Erza stood before the door of Lab 3. It was sealed like the others, cold and unyielding, its surface streaked with frost that had formed on the inside. She did not hesitate. She stepped through.
The room was frozen.
Not cold in the way that winter was cold, Erza could not feel temperature in a memory. But she could see the cold. She could see it in the thick sheets of ice that coated the walls, in the frost that crawled across the floor like the veins of some frozen creature, in the way the air itself seemed to shimmer with a chill that had nothing to do with temperature. This room had been cold for a very long time. It had been cold when the child inside was alive. It had been cold when he died. It would be cold forever.
The child in this room was older than the others, ten, maybe eleven. His hair was white, pale as fresh snow, and his eyes, what remained of them, were red. Crimson. The same red as Yuuta's. The same red that had looked at her with hope and fear and love.
