Children of the Rune – Winterer - Chapter 17

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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 17
The Winter Sword (17)

Three hundred Elso had nowhere to be stored, so the innkeeper graciously produced a plain cloth pouch. Had they been gold coins, three would have sufficed, but what he gave me were silver coins through and through. I gathered them carefully and stepped outside.
Boris glanced at his brother’s profile but hesitated, uncertain how to offer comfort.
His brother wore only a slightly bitter expression, yet Boris was not one to miss the emotions concealed beneath. He struggled to find words when suddenly Yefnen spoke in a bright voice.
“Well, now that we have money, we can finally eat something! What would you like? Tell me anything, and I’ll buy it for you.”
“….”
Boris knew all too well they had only three hundred Elso, and he understood perfectly what had been sold to obtain it. Words could not easily escape his lips. He was not without hunger, yet something far deeper gnawed at his chest—a hollowness he could not bear.
That was why he asked the question he had tried not to ask.
“Brother… When will Father contact us?”
Yefnen’s footsteps, which had been leading the way with feigned cheerfulness, faltered ever so slightly. Yet he soon turned to his younger brother and spoke.
“Ah, well… I imagine his injuries are taking longer to heal than expected. He likely wants to meet us only after he’s recovered.”
It was an answer prepared in advance. Boris started to meet his brother’s gaze but quickly looked away. He had glimpsed something glistening in the corners of Yefnen’s eyes.
“I… see.”
With his head bowed, I simply nodded in response. Yefnen turned and walked on, his right hand thrust deep into his pocket, gripping the cloth pouch of silver coins tightly.
That night, we stayed at the Inn.
After eating proper meals for lunch and dinner, the abundance of silver coins had already noticeably diminished. I thought that dry bread and water alone would suffice, but I said nothing of it, knowing my brother’s desire to provide his younger sibling with better things.
The brothers lay down on adjacent beds and fell asleep. Yet Boris was tormented by nightmares once more.
This time, someone’s hands seized his chest and shook him violently. His breathing quickened as coughs erupted in succession. In the moment his thrashing neck bent backward, he jolted awake.
A scream tore from his lips unbidden.
“Ahhhhh!”
The figure gripping Boris’s chest was nothing but a dark shadow. The terror of his own scream faded quickly, but then he realized something far worse and froze in shock.
It was a familiar silhouette. It was his brother.
“B-brother… Why….”
Yet words had no effect. In the darkness, Yefnen’s face was barely visible as he shoved his younger brother across the bed, then drove his fist into his stomach. It was an action the usual Yefnen could never have committed, not under any circumstance, not even facing death itself.
“Ugh….”
Boris felt pain so intense his mind grew hazy, yet no further screams came. He was merely tossed about like a stick, swept this way and that by his brother’s hands.
More devastating than the physical agony was the psychological shock. Why? Why was his brother doing this?
Resistance was impossible for a twelve-year-old Boris. This was no jest, no sleepwalking. Yefnen was truly trying to kill his younger brother, pushing and grasping and striking with all his strength. Had even a dagger been in those hands, Boris would not have survived.
Had his brother’s mind become unhinged?
“Brother… Yef… nen….”
Boris’s voice emerged thin as a mosquito’s whine. Then Yefnen rose and froze, as if searching for something. In that instant, terror-stricken Boris remembered the existence of the Winterer.
“No, this can’t happen!”
It was not the desire to survive that drove me, but rather the urgent need to shield my brother from the shock of a terrible mistake. With a body covered in bruises, I somehow miraculously sprang up and threw both arms around my brother in an embrace.
Of course, had Yefnen wished to push me away, he could easily have hurled me into a corner. Yet at that moment, the murderous intent that had been roiling through his body suddenly vanished.
As I released my brother’s limp form, he staggered forward a few steps before collapsing onto his own bed and losing consciousness.
Had he fallen asleep?
Boris rose and carefully approached Yefnen. His brother’s condition resembled that of the previous night. His face and limbs were burning hot, and ragged breaths poured from his lips.
Boris returned to his bed. Startled, exhilarated, and aching in every fiber of his being, his racing heart refused to settle. Sleep was entirely beyond him.
A horror beyond even his nightmares had unfolded. No matter how much I turned it over in my mind, confusion reigned supreme.
What secret could possibly be hidden beneath all this?

Only after dawn broke did Boris drift into fitful sleep, and when he awoke, Yefnen was already up and dressed, sitting at the edge of the bed watching over his brother with evident concern.
“What’s wrong? I’ve called you several times. Did you have a nightmare?”
“….”
Boris found himself unable to speak. The moment his eyes fell upon his brother’s face, his heart lurched violently. The shock was so profound I feared it might burst from my chest.
Worried that his expression might betray him, Boris hastily tried to sit up, but instead let out a groan and collapsed back onto the mattress.
“Ugh….”
“What is it? Does something hurt?”
As Boris watched Yefnen’s face shift to alarm, he recalled the silhouette of his brother from last night—nothing but a dark outline. What expression had worn then? None of the faces Boris had ever witnessed seemed to suit Yefnen in such a moment.
“No, it’s nothing. I just… fell out of bed while sleeping.”
A lie conjured in an instant. Once spoken, it seemed the only explanation for the bruises scattered across his body. Yefnen’s expression turned incredulous.
“That’s strange—you’ve never done that before. You must have been exhausted.”
Both brothers were ordinarily light sleepers. Yefnen helped Boris to his feet. For a moment, his neck and shoulders screamed with pain, but Boris bore it in silence without complaint.
“Should we stay here another day? You look terrible. Are you hurting somewhere else?”
Boris managed to ask quietly.
“Are you… all right?”
“Me?”
Yefnen spread his arms with an unconcerned expression.
“What about me? You asked the same thing yesterday—do I still look ill to you?”
Yet Yefnen’s face was more gaunt than the day before, as though he were wasting away from fever.
As Boris dressed and descended for a late breakfast, he wrestled endlessly with what to say to his brother. In the end, he said nothing. It felt like something he should not do.

The night they decided to rest one more day at the Inn, Boris lay in bed listening for signs of his brother falling asleep. Yet after a considerable time, Yefnen showed no signs of slumber.
Shortly after, he rose from the bed entirely. He paced the room barefoot, then slowly drew deep breaths and loosened his shoulders and arms. Boris felt an inexplicable chill run through him.
But as more time passed, Boris realized his brother had no intention of sleeping.
He tried to hold on a little longer, then a little longer still, but eventually Boris succumbed to sleep. And this time, he woke in the morning for the first time in ages.
“Brother, you didn’t sleep at all, did you?”
Seeing Yefnen sitting on the bed with reddened eyes, Boris spoke with alarm. Yefnen shook his head with an awkward smile.
“No. I simply woke early, that’s all.”
“You look exhausted.”
It was more than mere exhaustion. Yefnen’s face bore the haggard marks not merely of sleeplessness, but of a night spent wrestling with troubled thoughts.
“Come now, we should move today.”
They departed the Unnamed Village. Their destination was tacitly understood to be where Janine was.
Yet it remained unclear whether they could truly reach there, or even if they truly wished to. They were simply walking, as though the act of going somewhere itself was the purpose.
Yefnen’s steps grew increasingly unsteady. Boris too had deliberated for a long time. When he finally spoke, it was already around midday.
“Brother, Father isn’t coming, is he?”
“Hmm?”
It was a response that sounded almost indifferent for the weight of the question. Moments later, watching Yefnen’s face, Boris understood that his brother had not comprehended his words. This was not like him at all—he seemed distant and dull, as though his mind were elsewhere entirely.
“Ah…”
Only then did Yefnen, understanding the question, roll his eyes vacantly like a man wandering through a dream. The answer came only after a long pause.
“No… that’s not it…”
An answer that sounded almost obligatory. It was a world apart from the earnest effort he had previously made to convince or deceive his younger brother.
Boris stopped walking.
“Brother, tell me honestly. I’m fine with it. What happened to Father? Was he captured by Uncle?”
And Yefnen too came to a halt. He pressed both hands to his temples as though his head ached, then slowly sank to the ground. He wrapped his head in his arms, burying his face against his knees.
“Just… give me a moment.”
The sky, as summer waned, was as blue as it had been yesterday and the day before. The last rain had fallen on the night of the uprising.
Perhaps for this reason, the memory of that day felt vivid, as though freshly experienced. The torches that had encircled Jineman Manor, the dreadful form of the summoned creature, the unknown monster I had glimpsed while sitting alone at the Lakeside, even my brother’s reproachful cry when he appeared—all of it remained crystalline.
And yet that made it all the stranger. Everything else was so clear, so why had my memories from some point onward become such a tangled mess?
It had been fog. I had thought about it countless times, but I could only recall Father standing in opposition to Uncle at the Swamp, myself standing back-to-back with my brother, and then for some inexplicable reason sinking to the ground.
What on earth had that been?
Whenever I tried to pierce through the memory, a terrible fear and a bone-chilling tremor would seize me, gripping my spine with icy fingers. The dizziness was so severe I feared my mind might fracture if I pressed further.
Suddenly Yefnen lifted his head.
“Boris, come here and take this.”
What Yefnen extended was the Winter Sword, drawn from his waist. Boris approached without understanding and accepted the blade.
“Draw it and swing it.”
“Now?”
Boris hesitated briefly, then stepped back two paces and drew the sword.
Truthfully, it was not easy. He managed to extract it from the scabbard, but the moment he extended his arm, his body swayed from the weight. The Winter Sword, though made of some unknown material lighter than steel, still proved formidable.
“Is it still too much…”
Yefnen rose and came behind him, supporting Boris’s arm. With his brother’s arm bracing him like a splint, holding the sword became manageable. Yefnen, his hands wrapped around Boris’s wrists, guided the blade in a slow arc through the air.
“Like this…”
A brilliant blade stretching forth in rainbow arcs, daylight grazing its razor edge, and there—a luminescence of memory that seemed to linger eternally, never departing….
The warm body heat of my brother cradling me, my brother.
Before I knew it, I was murmuring beneath my breath. Don’t go, brother, don’t go.
Don’t leave me alone.

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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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