"Have you come to see how many of us are left to sacrifice?"

The ten-year-old body before me asked, standing tall despite everything. His fists were clenched tight beside his thighs, knuckles white. His gaze didn’t waver as he looked at my golden eyes with his crimson ones.

His expression didn’t contain even a single ounce of anger. It was just... empty. Hollow.

"The answer is sixteen," he added, his voice flat.

I looked down at him and snorted. "Aren’t you supposed to be a generational prodigy?" I asked.

"How could you mess up such a simple calculation?"

I walked toward him slowly, watching his expressionless face carefully.

"The answer is seventeen," I said, stopping in front of him. "You forgot to add Sera."

His crimson eyes suddenly gleamed golden. The shelves around us shook violently, books tumbling to the floor with heavy thuds.

Light attribute mana.

A ten-year-old. Already using mana.

If I remembered correctly, even Sera, considered the greatest prodigy of our time, was only able to use mana for the first time when she was fourteen.

His small frame began to shake. That expressionless face, those eyes with the dark wrinkles beneath them, they cracked. Like glass under too much pressure.

His eyes turned moist. His face trembled with rage.

"They died..." His voice trailed off, breaking slightly.

"It’s all because of an useless garbage like you running off instead of facing them!"

His eyes contained a malice that no one his age should ever be able to hold.

Hell, there were only a handful of people I’d ever seen with that much hatred burning in their hearts.

He lunged forward, jumping at me with everything he had.

I fell backward as his weight crashed into me. My back hit the floor hard.

Gin sat on top of me, one of his small hands clutching my collar desperately, the other making a fist.

His eyes couldn’t contain the tears anymore. They came freely now, streaming down his pale cheeks.

Thud!

His fist made contact with my cheek, the impact sharp and stinging. A bruise formed immediately.

"Brother Vol!" he shouted as he hit me again.

"They killed him right in front of the orphanage!"

Another punch landed.

"He didn’t let a single one of those scumbags enter the orphanage!"

He hit me again. And again.

"I watched from that same window as he fought until his last breath!"

His fists kept landing. They packed quite a punch for someone so small. His tears fell onto my shirt and face, warm and wet.

"But those scumbags didn’t stop with him."

His punches suddenly stopped. His small frame went completely still.

His eyes turned dark. Dead.

"They took Sister Seraphina with them."

He lowered his fist slowly.

"She cried for Vol, but those animals didn’t bother to stop stabbing him." His voice was quiet now. Too quiet. "They dragged her off of Vol’s body and pulled her along the street... all the way to their station."

He looked at me, his face dangerously calm now.

"She returned at night. Her dress was torn in... places."

His hand shook where it gripped my collar.

"You know what that means... don’t you?"

A small, creepy smile formed on his face, twisted on someone so young.

"Do you know the first thing Sister did when she came home in that state?" he asked.

I didn’t answer. Couldn’t.

"She didn’t look at Brother’s dead body. No." His voice cracked. "She came to us kids, who were still afraid and frozen, and she smiled ."

"She smiled, Rune! She smiled!"

The punches rained down on my face again, harder this time. Desperate. Broken.

"She bathed the kids among us and made us dinner like usual! She told us bedtime stories while Brother Vol’s dead body was out there rotting!"

He was crying fully now, his words coming between gasping sobs.

"None of the kids doubted anything. None of them even registered that Brother Vol was dead."

His punches slowed, losing their strength.

"After everyone slept, I got up from my bed and looked out the window... but Brother Vol wasn’t outside anymore."

He stopped punching completely. He just cried now, like the child he was.

"I panicked. I ran to Sister’s room to tell her. I knocked on her door..." His voice broke. "But the response never came back."

His whole body was shaking.

"The door creaked open as I pushed it. It wasn’t locked."

His words came slower now, each one harder than the last.

"The ground... the ground was full of blood. I panicked and rushed forward." He squeezed his eyes shut tight. "On the bed, Brother Vol was laid out... where Sister would have been sleeping."

"Then I heard a creak..."

His voice dropped to barely a whisper.

"As I turned my head... I... I..."

He stuttered, his breath catching in his throat.

I caught his hand that was still gripping my collar. I held it steady, firm but gentle.

"I saw Sister... hanging..."

The words came out broken, barely audible.

Tears streaked down his face as he suddenly buried it in my chest, his small body collapsing against me. His shoulders shook violently as he sobbed, deep, painful cries that seemed to tear out of him.

After sobbing for what felt like an eternity but was probably only a minute, Gin slowly lifted his face off my chest.

"It was all your fault!" he said, his voice barely above a whisper. A mutter filled with pain.

"If you hadn’t run away..."

His voice trailed off.

Because he was smarter than that.

Even through his grief, even through his rage, Gin understood. If I hadn’t run away, they would have captured me and Sera. They would have subjected us to the same fate, or worse. He knew that. Deep down, beneath all that anger, he understood.

What he was doing now, blaming me, hating me, it meant he was judging whose life was more valuable to him. Mine and Sera’s? Or Seraphina’s and Vol’s?

If he was a normal kid, the answer would have been simple. Seraphina.

But nothing about Gin was normal.

He was the future Light of Dawn, the one who would single-handedly shake nations with just his words. He would grow strong enough to even be compared to us Warlords, the strongest forces in the world.

And right now, at ten years old, he already knew he didn’t have the right to make that judgment. He knew no one would willingly put others above themselves. If not Seraphina, then Rune. If not Vol, then Sera.

That’s just how the world worked.

He knew that truth. And now he was fighting his own inner thoughts despite the hate and anger burning inside him. Trying to reconcile what his heart screamed with what his mind understood.

That wasn’t something even most adults could manage.

His small fists landed weakly on my torso now, barely more than taps. All the strength had left them.

"Why did you come now...?" he asked, his voice breaking as he tried to gulp down another cry.

"What do you want...?"

The question hung in the air between us, heavy and raw.

I caught his small fists in my hands, gently, but firmly. I let Blood Raven fall to the ground beside me with a dull clatter.

I looked directly into those crimson eyes, eyes that held far too much pain for someone so young.

"YOUR FURY," I said.

**********

"Sister Sera...?"

A single, small voice echoed from the stairs of the orphanage.

Sera’s fury-filled eyes snapped toward the direction of the sound.

"Emily...?" Sera said, her voice catching. She was still pinning the fifty-year-old caretaker to the wall, her hands gripping the woman’s collar tightly.

Her hands suddenly released their grip. The caretaker slumped slightly as Sera stepped away, walking toward the small figure on the stairs. Her own eyes turned moist, tears threatening to spill.

All the other kids stood behind Emily, hiding themselves behind her small frame like she was their shield.

Emily’s eyes brightened at the familiar face. Her brain took a moment to register.

It was indeed Sera. Really her.

She sprang forward with a cry, throwing her arms around Sera’s legs and hugging them tight. Her face buried itself in Sera’s skirt as sobs wracked her tiny body.

Sera crouched down immediately and wrapped Emily in her arms, holding her tightly. Protectively.

Emily cried harder in Sera’s embrace, her small hands clutching desperately at Sera’s dress.

The caretaker, seeing this moment of distraction, found her opportunity. She slid along the wall and turned toward the entrance, ready to escape.

But the black-haired woman was already blocking the way.

"Hey, mov—" The caretaker stopped mid-word as she looked into Lydia’s eyes.

She squealed in terror, pressing her back flat against the wall as far from Lydia as she could get.

The kids behind Emily now looked at each other, recognition dawning on their faces.

"Sister Sera... it’s Sister Sera," mumbles of relief spread through the small group. The shock of their sister’s death and their current abusive caretaker had left them frozen, afraid to hope. But now...

They all flooded forward, surrounding Sera in a wave of small bodies and desperate hugs.

"What happened? Where is... Sister Seraphina...?" Sera asked, even though her brain already understood the situation. Already knew the answer.

Emily shook her head, her face crumpling. "I don’t know... they took her unconscious body when Gin found her in her room." Her voice was barely a whisper. "He didn’t allow any of us to go in..."

Emily’s cheeks and nose were covered in tears and mucus as she cried.

"They cleaned her room and didn’t allow us in until the new sister arrived," Emily said, hugging Sera even tighter, like she was afraid Sera might disappear too.

Sera understood what had happened. She’d understood it long before this moment.

But now she was forced to give her hope away completely.