Children of the Rune – Winterer - Chapter 117

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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 117.
Two Swords, Four Names (1)
At the Cliff Base, where gnarled trees twisted with roots and rapids rushed through the ravine.
An unfamiliar winter had settled upon the Mountain of Silence. It was a crystalline formation of tens of millions of ice shards, each sharp as a broken blade’s edge.
Crackle.
Dark blue hair gleamed faintly through the white frost cocoon, like sugar coating a confection. The face was corpse-pale.
A sword rested in his hand. The blade began to emit light.
Beasts trapped within the Winterer each struggled to cry out. The light engulfed the Young Boy’s eyelids, then transformed into fragmented memories.
A savage beast was charging. Six hooves kicked up blood-red earth that scattered like fireworks. The curved horns rising between its crimson mane seemed to point toward a height that should not be touched.
The earth boils.
The sky burns.
A cliff stood like a finger pointing across the wavering horizon, and at its edge, a white sword was planted. It alone remained still in this dynamic world.
Compressed, concentrated, sunken—a single entity.
White liquor danced across the pristine blade, unmarred by even a drop of blood.
“I shall possess you!”
Footsteps climbed the cliff, followed by grasping hands. The moment I spun around, gripping the hilt, I drew an arc and unleashed the strike. White radiance scattered like falling stars.
Squelch!
Bloodshot veins erupted like disheveled hair, spraying into the void. From the split beast’s interior, steam rose from half-severed life. A brief death rattle followed.
Then silence fell.
The figure standing atop the cliff raised the sword in hand, pointing it toward the horizon.
He would become a ruler. Though his face was unseen, he was a being of sculpted, disciplined form with hair like a mane—the strongest, looking down upon the roiling earth.
The blade’s edge trembled once. Then it cut through the void with full force.
In that instant, a blizzard scattered around him, and ice spread across the land, consuming it. The world transformed into winter.
Now the one holding the sword was a girl. A sixteen-year-old girl with lustrous golden hair and dark brows.
The girl gripped the white sword firmly with both hands, her gaze piercing forward. Her tightly sealed lips bore the weight of tension and arrogance.
Across from her stood a man in his mid-thirties, cloaked. His golden hair bore striking resemblance to the girl’s.
The man extended his hand. It was empty, bearing no weapon.
“That is not yours, is it not, Elvira?”
The girl neither answered nor moved. She only tightened her grip on the hand holding the sword.
“Do you know that in your hands now lies something that could destroy even yourself?”
“I only know the debt I owe you.”

“Do not wound my heart. Everything I have done was for you alone.”
“Why must I bear the weight of such thoughts? I never asked for any of this.”
The man shook his head, a melancholy smile settling upon his face. It was the gaze of one who, unable to find any better path, had resigned himself to the worst of choices.
“Come here.”
The girl answered not with words but with two steps backward, her blade sweeping through the air. Though the blade’s edge did not touch him, the white steel cleaved the air itself, which froze and shattered like glass into countless razor-sharp fragments that scattered forth.
In the girl’s eyes lay not a shred of pity—only a cold and merciless malice.
The man stood rooted to that spot as though nailed in place. Then, from the hundreds of wounds that covered his body, blood erupted all at once.
The bleeding Pilgrim’s gaze….
The white blade was gripped once more in the hand of a man with one eye missing. He sat upon a high throne, gazing down at the blood flowing from his abdomen.
It was the Grand Hall. Countless circles, difficult to count, formed the walls before gradually narrowing as they ascended to the apex of the domed ceiling.
Leaves and vines carved into cold stone, the pallid cheeks of petrified fairies, wings drained of light, shadows and patterns woven into the dark crimson carpet.
He, the very architect who had conceived this hall’s design and commanded its construction, sat lost in contemplation. Did humans truly create this?
Humans who kill what they cannot trust, who destroy what they cannot embrace—how is it that they understand grandeur at all?
Tapestries hung on either side of the hall, attempting to capture a fleeting glory destined to fade. The Knight’s silver gleam, the Crown’s golden radiance, a snow-white mare draped in violet robes.
The green of the earth was as I once beheld it, and the Saint’s hand still blesses my younger self. It is a vivid memory.
Yet as though no one would remember it anymore, the tapestries hung half-torn and defiled by crimson stains.
Beneath the rended tapestry lay a man crouched in death. He was the one who had wielded this blade one final time, piercing through.
The figure grasped the tapestry as he died, its image twisted and crumbling, while blood flowed as evidence of guilt.
Drip. Drip.
With each drop of blood echoing through the empty hall, I felt my own heart flutter and race in irregular intervals.
Even so, I turned my gaze from the corpse of my own blood and looked upward. I had instinctively recognized the moment I had always awaited. It was now.
The rose window at the very peak and the thirteen windows encircling the dome’s roof began to glow softly. They burned bright as though bearing the mark of blessing.
Light descended.
In this moment when the highest windows scatter the newborn dawn like petals, when this blood-soaked hall reveals its most sacred and resplendent form, the floor and stone walls—transformed into rivers of blood by the slaughter of the night—display only guilt, guilt that no mercy, no absolution, no pardon could ever wash away, not even until the end of all things.
Yet within this light, all appears sacred.
As though it were a sin committed a thousand years past.
A glittering reality, and yet simultaneously as parched as a death sentence written on parchment a hundred years ago.
Is this the end?
From within the agony, a strange exhilaration bloomed. Now there remained only rest, bestowed like a prize after a long battle. Smiling in anticipation of it, I have been a sinner my entire life, and now I only add more sin.
It is laughable. For what did I desire strength and shed blood? If I truly wanted something, why did I destroy everything and leave nothing behind?
Yet I have acted as I have lived. God’s hands hold salvation, forgiveness, and rebirth, but the only way for humans to atone for sin is with blood.
With a metallic scrape, I drew the blade. It was immaculate as ice, clean and cold, bearing not a single trace of blood.
In the end, I did not achieve victory. The blade will pass into another’s hands.
And once more it will demonstrate a power both unbearable and impossible to refuse, testing that one. They too will fall. The defeated will drop the blade and descend into the depths without ever closing their bloodshot eyes. Leaving behind only the remnants of destruction, or the foundation stones of a once-great civilization.
Compared to this blade, the bleeding tapestry is almost human. O generations of humans to come: entrust powers not of humanity to nature, and let them remain forever buried like fossils, unchanged and eternal.
The blade was raised upright for its final purpose. The one who had been a great king spoke now to his people, already descended into the depths below.

Those whose blood I have spilled in my hands, do not grieve in the depths below.
For I too shall follow you, and the day of our reunion draws near.
On that day, I shall offer every last scrap of my flesh into your hands
and the day is not far when we shall feast, pouring and drinking my blood.

The sword existed in many dark places. In one moment, it rested at the waist of a young man holding the hand of a rural woman on the Flower-Covered Hill. In another, it lay in the hands of a woman firing hundreds of flags that danced across the night sky before a Field Tent, facing an overwhelming force of malice.
It also lay beside a desiccated corpse, withered like a mummy in the heart of the Wasteland. A man approached, searched through the body, found the sword, and departed toward the north.
Other visions flickered past. Now the sword had entered an Ice Cavern, towering high in a conical shape.
Stones were embedded in the frozen blue floor like stepping stones. A figure walked across them, dragging a long cloak behind.
Beneath the icy floor, faces difficult to describe appeared dimly. Expressions that seemed to plead, that seemed to shriek, were frozen solid without the slightest movement.
There were women and men, and children too. Souls neither wicked nor virtuous—merely those who, having been defeated, were condemned to spend their years imprisoned within the ice.
The stepping stones led to a white altar rising at the center of the cavern.
The altar too was fashioned of ice. Cold air shimmered like breath from the very peak of the ceiling.
The figure who reached the altar gazed upon the faces of two who had arrived before.
Both were elderly—one a woman, one a man. Each wore a cloak of different hue and a crown upon their head.
The one standing to the north wore a blue cloak and a crown white as ice. The branches of the crown bent at each joint and extended outward, with frozen droplets clinging to their tips.
The one standing to the southwest wore a violet cloak and a crown that resembled moss-covered branches.
The third, positioned to the southeast, wore an orange cloak and a crown fashioned from gold leaf sharp enough to cut like a blade.
Upon the altar lay the sword.
“How can we be certain we are not committing yet another sin?”
“We cannot be certain. Yet we are certain of this: to leave the door of catastrophe standing open before us is itself a sin. We must protect the lives of our world.”
“It may be sent to a weaker, more peaceful world. And in doing so, it may destroy the beings of that land without giving them even a moment to resist. We still do not know the full extent of the power contained within this. In the end, who can say whether it will move with its own will, not merely as the possession of one individual?”
“It already possesses will. Here, it is a being that grants wishes. It begins with small things, but ultimately grants every wish one desires without end. Humanity cannot bear such a being. Though the sword itself is neither evil nor good, our weak human hearts cannot leave it as a harmless thing.”
“Or perhaps it is not only that. But those who do not know are not I alone—all beings in our world are ignorant. I will not leave such a terrifying and powerful unknowable entity in this world.”
“Even now, deeply corrupted evil souls are melting within it. Rather, I wish this sword would completely annihilate an entire world. So that no one from that world would ever send the sword elsewhere, nor take it up with their own hands.”

The three fell silent and extended their hands toward the sword.
Their hands glowed, and as that light connected hand to hand, swirled, and finally transformed into a surging ring of radiance,
a voice suddenly rang out from above.
“That place… where is that? Who are you?”

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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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