Children of the Rune – Winterer - Chapter 18

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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 18
The Winter Sword (18)

“I wish you were just a bit older.”
I heard my brother murmur softly. Boris truly believed it himself. How much better it would have been if he weren’t so helpless, so small—if he had the strength to aid his brother. Seventeen, or even just sixteen.
The white blade of the Winterer was being wielded futilely, without an opponent to strike. Up, down, then to the side again.
Yefnen’s eyes, burning with the desperate desire to leave something—anything—for his younger brother, never wavered from the blade that gleamed so brilliantly it seemed to steal sight itself.
“Father won’t return. He’s gone to a place from which there is no return. Already, he has been for some time. The butler will remain with us, so we won’t lack for anything. Even without us, that man will faithfully honor Father’s wishes always.”
“….”
Boris listened without answering. Though it was a fact he’d never known before, his heart didn’t surge with shock. It felt like confirmation of something he’d always known.
Perhaps he had long suspected it would come to this. Or perhaps he’d known all along—Father’s death, his brother’s suffering.
Some nameless oblivion had merely swallowed portions of his memory in silence. The moment he thought to retrieve them one by one….
A flash—an image blinded his vision.
Rummmble….
Thunder from days past, from memory. The final memory he’d forcibly suppressed that last night in the Territory suddenly became vivid, as if viewed through a crystal sphere.
He saw enormous wings.
Yefnen felt his brother’s arm trembling violently and tightened his grip, wrapping him more firmly. Thinking his younger brother was shocked by their father’s death, he tried to hold him warmly.
“Ah….”
The veil lifted, and memory unfurled like pages in a book. Wings the color of rust-red mist spread to a width that exceeded the height of five grown men.
But there was no beauty in it. In the darkness, the wings were covered in grotesque membranes and protrusions, with hundreds of hooked claws embedded along their edges like teeth.
A voice echoed in his mind. The sound of claws raking across iron doors. That sound that scraped not just his ears but his very heart, that made his skin and mucous membranes burn.
Boris dropped the Winterer. The blade lodged diagonally into the sparse, weedy earth.
Yefnen embraced Boris. His younger brother’s body burned and trembled.
“Boris, you….”
The Nanny had called it a phantom. Yes, a phantom it was. A dead creature in this world. Like the serpent-shaped phantom beast Krigar, summoned here from another realm with only part of its body.
Wings that flickered between blur and clarity, and within them, eyes that blazed like embers of fire…. Ah, how fortunate that the wings had prevented him from seeing the creature’s true form.
“B-brother… that, that… that… wings….”
Yefnen turned his brother’s body to face him and asked.
“Do you remember?”
As the overwhelming scene came alive again, everything that had happened that night rushed toward him in waves.
That night, Boris had been confronted by the phantom of Emera Lake, which he’d feared for so long, and lost his senses. His brother had rushed out, grabbed him, and pushed him back hard.
Pushed so violently that he lost his footing and crashed down. When he lifted his head, he saw enormous wings descending upon his brother. The claws at the wing’s edges glinted like teeth hungry for blood….
Boris ran.
He never thought he would do such a thing, yet seized by terror, he fled in panic. Without thinking, he ran toward the marsh, and in his confusion, he even witnessed his father collapsed on the ground.
Was there a final cry? Yes… The voice calling “Run, leave this place” still rang in his ears.
The image wavered. At that moment, he must have truly lost consciousness.
“Brother… What happened to you? How… did it happen?”
Boris slowly understood. The reason he’d lost part of his memory. Why he’d witnessed a scene he could never accept.
Something he’d never wanted to happen, something he’d always feared, had unfolded in an instant, and he had been a coward. So his fragile instinct had refused to remember that truth.
And Yefnen did not answer.

The night was cold.
The brothers sat facing the flickering flames. It was the same place as during the day. They felt no need to travel anywhere else. Now, going anywhere was pointless.
Boris opened his mouth.
“Brother, get some rest.”
Yefnen shook his head. He turned his gaze toward the campfire—one created with money from selling Mother’s belongings.
After a long silence, Yefnen spoke words that caught Boris off guard.
“When morning comes, leave alone, Boris. It would be better if we parted ways.”
More than any other truth, those words delivered the coldest shock to Boris. He quickly shook his head.
“No.”
“That won’t solve anything. I can’t be with you anymore. Already… there isn’t much time left.”
Boris looked directly into his brother’s eyes across the campfire and shook his head again. Stubbornly.
“Absolutely not. I’ll stay by your side until the end.”
Yefnen’s eyes grew sorrowful. He stirred the campfire with a long stick and spoke quietly.
“What if I have another episode? I might kill you.”
The specter of Emera Lake.
That creature had killed Yenichka, according to what my brother told me. I didn’t know what Yenichka looked like. I knew nothing except that such a person had existed in our household.
The manor had Yenichka’s room, always kept as immaculate as Mother’s. Once when I entered, I found an unfinished painting in the small sitting room attached to that chamber.
With the eyes of young Boris, I couldn’t understand how masterfully it was executed. The incomplete work depicted a young man—a figure rendered only in facial contours and an elegant jawline, left behind in a dead woman’s room.
“Yenichka was kind and gentle. I received many sweets from her hands. The sweet candies Mother hid and wouldn’t give me came easily into my hands whenever I grasped Yenichka’s skirt and looked up with pitiful eyes. She had such a tender heart that she couldn’t refuse anything. When they said she would soon marry and leave the manor, I clung to her weeping so desperately that she locked herself in her room for days. She was afraid to refuse me when she saw my face.”
That kind Yenichka had been deceived by Uncle Blado’s lies and gone to Emera Lake, which she so feared, to find her betrothed. Yet her betrothed was locked in the basement of the manor without a scratch.
Why must the people of Trabaches always fight? Severing bloodlines, forever tainting the hearts of those they cherish, until a conclusion stained with blood is reached.
“By the time we went to find her, it was already too late. What people discovered was not the beautiful Yenichka, but a mad woman raving and tearing at her own clothes, her mind shattered. I remember… when Father and the soldiers returned from searching for her, how Mother frantically pulled me into my room and wouldn’t let me leave. I was so worried and curious I couldn’t bear it. I loved Yenichka dearly too. I feared she might be gravely injured at the lakeside she had gone to alone, or worse, that she might be dead. So I wrenched my hand from Mother’s grasp and ran out. Mother chased after me, but… I had already seen everything.”
Three soldiers barely restrained Yenichka, her tattered clothes revealing the body of a maiden, her disheveled hair streaked with blood in a horrifying sight.
She didn’t recognize Yefnen, Father, or anyone else in the family. She perceived all those around her as enemies, uttering incomprehensible shrieks.
It bore no resemblance to the soft voice I knew from Yenichka. It was only the wail of a monster.
“Father and Uncle fought terribly. Thinking about it now, Uncle probably never imagined she would come to such a state. He simply expected the subordinates of his faction to kidnap her while she was alone. Father, too, was displeased with her marriage to a family of different political allegiance, so he never imagined she would be sent to Emera Lake and merely turned a blind eye to her betrothed trapped in the basement. In any case, Uncle’s position as a criminal was weak. Father declared firmly that the only way to resolve the madness caused by the specter of the lake was to put her to death.”
And the buried past of the household became reality, standing before my eyes. Boris felt a suffocating despair before a fact he couldn’t accept.
Neither Grandmother’s weeping pleas nor Grandfather’s refusal to witness it could break Father’s will—he who was the true master of the household.
Yenichka died. By whatever hand. Yefnen believed that given Father’s nature, he wouldn’t have let anyone else kill Yenichka.
Was it merely a terrible nightmare now that years had passed? Yet now it was his own affliction. The madness that should have appeared suddenly lay dormant, progressing belatedly—likely because Yefnen had suffered a lighter wound than Yenichka.
Even knowing it was hopeless, at first I tried to hold onto hope. The wound was light, so perhaps it might be alright. Or perhaps it would progress only after Boris had grown enough to live alone.
If only it could be that way, if only it could happen like that, I would pay any price. I would endure any hideous form.
But reality was always reality, and it showed no mercy to him either.
“I don’t… care.”
Boris, who had been recalling the long conversation they’d shared throughout the afternoon, finally spoke.
“I know what you’re thinking right now, brother. But as you know, how long could I live well alone? The things that happened over these past days because of the Winterer are still so vivid in my memory. I want to stay by your side until the very end. So rather than by your hand…”
“Boris!”
It happened in an instant. Yefnen rose abruptly and struck Boris’s cheek with force.
“You—when I went out to find the Winter Sword with you, do you remember what I told you then? Have you already forgotten? What did I say? Tell me what I said!”
I had never seen my brother so angry before. Yet I understood all too well why his fury burned so fiercely.
“Live… survive….”
Yefnen was not like Father. He was not the type to end things by taking his own sister’s life with his own hands while she was consumed by madness. He hoped that she would live for as long as their cherished ones drew breath, and that even amid suffering, she would grasp whatever fragments of happiness she could find.
Had it been Yefnen, he would have locked his maddened sibling away in a back room and waited endlessly for the day reason returned. Even if it meant caring for her until death.
“Never speak of death again.”
Yefnen spoke with his jaw clenching as he suppressed his emotions.
“Your life belongs to you alone. Follow only yourself. Do not listen to the circumstances of others. Never—never listen to those who would make you weak.”
Boris was already nodding before he fully grasped the meaning of his brother’s words. Yefnen continued.
“When I am gone… you must become truly strong. No one will shield you. You will find rest in no shadow. You cannot trust anyone, cannot let your guard down before anyone. It will be difficult… but it is worth doing. Because it is about surviving. It is about living until you have witnessed every infinite possibility that dwells within your life.”
Yefnen withdrew from Boris and sat at a distance. When he lowered his head, I understood that he grieved knowing his own words could never apply to himself.
It was the third unforgettable sight of my brother that I would carry forever.
Boris drew near and placed his hand upon his brother’s shoulder. They remained like that for a very long time.

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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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