Azriel’s eyes slowly widened with anger.

"...You... know why."

Pollux looked amused.

"Do I, monster?"

Azriel pressed the muzzle of the Desert Eagle against his forehead.

Pollux’s gaze naturally drifted past him, toward the chained princess of the Frost Clan. The gun remained pressed to his skull, yet he only tilted his head and placed a finger against his chin.

"Now that I think about it," Pollux said, "didn’t you defy the God of Time for Celestina?"

Pollux already knew that, of course.

His smile turned knowing.

Sinister.

"Such a dangerous choice, with such dangerous consequences. All so you could make her feel better."

He laughed.

Azriel’s eyes flared open, and he shoved the gun harder against Pollux’s forehead.

"Shut up."

"I truly cannot tell whether she is a lucky girl or an unlucky one!" Pollux burst into laughter. "Hahahaha!"

"I said shut up!"

"Oh? What, are you going to shoot me for her!? Or for your sister!? Come on, then. Which is it!? For whom are you going to kill me, you monst—"

A deafening bang tore through the oubliette.

The sound crashed against the walls.

Another cold breeze swept through the chamber, scattering dust into the air.

Azriel had already closed his eyes.

He felt warm blood spatter across his face.

Then he heard the body fall quietly to the ground.

Atropos’ Elegy slipped from his fingers. A moment later, the weapon vanished.

Azriel slowly opened his eyes.

Somehow, he was already on his knees.

A sharp pain began to spread from his heart, crawling through every part of him.

He looked down.

"I killed him..."

He had done it.

He had actually shot him.

"Oh..."

A painful headache started hammering inside his skull, pounding behind his eyes. Azriel gripped his face.

"Oh God..."

His eyes began to tremble.

"I killed her..."

He had done it.

He had actually shot her.

"No..."

His breath hitched.

"Ghah... shit...!"

His fingers dug into his hair.

"Dammit! Fuck! Dammit!"

A horrible pain consumed his body. Azriel froze under the weight of it, but his mind could focus only on the terrifying action he had just taken.

"W-why did I do this...?" His voice began to shake. "I didn’t want to do this..."

He grunted as another wave of pain tore through him.

"N-no. I had to, but... but still..."

His voice fell into a broken whisper.

"I... God, no..."

His lips parted.

"I-I killed a child...?"

As if those words had finally made it real, tears streamed down Azriel’s face.

His entire body trembled, seized by an agony that [Soul’s Crucible] could no longer protect him from, and by the horror of the choice he had just made.

It finally struck him.

What he had done in the arena.

The way he had acted toward that knight.

Then Dorian.

Then Pollux.

And now this.

"Ah... ahhh..."

His breath broke apart.

"No...!"

Azriel’s fingers dug into the flesh of his own face. His nails tore through skin, and blood welled beneath them.

"This... this is not my skin...!"

A scream erupted from Azriel’s throat.

It was not human.

It was closer to the bellow of a dying creature, terrified and in pain.

And amidst all of it, from nowhere, the wall in front of him began to change.

Blood seeped across the stone.

Slowly, impossibly, the crimson lines formed letters.

Large letters.

Sinister letters.

Azriel’s eyes locked onto them.

He could not look away.

"W..."

A silent cry escaped him.

The letters shifted.

More blood spread across the wall.

His eyes widened, now with a different kind of horror.

"W... ...P"

"W..E ...P"

"W... KE ...P"

Then, after a moment of terrible ambiguity, the message became clear.

Written in blood.

Baleful.

Unmistakable.

Azriel read the words in a shaky murmur.

"Wake up."

*****

"...Huh?"

Azriel blinked several times, his eyes as clear as ever despite the haze pressing against his mind.

"Wh... where am I...?"

His voice echoed through the spacious passage, swallowed by the silver flames burning in the torches mounted along the walls.

But Azriel already knew where he was.

He remembered this place.

He had been here only moments ago.

This was the tunnel beneath the colosseum—the one that led straight into the arena.

So that was not the real question.

The real question was why.

Why was he here again?

How?

Only a second ago, he had been inside the chamber. Now he stood here, back in the tunnel, as if the world itself had snapped him backward without warning.

"Arghh!"

Azriel clutched his face as pain burst through him.

No.

Not just his face.

His entire body screamed.

Every bone, every muscle, every nerve throbbed with a deep and merciless ache, as though something had torn him apart and stitched him back together wrong. He was in so... so much pain.

And yet, despite it all, his feet began to move.

He did not command them to.

He simply walked.

Step by step, he drifted toward the arena with a dazed, unsteady gait, like a drunk man stumbling through a nightmare he could not understand.

When he emerged from the tunnel, the light struck him.

Azriel squinted, his bloodied eyes struggling to adjust to the brightness.

Then his vision cleared.

And he froze.

This time, he looked less like a prince and more like a hollowed-out corpse wearing the shape of one. Confusion bled into fear as his gaze settled on what stood barely a meter in front of him.

A stake.

And atop that stake was Dorian’s severed head.

Blood soaked the wood beneath it. His face was twisted in the final expression he had carried into death—a bitter mask of madness and terror, frozen forever in his last moments. The stake had been driven up through his neck, holding the head upright like some grotesque trophy.

Azriel’s guts twisted.

He staggered back a step, his heart pounding so violently it felt loud enough for the entire colosseum to hear.

If only there had been a living soul left in the arena to hear it.

His gaze drifted across the blood-soaked ground, over the gruesome carnage he had supposedly caused.

Only now, something was different.

To his right.

To his left.

There were more stakes.

Rows of them.

And on every single one was a head.

Each belonged to someone Azriel had killed in this arena.

A cruel, familiar laugh echoed through the silence.

Azriel’s breath caught.

He knew that laugh.

It was the same one that had come from his own lips before.

Only this time, it did not.

At least...

He hoped it did not.

The stakes, except for Dorian’s, formed something like a barrier. A path. A corridor of severed heads leading Azriel straight toward the center of the arena.

His gaze followed it.

Naturally.

Unwillingly.

Until the endless line of stakes finally came to an end.

"Ah..."

There it was.

One of the questions he had asked.

One of the questions no one had answered.

The long dinner table.

The same one he had been sitting at not long ago.

It stood there in the middle of the arena, untouched by the blood around it, waiting beneath the dead silence like a memory that had no right to exist.

And at the far end of that table sat someone.

This time, from where Azriel stood, he could see the figure clearly.

...It was himself.