Yuuta stood completely still, his dark crimson aura leaking from his body like smoke from dying embers, his red eyes glowing with a light that did not belong to the morning sun.
He stared at the pitbull, at its limp body, its sightless eyes, its chest that no longer rose and fell. The beast that had been charging, snarling, ready to tear into his daughter was now nothing but meat and bone and fur.
Then everything went silent.
The darkness at the edges of his vision surged inward, swallowing the light, swallowing the sounds, swallowing the garden and the people and the dead dog.
Yuuta's legs gave way beneath him. He collapsed like a doll whose strings had been cut, his knees hitting the grass, his body crumpling forward.
His hands caught him at the last moment, pressing into the damp earth, but the impact still sent a shock through his arms, his shoulders, his chest.
He could not breathe.
