Children of the Rune – Winterer - Chapter 124

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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 124.
Two Blades, Four Names (8)

Young boys gathered before the dying campfire, each wielding a stick to stir through the still-warm ashes. When one of them finally unearthed a prize, delighted laughter rippled through the group.
“Looks like it’s done cooking?”
Daphnen didn’t know what it was, but he understood one thing—it was sweet. A long root that, when roasted over flames, revealed a pale golden interior.
Blowing gently to cool his burnt lips, he ate them one by one until his hands and mouth turned black with soot. A thin plume of smoke rose into the night sky. Small birds sang somewhere in the darkening forest.
Daphnen suddenly recalled something from long ago and spoke.
“Starting a fire is really difficult. From the sidelines it looked so easy, but when I tried doing it alone, I just couldn’t manage it.”
As he spoke and glanced around, his friends’ faces seemed to become translucent for just a moment. Daphnen continued.
“I only got good at making fire much later. Still, it must have been before I entered Lemme.”
The word “Lemme” lingered on his tongue after he spoke it. Something felt wrong. It seemed like a word that shouldn’t exist in this place.
“After crossing into Lemme and meeting that person….”
Something was strange.
The more he spoke, the more it felt like he was fabricating things that never happened. Or perhaps he had become someone recounting a tale from the distant past.
As he struggled to continue, a voice—a woman’s voice—grew louder, echoing in his ears.
Who was it? Yes, it was her.
Come back?
The young boys were exchanging glances with one another, communicating through silent gestures. Shortly after, Nikitis, who had been sitting beside him, extended his hand to Daphnen and spoke.
“It was fun thanks to you, after all this time.”
Nikitis, appearing as a twelve-year-old boy, wrinkled his nose and grinned. Soot smudged his cheeks and the bridge of his nose, but the marks faded and vanished.
The moment Daphnen’s eyes widened, the boy’s face became translucent once more.
“Yeah, it’s time to go back, isn’t it? Playing with you was really fun. Though I suppose we can’t say we’ll play together again next time.”
Another boy spoke, and a girl approached to tap Daphnen’s shoulder. Surrounded by his friends in an instant, he craned his neck to see a boy standing outside their circle.
Endymion smiled quietly.
“Did you play enough to never forget? Were you happy?”
Memories drained away like a receding tide, then flowed back. Empty, then filling again with new things.
“Happy….”
It was in that moment he realized how much time had truly passed.
Now his friends were no longer vibrant as they had been moments before, but had returned to their pale, skeletal forms—flesh and bone stripped away. And only then did he understand. He bore the same appearance as they did.
Simultaneously, memory of the sword in his hand returned.
The Winterer called to him. He felt the voice clearly. Of course, many other voices were mixed in as well. Some were malevolent, others neutral. And all of them were dangerous.
Daphnen murmured to himself. Winter’s Blade, entity of chaos—why did you let me live?
Because I seemed like a worthy opponent to fight? Because you had to keep me alive until you could devour my soul? Or was it because you hoped that this time, you would finally become the true master?
A girl spoke.
“I know who’s calling you. That beautiful lady, right?”

I was startled not by the words themselves, but by the strange resonance in that voice. And then I remembered something else.
When Daphnen first followed the ghost children to this place, the Forest of Spirits, their voices had sounded exactly like that. Yet somewhere along the way, they had shifted to sound like ordinary people.
But now they had reverted to their original voices. There was no need to say we are different from you. The voice alone created a palpable distance between us.
「Yeah, I saw that young lady too. I’ve been watching her since she was small.」
「Wasn’t she more lovely back then? When her father was still alive, she was such an adorably stubborn thing.」
“So you’re saying… you’ve been watching Isolet since she was a child?”
Another layer of memory settled over me. Isolet—she had been sitting beside me. Coming every day to gaze at my face and speak to me.
I had always been listening, so why was I only now understanding?
The small ghosts who had been with Daphnen exchanged glances before turning their gaze toward Endymion. Daphnen looked at Endymion too.
“Endymion, can you tell me? About Isolet’s past… No, wait. There’s something I really want to know. What misunderstanding do Isolet and the Nauplion Priest have? What happened between them? Do you know because you’ve seen it? All of it?”
The forest darkened. The campfire went out and the light vanished. The cozy forest where they had played and made noise transformed into a dim forest of shadows.
When Endymion raised his hand, a glowing blue circle formed at his fingertips, illuminating the forest.
「Such matters must be heard directly from those involved. But there is one thing I can tell you. If you return today, you will give her the greatest gift.」
A gift?
The circle grew larger. At the same time, Daphnen’s mind brightened, and his vision became distant.
「Do not forget. If you do not forget, you can meet again. No matter who it is, even that person you so desperately wish to see once more.」

「It is calling. Calling binds all souls together.」
「And so we cannot leave this land…」

Light consumed my vision. The beautiful forest crumbled to ash, and the gestures of my friends scattered like butterfly dust. I had lost them. Yet even as I lost them, I was reclaiming something else—another thing, what I had desired, a hunger that only the living soul could know.
I had returned.
When I opened my eyes, I saw a ceiling half-obscured by white cloth.
The cloth fluttered slowly as if it were not a real object. Perhaps that was why I did not realize where I had returned to until I looked to the side.
Isolet was sitting in a chair without a backrest.
At the hem of her long linen skirt, brown thread embroidered a pattern of crosses. Shadows fell across her ankles revealed between the folds, wavering gently. A long cord wound around her wrist extended through the skirt’s creases, and at its end hung a small key like a hidden promise.
It felt like I had slept deeply and awakened, yet I felt a pang of loss as the beautiful dream faded away.
But above all, I felt that it had been a long time. As if I had completed a long voyage, ended a long wandering, and finally returned home.
When our eyes met, Daphnen spoke his first words slowly. The voice that emerged without resonance felt strange to me.
“Happy birthday, Isolet.”
With those magical words, everything began anew.
Like a child who had overslept, I walked through the Unnamed Village sheepishly. People glanced at Daphnen as he passed, but no one spoke to him.
More than a month had passed while I played like a dream with the ghosts.
During that time, Daphnen had spent only three or four days wandering the forest playing war games, discovering caves and log cabins, collecting pebbles to arrange in an empty lot, and falling asleep laughing by the campfire. That was all I could remember.
Compared to old tales where one visits another world for a moment only to find decades or centuries have passed, this was nothing. Of course, Daphnen had not visited another place but had merely been asleep.
According to what Priestess Despoina had said, my body remained while only my soul had gone to another world. Thinking of it that way, it made sense that the ghost children had appeared to be ordinary children just like myself.
Most strangely of all, I had eaten nothing for a month and had not awakened, yet now that I had risen, I moved about perfectly fine. I felt only slightly weak; there was no pain anywhere.
Yet when I searched my memory, a difficult-to-explain unease pressed down from deep within my heart.
A month ago, Daphnen had stepped onto a staircase where he should not have been and fell. His body should have shattered to pieces, yet he had survived. What made that possible was perhaps the power of the Winterer…
My thoughts stopped. When I came to my senses, I was just before my nose struck the door.
“Did you enjoy your walk?”
The voice reached me as I stepped back and pushed open the door.
A sudden wave of contentment surged through my chest, sweeping away the confusion from moments before. I approached Nauplion from behind and wrapped my arms around his neck.
“I nearly lost a hand, you wretch.”
Nauplion had been occupied with sharpening a short blade against a whetstone. But he abandoned the task the moment I entered.
“Yes. Spring has already arrived in full.”
Spring had crept in while I slept. Nauplion wrapped the whetstone in cloth as he replied.
“Only humans wait for humans.”
“But humans don’t reverse time, do they?”
“Without exception, they show aged faces and create a sense of relief and contentment.”
“Is that what waiting means? I don’t think that’s what waiting is supposed to be.”
Nauplion gently loosened my arms and turned to face me. It had been a long time since I’d seen his face this close. But in the next moment, I swallowed my words.
Though not vibrantly youthful, Nauplion’s face was neat for his age. I vividly remembered his cheerful appearance from when we stayed at Belnor Estate.
Yet now I could see fine wrinkles spreading across his face. Deep furrows were beginning to form on his brow and between his eyes.
Before I could say anything, Nauplion spoke first.
“There are those who don’t wait. The Silverscull Expedition departed long ago.”
“….”
Silverscull meant nothing to me. Only then did I truly realize how much worry I had caused Nauplion by following him to The Island.
At the same time, I was seized by the unfairness of burdening him—someone not even bound to me by blood—with such a load.
Neither father and son, nor master and disciple, nor equal friends, nor mere roommates… We two were something else entirely. Would it have been better if we were simply a stern guardian and an innocent boy? Would everything have been simpler if we were a great figure pursuing his own path and a child who admired him?
But we were both flawed beings rolling through gravel, becoming wounded, and we were naked exiles in need of different kinds of salvation.
“Why can’t I be a good child who simply follows your words without question… ?”
Sometimes I wished Nauplion would take my hand and guide me. I imagined him pointing to an open road, telling me to go there, assuring me that everything would turn out well if I just followed his lead.
I wanted to abandon my sword if he asked, forget the affairs of the Continent if he asked, make peace if he asked me not to quarrel, love only those he told me to love, and accept from his rough hands only the fruit of an immature boy’s devotion.
Especially in the coldest times, even more so when I had lost my way….
But I could not. Nauplion showed me no such path, and I was not one who could follow it.
No matter what anyone said, I could not abandon my sword, could not erase my Elder Brother’s memory or forget my Uncle’s affairs, could not forgive Hector. I could not relinquish my feelings toward Isolet, however ambiguous they might be.
They were all my wars. I could not abandon a single one.
“Because they are all your life. Whether you win, lose, or give up of your own accord, they must be resolved one way or another. Because I too cannot have someone else fight my life’s battles in my stead. Because no one can bear another’s burden for them.”
Nauplion touched his own cheek once, then rose to his feet. His face receded from me. At the same time, it grew darker.
Before I could rise and follow, I looked at Nauplion’s face. And for the first time in a long while, I felt a premonition wash over me.
Like his face receding, his very presence would withdraw from my life in the not-distant future.

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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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