Children of the Rune – Winterer - Chapter 120

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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 120.
Two Swords, Four Names (4)
Despoina surveyed the gathered people and shook her head.
“There is nothing particularly remarkable about him. Daphnen’s bloodline bears no connection to magical tradition, and his aptitudes are merely slightly above those of an ordinary child.”
Nauplion listened intently to every word Despoina spoke.
Suddenly, he found himself wondering how well he truly knew her. In that same moment, the same question arose regarding Daphnen.
“When an inexperienced boy comes into possession of a magical weapon imbued with tremendous power, he is ordinarily consumed by that magic in an instant. Yet Daphnen has carried that sword for years without incident. In such circumstances, the judgment passed down within the Pilgrim’s Tradition is singular.”
Despoina’s voice grew firm.
“‘Grant him the sword, and make him bear responsibility for both his own rebirth and his ruin.'”
It was then that the doors of the Town Hall were struck with violent force.
Yet Despoina paid no heed. Her wrinkled face trembled faintly, and her eyes within drooping lids burned with labored intensity.
“Thus I entrusted the sword to the child. I sought to witness whether he would be reborn as one worthy of the blade’s power, or whether he would be led astray by it and destroy himself. And now I suspect he has chosen the latter. In other words, the sword desired to return to the otherworld that birthed it and release its power freely. When the door opened, Daphnen could not resist the temptation and stepped through.”
As a chill silence descended, the sound of knocking ceased. Then the voices of five or six people cried out in succession.
“Priestess! White birds… have brought… trying to enter… with their wings… the door…”
Everyone heard the sound of dozens of wings fluttering outside the Town Hall.
The sound stretched long as the birds circled the building, then rushed violently toward a window.
Crash! Bang!
The shutters of the closed window fell to the floor, bolts and all. Through the broken opening, what appeared to be twenty white birds streamed in formation.
Their wings were wider than the window itself, so the birds folded them slightly as they entered, then soared high toward the ceiling and spread both wings wide. In moments, a magnificent sight unfolded—white birds circling above the people’s heads.
The next instant, everyone saw Isolet rise and step forward. As both her arms lifted high, her long, trailing sleeves swayed like another pair of wings.

Four feathers return to their resting place.
Steel branches rising at the cliff’s edge
At the curved perch’s end, waited a thousand years
Now, wings folded, I sit and gaze down.

It had been a long time since people heard Isolet’s Sacred Chant. In truth, they had nearly forgotten what a chant even was.
Philomela, who taught magical incantations and chants at Scoli, was so shocked that she trembled with both hands covering her mouth.
The Sacred Chant was the song that reigned supreme over all magical songs. If Isolet’s chant was like a branch heavy with spring water, what she taught the children was a withered, twisted branch of deepest winter.
The moment the chant was recited, birds descended in spiraling curves and gathered around Isolet.
At the front was Yozrel, the white bird princess wearing a ruby necklace. The other birds flapped their wings slowly, circling nearby.
When Isolet extended her hand, Yozrel descended lightly and perched.
….
Isolet received the transparent, sharp fragment held in Yozrel’s beak.
Yozrel fluttered once and moved to Isolet’s left shoulder. Then she turned her head as if surveying the people around her. Her calm red eyes fixed upon several faces.
The fragment gleamed blue in Isolet’s hand. And it was bitterly cold. It was like ice, yet it would never melt.
Isolet walked toward Despoina with Yozrel perched on her shoulder and handed her the transparent fragment.
Despoina’s expression changed.
“This is….”
She had seen something like it only once before. Last summer, within the winter that had engulfed the Ruined Village.
The birds circling in the air flew toward the entrance as if caught by a sudden current.
Moments later, Despoina raised her hand. An irresistible voice commanded.
“Open the doors! All priesthood members shall follow those birds! Those who wish to follow, do so!”
It was not an easy path. Yet because all six priests led the way, those who followed did not find their steps too difficult.
The broken path was filled by stones that flew up at Despoina’s incantation, and the gnarled branches and undergrowth blocking the way were cut away without a trace by the brief flames from the thunder rune that Nauplion wielded.
With Morpheus’s sensing staff, following the birds that occasionally vanished was simple. It was rare for priests to display their abilities so unhesitatingly.
As they descended roughly halfway through the gorge formed by steep cliffs, white marks began to appear on the stone walls before, behind, left, and right.
Upon closer inspection, it was snow mixed with ice. Yet no matter how heavily it had snowed last winter, it was impossible for snow to remain in the gorge at this season.
As they neared the bottom, the snow marks became increasingly abundant.
People looked down curiously, but the gorge was shrouded in considerable fog that day, making it impossible to see beyond a few steps ahead.
“I’m getting an increasingly strange feeling. It seems like something unexpected is waiting for us.”
Hearing the whispered voice of the female monastic beside him, Pelloross cleared his throat anew. He carefully selected the words he would speak.
He was merely the brother of the Regent with no special authority, but he held a good position as a close advisor to Regent Skyabola, who often became helpless due to physical weakness.
It was he who had long promoted the betrothal between Liriope and Hector, and who had cultivated the atmosphere that Hector was the most suitable person to become the next Priest of the Sword.
In such circumstances, an unexpected boy appeared and became the first disciple of the Priest of the Sword. According to the Regent, he was even drawing Liriope’s attention.
At this rate, both of the two purposes Pelloross had pursued would be thwarted.
In such a situation, whether it was slander or fact-finding, he had no choice but to take the lead in expelling Daphnen.
He harbored no particular feelings toward Daphnen. In truth, he did not know well what kind of child Daphnen was. Yet when it came to removing one who blocked his son’s path, he could neither be negligent nor lenient.
Soon all around transformed into walls of ice.
At first, the ice melted when touched by hand, but now it would not yield even to a sword’s thrust. Despoina halted the group’s steps and called Isolet forward.
Isolet knew well what she had to do without needing to hear it from Despoina. She whispered a few words into Yozrel’s ear and sent her flying. The bird that flew downward soon disappeared into the fog.
Shortly after, a distinctive cry echoed from not far away.
Then something remarkable happened. Isolet seemed to recite something within her mouth, then without hesitation, leaped down the cliff.
“No!”
The single cry soon transformed into confused murmuring. The sound of footsteps striking ground echoed from not far away.
Moments later, as Despoina swung her staff and recited several runes, cloud-like masses of fog were pushed to both sides of the gorge. Isolet appeared, kneeling on one knee, and….
“What… what in the world is that…?”
Before Isolet stretched a massive block of ice, barricading the Gorge itself.
It appeared as though someone had rolled it down from the cliff’s summit, yet it was far too enormous for such an explanation. And it had not merely wedged itself between the cliff walls and stopped.
Hundreds of ice branches extended from the frozen mass, gripping the cliff face with an iron hold.
“I never thought I would witness such a thing in my lifetime…”
“Truly wondrous… Is this not the descent of the Queen herself?”
“Moon Queen, is this your will, or do you defy your own will?”
As the Monastic Order gasped in shock, Despoina lifted her body into the air and descended slowly onto the ice where Isolet stood.
An ice sphere exceeding ten paces in diameter. Its surface was jagged and rough—countless shards of ice that had drifted through the void before suddenly adhering to a single crystalline core. If one were to liken it to something, it resembled a colossal spider’s web, the lair of an ice spider.
Or perhaps a tuber plant torn from the deep earth by a giant’s hand. Hundreds, thousands of thick and thin roots extended in all directions, clutching the cliff face with terrible strength.
All of it was ice—ice so white it gleamed with a pale blue luminescence.
The white bird’s princess took flight once more, folding her wings to perch upon one of the ice branches that connected to the cliff.
As her talons touched down, jagged frost crystals shattered and fell upon the ice with a crystalline chime. Both the ice and the bird were so blindingly white they burned the eyes.
Despoina approached Isolet and placed a hand upon her shoulder.
“You can see them, can you not?”
Isolet lifted her gaze to meet Despoina’s.
“Please make them withdraw.”
Her expressionless face was framed by strands of hair that fell like white light.

「The Sword of Winter has existed in our world for at least two hundred years. Whether it slumbered somewhere in this place before that, or dwelt in another realm entirely, I cannot say.」
「Yet in those two centuries, the Sword granted power to three souls, rendering them omnipotent, only to engineer their own destruction. The number of those consumed the moment they claimed the blade is beyond reckoning. Power itself is not inherently evil. But among the living, none have yet possessed a vessel large enough to contain such strength.」
「Perhaps it is a power impossible for humans to wield. Power inevitably shapes existence. It is neither a matter of good and evil, nor of nobility and baseness, nor of precedence and succession. And power requires sustenance…”
「Those who possess power begin by shattering obstacles that deny their strength, carving the world into their desired form. Yet the more they carve, the more hideous it becomes, and to conceal that hideousness, they carve all the more… Until at last, when they have destroyed not only their enemies but all they once loved, what remains is…”
「Only the destruction of oneself.」
The Three Sages gazed upward at the Sword still suspended in the void, their eyes trembling with dread.
Once this ceremony concluded, the Sword would vanish into another realm. Thus, only until the ceremony’s end could they converse with this strange boy—whether he was their past or their future, they could not discern.
「Child, your words ring true. Between us and you, there is no way to distinguish the real from the false. Or perhaps both are real. By one chance in ten million, a connection may have formed between your world and ours.」

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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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