"Gulp...!"
Francis's breath caught in his throat.
He slowly turned toward the silver-haired youth who now stood with his back half-turned, violet swords still orbiting him like an executioner's crown.
The crackling sparks of divine light around the Emperor flickered and dimmed.
Because he saw them.
Those glowing red eyes.
Red like ancient blood.
Red like death that never left.
His pupils shrank, and the world spun.
And suddenly, a memory came flooding back.
A dim hallway, a slit of moonlight, and the cold wave of the wind. And then, it came silence, complete utter silence. The silence that came only after death.
He remembered the pain.
That cold, suffocating fear that had wrapped around his throat when someone, something, had sliced through the layers of his defenses like they were made of paper.
He barely survived that night, but the attacker had left a deep trauma on his soul, along with a deep scar on his thigh.
