You had believed in him. And this was the cost. What did you think would happen?

You felt foolish.

You'd brought him into your home, your village, let his shadow stretch across your hearth, and now the blood ran back to you.

You called him man, even when he told you not to. Even when he showed you—told you about the curse curled in his gut, laid out like something rotting in the sun. You loved him. And you would not love a monster. So he couldn’t be one. Not then. Because you didn’t see it.

There he stood. Over your father’s body. The stink of ash clawed at your throat, smoke needled your eyes. But you kept looking, couldn’t help it.

You said something—what, you didn’t know. Words lost their shape in your mouth. Ryomen turned.

His face was unreadable. Not cold, not cruel. Worse—indifferent. You wanted him to say something. A reason. A lie. A wound. Something to prove you still lived in his mind.

But there was only silence. Not even triumph. Only that same dead calm, carved into him like stone.

The wind shifted. It carried the scorched scent of your father’s robes. You moved without meaning to, legs folding slow beneath you.

“I trusted you,” you said. Softer now.

He tilted his head. Curious, like a beast sniffing at a thing it would not eat. And then, after a pause that felt like the end of the world, he spoke.

“You shouldn’t have.”