Chapter 502

Chapter 502: Heading South.

A strange word he had never heard before reached his ears. Its mysterious, harsh sound did not even seem to belong to any language Tyrian knew.

He lowered his head in shock and glanced at the file, at the precise drawing of the stone sphere on it. After a long moment he finally looked up and asked: “Father, what did you just say? ‘The Moon’… is that the name of this thing? Do you know this mysterious sphere?!”

Duncan, however, seemed not to hear him. He still stared at the image on the paper, the image of the Moon that looked so familiar to him. Only after Tyrian repeated his question twice did Duncan suddenly come back to himself. He looked at Tyrian and quickly asked: “You just mentioned Lucretia. What exactly happened?”

“Um… this is information she sent from the Radiant Star,” Tyrian said after a pause. Father’s strange reaction made him uneasy, but under that oppressive, almost gaze he still poured out everything he knew: “Some time ago, a mysterious glowing object fell from the border region and happened to be found by Lucretia. She has been studying it all this time. This strange sphere is the ‘core’ of that fallen relic…”

Tyrian slowly told the whole story from beginning to end. He spoke of how the scholars in Lightwind Harbor had judged that the fallen relic came from Visions 001, and of all the progress they had made so far in their study of the stone sphere, as well as all the problems they had run into.

While he spoke, Duncan did not interrupt even once. Duncan only listened in a strange, heavy silence that made Tyrian feel even more pressure, as if he meant to carve every sentence deep into his mind and take every word apart, grind it down, and dissect it a thousand times over.

After more than ten minutes, the domed office fell quiet again.

Duncan stayed silent for a long time. At last, before the air itself seemed to grow solid, he let out a quiet breath and asked: “Why did you not tell me about this before?”

“…Lucretia wanted to wait until her research had made some progress before contacting you. And more importantly… at that time we were in the middle of the Frostholm crisis.”

After a while, Duncan felt his pounding heart slowly calm down. As he listened to Tyrian, he finally gave a small nod and asked: “This thing is in Lightwind Harbor now, is it not?”

“Uh… yes,” Tyrian said at once, nodding. His lips felt dry, and he watched Father’s expression with growing tension. After hesitating several times, he could not help asking again: “Do you know this mysterious sphere?”

“…It is called the Moon. At least, that is what it looks like. But the Moon I know does not have a diameter of ten meters, and it could never float on the sea and be dragged back to a city-state with steel cables by a ship,” Duncan said slowly. “Perhaps it is only some man-made object that copied its shape. Perhaps it is only something the ancient kingdom of Critt…”

He broke off halfway. The sense of deep contradiction and the tangled thoughts in his mind clashed so hard that none of his guesses could explain this matter. No matter what, one thing was beyond doubt: in the picture on the document in Tyrian’s hand, that was indeed the Moon. And no matter whether the stone sphere Lucretia had picked up at sea was the true Moon, or only an “artificial flying object” made by the ancient Critt kingdom to imitate the Moon, one question still remained:

Why would the image of the Moon he knew so well appear here? Why would it appear in this eerie, twisted “other world”?

Lost in his thoughts, he frowned and looked at Tyrian: “You said just now that the scholars in Lightwind Harbor have already confirmed that the mysterious glowing glowing orb fell off the rune ring of Visions 001?”

“Yes. They have already confirmed with their own eyes the shape of the gap on the Sun’s rune ring,” Tyrian said. Then another question came to him, and he added: “You said it is called ‘the Moon’… then what exactly is the Moon?”

“The Moon…” Duncan hesitated. He suddenly found that he did not have the right words to explain such a simple name to Tyrian. After thinking for a long time, he could only say: “…It is a planet.”

When Tyrian heard this, the confusion on his face only grew. He asked: “What is a planet?”

Duncan fell silent.

After a very long time, he finally heard Tyrian’s voice again: “Is this a forbidden question? Am I asking too much?”

“No, it is not forbidden. It… should be the simplest question of all, yet I have no way to explain it to you,” Duncan said with a slight shake of his head. He looked at the opposite side of the mirror with a complicated expression and said: “I am sorry, Tyrian. The answer to this question is simple, but helping you understand it is the hardest part.”

Tyrian froze a little.

He looked at Father in the mirror, his expression complicated and apologetic. For a moment, Tyrian suddenly felt that this scene had happened once, long, long ago, somewhere deep in a distant, hazy memory, on some faded afternoon…

On that day, he and Lucretia had stood for the last time on the deck of the Vanished and had asked their father, who had decided to cross the border, what exactly lay beyond the border.

Back then, Father’s reaction had been exactly the same as now.

It was the look of someone who knew an extremely simple truth, yet did not know how to explain it to others.

Just then, Duncan’s voice came suddenly from the mirror and cut off Tyrian’s sinking memories: “I have changed my plan. Next, the Vanished will head for Lightwind Harbor.”

It was within his expectations. The moment Father had reacted like that to the sphere called the Moon, Tyrian had known things would develop this way.

“I understand. I will explain the situation to Lucretia.”

…

Nina looked worriedly at Duncan, who was standing at the far edge of the deck and gazing out at the sea. Alice walked past her, and Nina pulled her to a stop.

“Uncle Duncan, what is going on?” Nina asked in a low voice. “He has been staring into the distance this whole time. He looks like he has a lot on his mind…”

“I do not know,” Alice said, glancing up at him and shaking her head in confusion. “He has been like that since he came out of the captain’s cabin. He said he had to think about some things…”

“Think about some things?” Nina blinked, puzzled. “Did something happen?”

Alice thought carefully for a moment, then nodded and said: “He contacted Tyrian, but I do not know what they talked about.”

“Mr. Tyrian?” Nina was stunned. Then her imagination began to run wild, and her expression slowly turned odd. She asked: “Is it because Mr. Tyrian still has not gotten married?”

Alice looked utterly lost and asked: “Huh? What do you mean?”

Nina thought for a moment, then began to explain very seriously: “I heard it from Mr. Morris. He often worries about Miss Heidi’s marriage. But Mr. Tyrian is even older than Miss Heidi. So by the same logic, the captain must be even more worried about this…”

Alice was completely taken in. She nodded in a daze and said: “So that is how it is!”

Just as she finished speaking, Duncan’s voice suddenly came from beside them: “That is enough, you two. Nina, you must not tease Alice like that. She will take it seriously.”

“Wah!” Nina jumped in fright. Only then did she notice that Uncle Duncan had somehow come up beside her. She quickly drew back her neck and stood up straight like a good girl.

Alice scratched her hair in confusion and looked at Nina with a puzzled face, asking: “Were you teasing me just now?”

“…In any case, do not take what she just said seriously,” Duncan said helplessly. Then his gaze fell on Nina. “Do not worry. Nothing bad has happened.”

Nina stuck out her tongue, but soon her face turned worried again. She asked: “Uncle Duncan, what exactly happened? You rarely look so troubled…”

For a moment Duncan did not know how to answer this young lady’s question. What appeared in his mind was still that drawing he had seen in Tyrian’s office and the strange thing Lucretia had “picked up” at sea.

The Moon…

He raised his hand and rubbed his aching brow. But in the next second, his movement stopped, and he turned instead to stare fixedly at the girl in front of him.

Nina stood there obediently, a slightly worried look on her face.

Duncan looked at her, at this quiet, gentle, well-behaved little solar prominence. Beneath that shell of a human maiden, he seemed to see directly the bright arc left behind after a star shattered, and the blazing plasma flow that had once erupted in the void of space…

The little solar prominence tilted her head, reached out, and gently touched Duncan’s tightly furrowed brow, as if she wanted to smooth out those deep lines. She asked: “Uncle Duncan, are you really all right?”

Duncan did not speak. He only took Nina’s hand and pressed it to his forehead, then slowly let out a breath.

Once again he understood a few more things. Behind the heavy Veil, this world had once more shown him a corner of the “truth”. Yet this small piece of truth was something he could not share with anyone.

“Do not worry, Nina. Everything is fine,” he said slowly, gradually returning to his usual self. “I have run into some hard questions, but right now it is hard to explain them to you. When I solve them, I will explain everything to you properly.”

Nina listened in a daze, then nodded hard and said: “Mm.”

“Good. Then go back to the cabin first. It is time for us to set out. But before we depart, we need to detour to the Sea Mist Fleet’s base. We have to take something along for Tyrian…”

…

In the domed office of the governor of the Frostholm city-state.

With a faint humming sound, the scrying crystal slowly lit up. In its dim light, the figure of the Sea Witch gradually became clear.

“Brother?” Lucretia looked over with curiosity. “Are you done with everything over there? Did it all go well?”

“If you mean the appointment ritual, it ended this morning. Everything went well,” Tyrian said. His expression gradually turned complicated. “But I am contacting you for something else.”

Lucretia frowned and asked: “Something else?”

“Two things,” Tyrian said after a short hesitation, choosing his words carefully. “First, I have prepared the Spirit Realm lens you wanted. I used legal city channels to get you the best and most precise lens array device available at the moment.”

In the scrying crystal, Lucretia’s face lit up with joy at once. She said: “Ah, that is wonderful! Brother, you really are reliable! And what is the second thing?”

“…The second thing. Guess who is going to deliver the lens to you?”

“One of your transport ships?”

Tyrian did not answer.

Lucretia’s expression slowly changed. She said: “…It is one of your transport ships, right?”

Tyrian still did not answer.

Lucretia finally reacted.

“…Dad?”

“Yes.”