Silence.
For the first time in centuries, the world around Angron was silent.
The deafening roar that had accompanied his every breath, the eternal shriek of the Butcher's Nails had vanished as if it had never existed.
The colosseum felt strangely distant.
The wind.
The shifting sand.
Even the faint heartbeat of the humans standing nearby.
Everything sounded unbelievably clear.
Angron stood motionless.
His massive body, capable of tearing battle tanks apart with bare hands, trembled like that of a child lost in a snowstorm.
His chainaxe lay discarded on the sand beside him.
He did not pick it up.
He simply stood there.
Breathing.
Each breath felt unfamiliar.
Too slow.
Too calm.
Too... peaceful.
His crimson eyes stared blankly at the woman standing before him.
At Leticia.
Her palm was still resting gently against his forehead.
Warm.
Soft.
It was a sensation he could not remember ever feeling before.
His lips trembled slightly.
Fragments of memories, long buried beneath mountains of slaughter began to surface.
Snow.
Cold mountain wind.
The smell of smoke from a campfire.
The rough laughter of gladiators sharing cheap wine.
The faces of brothers and sisters who had once fought beside him beneath the cold skies of Nuceria.
For a fleeting moment…
The monster known across the galaxy as the Red Angel was gone.
There was only a gladiator.
A tired, broken man who had once dreamed of freedom.
Another tear slid down his cheek.
Then
Something screamed.
A thin, metallic shriek pierced through the fragile calm like a rusted blade driven into flesh.
At first it was faint.
Almost imperceptible.
Then another voice joined it.
And another.
And another.
Within seconds, the silence shattered.
The Butcher's Nails had awakened.
Pain exploded inside Angron's skull.
Not the dull, familiar ache he had endured for centuries.
This was something far worse.
A punishment.
The Nails rejected peace.
They rejected calm.
They rejected mercy.
The moment Angron's mind drifted away from rage, they retaliated with brutal precision.
Angron's entire body suddenly spasmed.
The veins across his neck bulged violently.
His hands clenched.
His teeth ground together with a grinding crack of bone against bone.
The Nails screamed inside his brain like a swarm of starving metal insects.
Kill.
Destroy.
Drown the silence in blood.
The whispers quickly turned into a roar.
Angron gasped, staggering backward a single step.
The fragile calm Leticia had given him began to crumble under the overwhelming assault.
His breathing grew heavier.
Faster.
The tears on his face mixed with sweat and dust.
For a moment, the gladiator tried to hold onto that silence.
That peace.
But the Nails were relentless.
They drove their invisible hooks deeper into his mind, tearing apart every memory of warmth that tried to surface.
The campfire faded.
The laughter disappeared.
The faces of his fallen comrades vanished once more beneath a rising tide of fury.
Rage flooded back into his veins like molten iron.
Angron suddenly roared.
The sound shook the entire colosseum.
It was no longer the mournful cry of a grieving warrior.
It was the howl of a beast dragged back into its cage.
His crimson eyes snapped open again.
The brief clarity inside them vanished beneath a storm of bloodlust.
His gaze locked onto Leticia.
For a fraction of a second
Something flickered behind that madness.
Recognition.
Confusion.
Even… hesitation.
But the Nails did not allow it to last.
They demanded slaughter.
Angron bent down slowly and picked up the fallen chainaxe.
The engines inside the weapon coughed once.
Then again.
His massive fingers tightened around the handle.
The machine roared back to life.
"VRUMMM—!!"
The familiar shriek of spinning teeth filled the arena once more.
Yet something had changed.
Something small.
Something fragile.
Something the Nails could not fully erase.
As Angron raised the weapon once again, his eyes remained fixed on Leticia's face.
Not with pure hatred.
But with a strange, fractured uncertainty.
The beast had returned.
But somewhere, deep beneath the mountain of rage
The gladiator had awakened.
And he was no longer sleeping peacefully.
He was struggling.
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