na Muṛiël’, that is, ‘God’s gift’.
In Ancient Language, ‘na’ indicates origin or relationship rather than possession. If you take out ‘God’s gift’ separately and combine it from the sentence ‘The owner of the gift is God’, which Signe’s sister interpreted…
God’s gift is the owner, the owner is God’s gift….
Suddenly, Leonardo remembered the only ‘God’s gift’ he knew. A noble bloodline and royalty, someone who could receive a huge land next to Central, where Saint Laina was located, as a gift.
The one who had been prolonging the seal from Beacon 118 beyond countless time to the present world.
Leonardo retraced the cause of the unpleasant sense of déjà vu he had felt in the peninsula. He had even broken the Sealing Magic Circle there with Agrizendro. So it was stranger not to feel ‘his’ energy in a place for ‘him’.
“I think I know. Who the owner of the gift is.”
“…What?”
“The Sun King, God’s gift.”
He struggled to utter the familiar name that lingered on his tongue.
“Theo.”
At that moment, the small bag containing the gold bracelet began to shake violently. An unidentified brilliant light poured out from the narrow gap, dyeing the field of vision white.
Leonardo and Signe frowned at the glare, but couldn’t turn their heads. At the peak of the explosively brilliant radiance that surged hotly, a powerful force that tightened their breath pulled their whole bodies.