In ancient Rome, the gladiator Marcus was the first human who ever stirred her heart.
He used to sneak her out of the arena at night, soaring over the vineyards under the moonlight, telling her stories from his childhood. But when the Emperor discovered their secret and threatened to execute his entire family—
Marcus let go of her hand.
"I'm sorry," he bowed his head, "I'm just an average man... I can't afford the price of loving you."
—It was the first time she understood: humans could love her, but they didn't dare choose her.
Rome, 80 AD. The Colosseum.
Before a crowd of a hundred thousand roaring spectators, Serapha was chained inside a golden cage, displayed as a living symbol of "Victory."
Her wings had been cruelly clipped, her ankles shackled with rune-engraved silver cuffs—the Empire's latest invention: the Divine Bird Shackles.
"Today's execution features a rebellious Germanic prisoner," the announcer shouted beside her cage, "but here's a little surprise... our brave Captain Marcus has volunteered to fight a tiger!"
Serapha snapped her head up.
The man who once secretly brought her figs now stood in the center of the arena. He wore no helmet. Beneath his golden-brown curls, a pair of amber eyes stared straight at her.
—A warning.
Three months earlier, Marcus had slipped into the Aviary Shrine under cover of night.
"Try this," he pulled out a bunch of grapes from beneath his armor, "today's reward from Caesar. They say... feeding a phoenix will bless the Empire with prosperity."
Serapha sneered, "Then you should offer them to the cage."
"But I want to offer them to you, inside the cage."
Suddenly, he drew his dagger and cut his fingertip, letting a drop of blood fall onto the grapes.
"We Germans believe a blood oath exposes all lies—"
"These grapes," he said softly, "are from my own rations."
In the moonlight, his blood seeped into the fruit, sealing some secret covenant between them.
Now, in the arena, Marcus let the tiger pin him to the ground.
As the crowd roared, Serapha saw the shape of his lips:
"Under... the cage... obsidian..."
And in that moment, it all became clear—
The way he'd always touched her shackles during his late-night visits, the lash wounds from skipping training last month, and this entire staged defeat against the tiger—
It was all for finding the weak point of her prison.
Just as the tiger was about to tear out his throat, Serapha did something she had never done before:
She broke off one of her own tail feathers.
A phoenix's tail feather is the source of its regeneration.
As the burning feather fell, the entire arena began to quake:
The silver runes corroded and failed under the bloodied flame, and the obsidian beneath the cage melted away in phoenix fire.
Serapha burst free from her restraints and soared into the sky.
The audience gasped in shock and awe.
At that moment, Marcus turned and slew the tiger, then hurled his blood-stained short sword at the announcer.
"Run!" he crashed through the guards, sprinting toward the cage. "The Germanic allies have already—"
Before he could finish, a golden arrow pierced his chest.
From the stands, the Emperor lowered his bow with a sneer:
"A slave, saving a Pheonix? Know your place."
High in the sky, Serapha could only watch as his body crumpled and fell.
The pain was sharp and familiar, like a blade driven straight through her heart. She couldn't breathe, couldn't cry.
But just as despair was about to swallow her whole, an unstoppable force erupted from within her.
Blazing flames surged from her throat like a furious dragon, lunging toward the imperial stands, devouring the greedy Emperor and his nobles in an inferno of wrath.
Screams echoed through the smoke and the stench of burning flesh filled the air.
When the flames finally died down, she gently descended beside his fallen body.
That body—
The only warmth she had known in this life, the last tenderness in her heart.
She gazed at him quietly, her eyes filled not with fear or despair, but with endless softness and longing.
The fire gradually consumed her too, but she did not resist.
She simply stood there, letting the flames engulf her and the world alike.
In the final moment of her life, her heart held only one wish:
May this raging fire burn away all the world's evil and injustice.