Hoshi collapsed on the bed, his small body bleeding endlessly, his blood soaking into the white blanket that had lost all meaning. He no longer screamed. He no longer moved. Only faint breaths fading slowly away.
At the other end of the room, Harvmar had lost his mind. He lunged toward Nirara, shouting, his voice cutting through the silence like a blade:
"You killed him!! Our child!! You killed our son, Nirara!!"
He raised his hand and slapped her violently, then struck her shoulder as if madness had completely consumed him. His eyes were wide, filled with a mixture of rage and despair, seeing nothing now but the crime before him.
Nirara cried out, weeping as she tried to push him away with trembling arms:
"Stop! He wasn't our child! He wasn't Hoshi!!"
Her voice trembled as she continued, her expression shattered between fear and desperate self-defense:
"I saw it with my own eyes! Those black eyes… that horn! He wasn't human! He tried to kill you, Harvmar!"
He stepped back, his breathing heavy, but said nothing.
She went on hoarsely, placing a trembling hand over her tear-stained face:
"I did it for you… for Astrom… I couldn't risk letting that monster live among us!"
She looked at him with glassy eyes, a broken smile splitting her face:
"Don't worry… we still have another child, normal and beautiful… we have Astrom. He's pure, not like that thing."
At that moment, Harvmar said nothing. He only stared at her, completely still, his face lifeless. Behind him, the sound of blood dripping from the bed was the only thing that remained alive in the room.
His fist clenched so hard the veins in his arm bulged, the blood boiling through him like fire. Before his eyes flashed the image of Hoshi as he had seen him just minutes ago—a tiny child smiling up at him, clutching his collar, crying in his arms, asking for warmth. That moment, once a symbol of life, now returned as a blade tearing through his heart.
He lifted his head slowly toward Nirara, his breaths uneven, his voice low but dripping with rage:
"He was… hugging me, Nirara… he was crying, begging for my warmth…!"
He stepped back, gripping his trembling hand again so tightly that blood oozed from his palm.
"And you… you killed him as if he were nothing!"
His voice rose, breaking with fury and pain:
"My child was alive!!"
Astrom's cries rose again—sharp, shattering—as if his wails carried everything the adults could not say. He lay in the same cradle, his white skin now stained with the blood that had splattered from Hoshi's body, screaming as though trapped in a curse he was born into without understanding it.
Harvmar turned toward him in confusion. For a moment, he thought the sound came from another world. Astrom's cries filled the room, echoing off the walls, blending with Hoshi's fading breaths.
Harvmar reached out slowly, his voice hoarse, wavering between fatherhood and collapse:
"Astrom…"
But the child kept crying, tears falling onto the traces of dried blood on his small body, as if fate itself had branded him with sins he had yet to commit.
Tears slid quietly down Harvmar's cheeks, soundless, as though his soul was bleeding through them. His eyes drifted toward Hoshi's tiny, motionless body lying on the bed.
He stepped forward with trembling knees, his hands shaking as if approaching something sacred he feared to touch. He extended his arms toward the body, then froze for a moment, as though his heart questioned whether he deserved to lift him after failing to protect him.
He whispered in a broken voice as he gathered Hoshi's body into his arms:
"My little one… you were so warm the last time I held you…"
His hands trembled harder, the hot blood seeping between his fingers, yet he held the child in a long, silent embrace, as if he could stop death through his arms alone.
Nirara approached slowly, her steps heavy as if the ground refused to carry her. She stopped one step away from her husband, her voice raspy and faint, speaking more to herself than to him:
"Hoshi was the curse they spoke of… even if I hadn't done it, they would've killed him anyway…"
Harvmar didn't move, but a low growl escaped him—something between a sob and suppressed rage. The image of Hoshi smiling at him, reaching out his tiny hand, still burned inside his mind.
He lifted his eyes toward Nirara, a look of grief, fury, and betrayal mixing in his gaze:
"Hoshi wasn't a curse… he was my son."
His words were short, yet they fell like a final verdict—one that allowed no retreat. Nirara stepped cautiously toward the cradle, then bent down and gently embraced Astrom, this time with genuine tenderness, as if seeking refuge in him from the chaos her own hands had caused. She held him to her chest, running her fingers through his blond hair, now stained with small spots of blood.
She raised her head toward Harvmar, her eyes gleaming with a strange firmness somewhere between fear and resolve, and said in a steady voice trembling beneath its own restraint:
"Harvmar… stop clinging to the corpse of a monster, and look at your real son! This is the one we must protect—not that creature that nearly destroyed us!"
Her words cut through the room like a new blade. Harvmar froze, his arms still wrapped around Hoshi's cold body, his dead gaze fixed on her eyes—unable to speak, unable to let go.
He lifted his head slowly, his voice low at first but saturated with a bitterness he had never known.
He stared at Nirara for a long moment, his face streaked with dried tears, then spoke in a broken yet sharp tone:
"Nirara… I never thought you could be this numb…"
His features stiffened, his voice quivering slightly as he continued:
"How can you speak with such coldness… after killing the one who came from your own womb? After stabbing him with your own hand while he looked at you in pleading?"
He stepped closer, his eyes trembling with restrained fury:
"You killed something you didn't understand, and now you try to justify it with logic… as if what died before you wasn't our child."
Harvmar's words faltered mid-sentence as he felt a faint, trembling movement within his arms. His voice fell silent, his breath catching as he slowly looked down. He turned his eyes away from Nirara and stared at Hoshi's body—and his heartbeat quickened.
The wound across the child's stomach was beginning to shrink before his eyes, the torn flesh closing neatly as if time itself were rewinding. Within moments, all the blood had vanished, the skin smooth again, free of scars. Harvmar staggered back a step, his body trembling, his eyes widening in disbelief and horror.
He whispered in a faint, almost inaudible voice:
"This… is impossible…"
Nirara's eyes widened in utter shock, her face turning pale beneath the room's light. She raised her hand unconsciously to her mouth, unable to speak. Meanwhile, in Harvmar's arms, Hoshi's eyelids began to quiver. He opened his eyes with a faint tremor, his gaze hazy and unfocused, as if he were seeing the world through a veil of mist. He couldn't concentrate, yet what he felt was clear… warmth.
He felt hot drops fall onto his small face. He didn't understand at first—then realized they were his father's tears. They fell silently, washing away the traces of blood that no longer existed, blending with the breath of life that had just returned to him.
Amid his weakness and faint inner voice, Hoshi whispered to himself:
'Father… don't cry… I'm here…'
Hoshi's breathing quickened as he lay in his father's arms, his eyes flickering weakly between consciousness and fog. Images trickled through his mind like nightmares rising from the depths of memory—the black beam, the pain in his chest, his parents' trembling eyes, and the knife that pierced his body.
'That wasn't me…'
A heavy voice echoed inside his head, thick with guilt and fear.
He remembered losing control of his body, the rage that overtook him without source, and how, for a moment, he felt no longer human. That energy had moved inside him like a creature desperate to devour the world, and he had been powerless to stop it.
His lips trembled as he thought:
'I was screaming… I was asking for help… but they didn't hear me.'
Then came the final image—his mother's face, her terrified eyes, the knife gleaming in her hand before it plunged into his stomach. He felt something break inside him again—not from the wound, but from that last look in her eyes.
'Mother… you were afraid… but why didn't you believe I was even more afraid than you?'
A single tear slid from his eye, silent and heavy, carrying every memory within a single point of pain.
Nirara screamed sharply, her voice echoing through the room:
"He really is a curse! He refuses to die!"
She stumbled backward in panic, her gaze darting between the moving Hoshi and the frozen Harvmar still holding him. Her hand shook as she pointed toward the child, her voice breaking between sobs and terror:
"Do you see?! I stabbed him myself! I saw the blood! I saw him die with my own eyes!"
But Hoshi understood her—and each of her words tore something inside him. He stared at her, his eyes half-closed, tears glimmering in them. He couldn't grasp how a mother could scream like that at her son, yet he felt the cold seep into his heart—not from the wound, but from the truth itself.
All he could hear now was the echo of her words pounding in his head:
"Curse… refuses to die…"
Those words were sharper than the knife. Crueler than pain. He stared at her for a long time, and within his eyes, there was no longer anger—only emptiness. Something broke inside him, something that should never break in a child so young.
He slowly turned his gaze toward his father, still holding him, searching for a look that would tell him what he heard wasn't true. But Harvmar couldn't answer. His eyes were drowning in tears, and within his silence lay an agonizing confession that needed no words.
At that moment, Hoshi felt that something within him had truly died—not his body, but his heart. The small part that once believed he had found a family that loved him. He curled quietly in his father's arms, without tears this time. Only a lingering stare at the ceiling—at the world that had betrayed him twice.
And within him, a final voice whispered before the darkness took him:
"If this is love… then let the universe burn."
That night, Hoshi didn't die… but he was no longer alive either.