The silence in the arena held long enough to become its own verdict.
On the floor, the relic kept dragging the severed arm across the stone in short, blind scrapes that went nowhere.
Five paces from it, Kaede lay in a spreading pool of her own blood. Color drained from her face with every heartbeat as the strength that had never truly been hers bled out alongside the rest.
Ayame looked down at her sister.
Kaede looked up at her.
Neither spoke. The wind stirred frost between them and carried the sound of the relic scraping stone somewhere behind Ayame's heels, and for a breath the only thing left on that floor was two sisters and the wreckage between them.
"I kept imagining what I'd do with you," Ayame finally spoke up.
Her voice came quiet, almost conversational, as if she were talking to herself with Kaede as the audience.
