Chapter 146- The Story of Luna Vesper.

Chapter 146: Chapter 146- The Story of Luna Vesper.

The Guardian had been about to offer another name when the sound of the name Luna stopped her mid-thought.

Silence settled over the chamber for a long moment. A low mist curled around their ankles while dark mana pulsed steadily through the vein running along the floor.

Leo lowered himself to sit on the ground, bringing himself down to eye level with the little girl. She stood perfectly still, watching him in silence for a long while, saying nothing at all.

Even Blacky had settled down nearby, quietly taking in the scene unfolding around him.

The Guardian finally spoke. The veil covering the lower half of her face shifted slightly as she did, her voice coming out dry and measured. "The name Luna suits her well enough. But a name should also reflect who she is, and anchor what she carries inside her." She paused. "On its own, Luna feels incomplete."

Leo glanced up at her. "Incomplete how? You have something to pair with it?"

He studied her with open suspicion. Some part of him was genuinely worried she’d try to sneak the word bone or skeleton into the name somehow.

"I do," the Guardian said, a faint smile touching her eyes.

"Let’s hear it, then," Leo said.

"Vesper."

"Vesper?" Leo repeated.

"Yes. Vesper means twilight — the evening hour, the moment when day finally gives way to night. Paired together, it becomes something like moon of the twilight." She paused again, studying Leo carefully. "It also carries the meaning of a boundary — between life and death, between light and darkness. It suits her, I think."

The Guardian turned her gaze toward the little girl and murmured, almost to herself, "Between life and death. Between what’s been lost and what still remains. Luna Vesper."

Leo tried the name out loud. "Luna Vesper. A little ominous, maybe, but it’s got a nice weight to it. Let’s go with that."

He looked to the girl. "From today onward, you’ll be called Luna Vesper."

The little girl stared back at him in silence, then glanced toward the Guardian. Her hands tightened around the fabric of her skirt, and her eyes began to well up with tears.

"Do you like it?" both of them asked at once, crouching down together to meet her at eye level.

The girl stayed silent, clearly holding something back, but gave a small, careful nod.

Then she lowered her chin. The Guardian stepped forward and gently took her by the hand. "Come. I’ll teach you how to write it." She led the girl toward the blackboard, Leo trailing a few steps behind.

The Guardian picked up a bone-white piece of chalk and began sketching out a series of symbols that meant absolutely nothing to Leo.

She pointed at the first set and said, clearly, "Luna" — then looked toward the girl.

Then she drew another unfamiliar symbol beside it, pointed to it in turn, and said, "Vesper."

"Luna Vesper."

The girl’s lips parted slightly, but no sound came out. Her eyes stayed locked on the writing in front of her, unmoving.

Then the tears started again, welling up fast this time.

One rolled down her cheek. Then another followed close behind.

She wiped at them quickly with the back of her hand, but more kept coming, faster than she could clear them away.

Leo froze, worried for a moment that she hated the name after all. He opened his mouth to say something—

But the Guardian held up a hand, stopping him before he could.

The entire chamber seemed to register the girl’s grief and quiet joy all at once. The death-mana veins running through the floor responded to her emotion, resonating with it directly. Undead mana churned and spread, slowly filling the whole chamber from wall to wall.

Dark mist crept along the ground, rising steadily until it reached past their knees.

The temperature in the room dropped noticeably.

The chamber itself was answering Luna.

Leo’s vision went dark without warning.

No light. Just black, churning undead mana, swallowing everything around him.

Then it shifted.

A faint light emerged, and Leo found himself looking at a woman lying in bed, cradling a newborn infant against her side. She gazed down at the baby with pure, unguarded love, her hands moving gently as she traced a finger across its tiny forehead.

She smiled, pulling the baby closer into her arms.

Then her eyes slowly drifted closed, her hand slowing mid-motion before falling still against the blanket.

The room erupted into noise almost instantly — voices shouting, people rushing toward the bed and the crying infant. The baby’s cries filled the air.

The mother’s eyes never opened again. The father gripped her hand tightly, grief overtaking him as tears streamed down his face.

The vision shifted once more.

The child had grown a little, now small enough to be cradled in her father’s arms. He looked down at her with warmth, with genuine affection — until, without warning, undead mana began curling around the child’s small frame.

The love in his eyes vanished instantly, replaced by raw fear.

The child didn’t understand what was happening. She reached her arms toward her father, wanting to be held, but he only flinched back, horror written across his face.

Then he turned and fled the room.

...

The vision shifted again. This time the child appeared with a dog by her side, one that seemed to genuinely care for her. She’d been playing with it for as long as she could remember. Even as her father grew more distant, more afraid of her, the dog never once left her.

But the dog was growing old. One day, after following it around the house as usual and curling up to sleep beside it that night, she woke the next morning to find it hadn’t moved at all.

It was dead.

Her father discovered the dog’s body and buried it quietly in the yard.

Luna stayed by the grave for days afterward, crying.

Every day she thought of the dog and cried a little more. Then, one evening, she heard a familiar scratching sound at the door — the same sound the dog used to make when it wanted to come inside. She rushed to open it, and there it was.

The dog had come back.

Her face lit up instantly. She ran toward it — but her father grabbed her before she could reach it.

Because the dog wasn’t truly alive. It had returned as an undead creature, its body already showing the early signs of decay.

The whole family froze in terror. Her father trembled where he stood, while her aunts and grandparents backed away, fear plain on every face.

Her father slammed the door shut and staggered back from it.

The little girl, overwhelmed with sadness she didn’t fully understand, began unconsciously releasing undead mana of her own. The rest of the family recoiled even further, terrified.

Her aunt went so far as to curse at her outright, calling her a devil’s child, blaming her for her mother’s death and for whatever had happened to the dog.

Her father said nothing at all. Her grandparents still loved her, somewhere underneath it, but their fear had grown too large to overcome.

With no other option left, as they saw it, her father was forced to leave her at an orphanage.

...

The father she’d trusted completely left her there, promising he’d come right back.

He never returned.

She waited, and kept waiting, but no one ever came to collect her.

The long hallways of the orphanage, filled with other children, felt hollow and distant to her, like none of it was quite real.

She was fed. She was taught. And slowly, she began speaking less and less.

The undead mana kept surfacing regardless, and undead birds, cats, and mice began gathering around her without explanation. Eventually the orphanage tried placing her with a foster family instead.

An older couple found her endearing and decided to adopt her.

A new home. A new bed. A new family. For a little while, they treated her kindly, and the voice she’d lost slowly started coming back. She began speaking again, even smiling here and there.

But then the undead mana surfaced once more, and the same pattern repeated itself all over again.

The memory shifted. A different house this time, a different family, another attempt at adoption. This time, she was already braced for it, terrified the same thing would happen again, that she’d be abandoned all over.

Her fear came true exactly as expected. The undead mana surfaced, and the cycle repeated itself once more.

She moved from house to house after that. Eventually she stopped hoping entirely — her eyes went flat and distant, her voice vanishing completely under the weight of shock and exhaustion.

Eventually even the orphanage gave up on placing her anywhere at all. She hadn’t even turned five years old yet.

...

The vision shifted again.

This time she sat in a dark room, coins changing hands somewhere nearby while adults spoke over her head. She didn’t understand the words, only that she’d been sold. She’d been taken to a slave market.

People looked her over, bought her, passed her along. Some treated her gently, at least until the undead mana surfaced and frightened them off. Others simply beat her, until that same undead mana rose up and protected her from further harm.

The undead mana had become something closer to a permanent fixture by then — a curse that left her endlessly alone, but also a shield that kept her from real harm. Nobody could hurt her. But nobody could truly touch her, either.

One man who tried to strike her found himself wrapped suddenly in undead mana instead, his body decaying and collapsing before he even understood what was happening.

So she was passed back to the traders again, sold and resold more times than she could count. Until, finally, one day arrived.

She was locked inside a caged caravan, being transported somewhere new.

The carriage rolled to a stop. She could hear a man’s voice outside, discussing the purchase of a dwarf lying nearby in her cell. She studied the dwarf quietly for a while, saying nothing.

Then, suddenly, she heard herself being mentioned in the conversation. A beautiful woman approached and reached out to touch her — but the undead mana presence inside her acted on instinct, repelling the woman’s hand before it could make contact.

Right after, another man stepped forward and reached for her instead.

It had been so long since anyone had actually managed to touch her without being thrown back. She looked up and found a pair of golden eyes staring down at her, burning with something like passion, something like ambition. Dark hair, a pale, handsome face.

The hand didn’t get repelled this time. It settled gently against her hair instead, and pulled her into a warm embrace. She cried into the arms of a complete stranger — a stranger whose hands felt warm, and whose arms, somehow, felt safe for the first time in longer than she could remember.

That girl was Luna. And the stranger holding her was Leo.

The vision faded out as the undead mana finally cleared from the air.

Both the Guardian and Leo had witnessed every moment of it. It was Luna’s own memory, laid bare in front of them.

The Guardian — thousands of years old, having seen more than either of them could imagine — couldn’t hold back her own tears. She pulled the little girl into a tight embrace. "Luna, don’t worry. Even if the whole world turns its back on you, I’ll stay right here beside you."

Leo felt something rise in his own chest, barely managing to hold his tears in check as he looked down at Luna, running a hand gently through her hair. "Don’t worry. Big brother’s going to be right here too. I’ll make sure you’re never alone again. I promise you that."

....