Chapter 39: The First Echo

Corollis chased after him. It wasn’t recklessness. As the Saint, she knew exactly what lay in that final layer, and she knew they were racing against time.

To an extent, it wasn’t deadly. At least, the odds of losing her life weren’t high. But it would shorten a person’s years and gnaw at their mind.

Someone weak-willed would be left with lasting psychological scars once the seduction took hold.

So Corollis hurried, meaning to pull Lane back first. And because there was no immediate danger to life, she chose to go alone instead of calling the wardens first.

Before the Gate of Sin collapsed and the bone chains melted, even a second-grade sealed object like this one couldn’t kill anyone directly inside the Gate.

Corollis’s steps paused only for a moment as the information about the sealed object ran through her mind.

Sealed Object 2-4-7, the Mocking Tune of Dream Sounds.

It came from a seventh-rank Whisper Dreamer executed by the Broken Wing Tribunal. In the Last Kingdom, the Tribunal pierced his body with forty-seven iron nails, then had a member with only half a body carry his remains through a “judgment” ritual.

They walked for months, from the Last Kingdom’s old holy city to Cohen City in the Silver Moon Kingdom. When the ritual was nearly complete, as the miracle’s blessing was halfway down, the Tribunal member carrying the condemned was killed by an intruder.

The ritual was shattered. The ropes binding him, along with the Tribunal members around him, were destroyed by the enraged half-blessing. And in the condemned man’s mouth, there formed a delicate record that sang lullabies.

The record’s base was flesh, dressed in a comically ugly miniature tailcoat. Two long, withered little hands grew out of the flesh base, one to turn the record, one to scratch it.

Its seal was forged from the bones of the faithful beneath the church, bone chains that bound its true body, with the Gate of Sin joining in to suppress and control it. At the very least, that kept its danger in check.

After all, when it first appeared, it had caused a disaster that killed a tenth of Cohen City’s population. Tens of thousands died in that catastrophe. To suppress it, the Holy Church lost two seventh-rank knights in the sealing.

To this day, no crisis had ever required its use. But it was tied to the soul-return custom that had once spread through Cohen City.

All of this flashed through Lily’s mind in an instant. She had no time to hesitate. Knowing her life wasn’t in genuine peril, she was confident she could pull Lane back out of the dream.

“It creates dreams from your fears. If you don’t wake up after five echoes, it will devour your soul.”

Lily carried those words firmly in her heart, then stepped into the darkness. After the clinging, viscous feeling, she saw a spiral staircase leading down. A wooden sign read: Negative One.

The crooked lettering looked like clumsy graffiti. There were no such signs inside the Gate of Sin, and the writing would never be that ugly.

‘It didn’t let me pull him back in time, and yet it welcomes me now?’

Theoretically, Corollis should have had dozens of meters left before reaching the final layer’s entrance. Now she stood right before it.

She understood the Church. Simply containing this thing had already taken enormous resources.

Objects like this were hard to control. Sealing and using them was far more difficult than simply defeating them.

Had the war against the Abyss not reached its fever pitch, had the craze for new territory and deep-abyss treasure not swept the world, drawing most high-rank fighters into that conflict, the interior of human territory would never have developed this kind of sealing method. No one wants to face hardship and despair with no chance to struggle.

The tide was ebbing. The Abyss was at its most fragile, and it was the perfect moment to take territory back from its mouth.

Corollis walked down to the final layer, the Scroll of Will tight in her hand.

If she didn’t pull Lane out in time, the wardens would notice something wrong and come down looking for them.

Lily had told herself countless reasons why going down was safe. But there was no denying it. This was still a risk.

A familiar kind of risk.

It was so long ago. Like something from five years past.

He saved her. She saved him.

They each took risks for the other, willing to pay with their lives to walk into danger and hardship.

At that thought, Lily’s heart ached faintly again.

Faint sounds, broken whispers.

Scenes slowly surfaced before Corollis’s eyes. She knew with certainty that they were shaped from her fears, twisted out by the sealed object’s malice.

But even though she was prepared, Corollis still froze when the scene appeared.

She heard the sound of waves crashing, along with shouts. Turning, she saw sailors just stepping off a ship.

Someone accidentally bumped into her and knocked her down. Lying on the ground, Corollis looked at the other person.

A girl in a brown coat, looking a little flustered, with a leather satchel at her side. Corollis knew the satchel held letters.

She had met this girl not long ago. Not as the Corollis standing here, but as Fayrol, in the Silver Redemption Kingdom.

Ilan…

That mail girl. She should be on a train to the Silver Moon Kingdom by now.

She couldn’t be here. So this was a dream. This was a false Feather Redemption Harbor.

This was the past, a memory of what had been.

She had stepped into the dream.

Rustle, rustle… screech!

A sound like a bell mixed into the whispers. No, it was more like something sharp scraping roughly across a record. Just one instant.

The first echo.

In her daze, Corollis heard Ilan’s flustered apology. “Sorry, sorry!”

Just like when they first met.

‘Then, at this point in time, I should be seeing him soon.’

Lily didn’t know whether he would appear, or whether the one who did would be the false version of him or the real one.

Corollis only reached up and touched her face. There was no iron mask on it.

‘So that’s it. In this dream, I am “Corollis,” not “Fayrol.”‘

At this point in time, “Fayrol” would be wearing the mask, already two months into knowing him. It all began with this hurried encounter with the mail girl.

“Fayrol” and “he” were about to be drawn into the matter of “Evil Sin.” And Evil Sin was the one who had killed Fayrol’s parents and forced them to pour silver water over their own daughter’s face in a desperate search for a thread of life.

Lily had relived the events the two of them had shared countless times. So her gaze turned to one spot, ignoring the mail girl.

“Sorry, sorry… um, are you all right?”

The flustered voice of the mail girl, Ilan.

A male figure appeared at the end of her sight, just as Lily expected.

He walked toward her.

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