Author's Note:
This chapter is longer than usual.
I didn't want to cut anything out because every part of it matters. I hope you take your time with it and feel everything I tried to put into it.
Thank you for reading.
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"Didn't I say die?"
Yuuta's voice echoed through the Colosseum, small but absolute, carrying a weight that should not have been possible for a four-year-old child.
His crimson eyes blazed like twin suns, not the soft red of autumn leaves or the warm red of hearth fire, but the deep, terrible crimson of freshly spilled blood.
The color seemed to drink the light around it, pulling shadows toward the boy, making the air itself grow heavy and cold.
The tears that had been rolling down his cheeks moments before transformed as they fell.
Crystal droplets turned into drops of deep blood, dark and thick, striking the dirt and staining it black. They did not evaporate.
