Yuki felt numb after hearing the stranger's words.
"To perish?" he repeated softly.
Those words dissolving like poison in the room's heavy stifling air.
Taking a deep breath and suppressing the bitterness in his heart.
He began walking back toward his corner.
As he left, he could only manage to say.
"You... you shouldn't be so hopeless."
Yuki sat back down in his usual spot.
Where he often isolated himself from the world.
He leaned his head back against the stony wall and closed his eyes.
But this time, instead of the fear of the dungeon walls.
He heard the commotion of his home kitchen.
Behind his closed eyes, a scene began to clear.
The familiar warmth of the kitchen and the sweet aroma of food.
His younger siblings were swarming around his mother's feet.
Sometimes playing with utensils and sometimes chasing each other around.
His mother was busy preparing food.
And was getting frustrated because of the children.
Suddenly, her patience gave way.
She stopped her work and shouted at the children.
"Don't bother me! Get out of here, I have work to do!"
Then his mother turned toward Yuki.
Who was standing there throwing tantrums because he didn't like the food being prepared.
She scolded him in irritation.
"Yuki! Take your younger siblings out of here! Don't crowd this place!"
His father's faint, suppressed laughter.
And the sight of his siblings running out giggling...
It all felt so real that Yuki felt if he reached out.
He could touch the corner of the frock his mother was wearing.
But as he took a deep breath, the aroma of home vanished.
Replaced by the dampness of the dungeon.
When he opened his eyes, there were only stone walls and Lane's terrifyingly calm face.
That peaceful life had now become nothing more than a fading dream.
Yuki clenched his fists.
Realizing how painful the journey from that home to this place had been.
Yuki thudded his head against the cold stone of the wall and whispered.
"I made friends here... but the memory of all of you still stings in my chest."
Staring into the darkness, his mind took him back to that same black evening.
The scene was still fresh behind his eyelids.
"Yuki, go to the market and fetch these things," his father had said.
Yuki didn't want to go.
He wanted to stay in the liveliness of the home.
"Tell someone else... I don't feel like going," he had insisted.
But his parents, scolding him affectionately, had forced him to go.
If only he hadn't listened to them that day... if only he had stayed home.
When he returned, that house had become a cremation ground.
As he crossed the threshold, what he saw made his soul tremble.
His parents' lifeless bodies lay on the floor.
Instead of innocent colors, the walls were splattered with crimson blood.
There were only red stains everywhere.
"Mom? Dad?"
His voice choked in his throat.
He frantically began searching for his siblings.
They weren't in the kitchen; they weren't in the rooms.
There was no sign of where they had gone.
He ran out of the house, hoping someone might be in the neighborhood.
But the world outside was dead too.
Only silence filled the surrounding houses.
A terrifying silence in which only the sound of his own heartbeat could be heard.
He was completely alone.
"I should have died too," he whispered to himself.
"Why was I the only one left?"
Yuki blinked his blurred eyes and looked ahead.
Luka had just woken up.
He sat leaning against the wall.
And Lane lay comfortably with his head in Luka's lap, sound asleep.
Looking at them, it felt as though they had built a small, secure world of their own.
Even within this stony cell.
Luka blinked and looked down.
There was a strange peace on Lane's face.
The same peace that kept Luka from waking him.
Suddenly, Lane turned in his sleep.
And began rubbing his eyes vigorously with his small fists.
Luka immediately leaned forward and caught Lane's tiny hands in his palms.
"Don't do that, Lane," Luka's voice held the concern of an elder brother.
"If you rub your eyes like that, they'll turn red and then they'll hurt."
Lane looked at Luka with half-open eyes.
And snuggled back into his lap with a faint smile.
Sitting in the shadows, Yuki watched all of this.
An unknown smile bloomed on his lips.
He remembered the moment when Luka had extended the hand of friendship toward him.
In the dust of this very dungeon.
Yuki, who had turned himself into stone, hadn't been able to reject that hand.
Seeing the two of them together reminded him of his younger siblings who were no longer with him.
In a corner of Yuki's mind, the fear still lingered that Lane was dangerous.
His nature, that 'black door,' and his mysterious words.
Everything pointed toward a great danger.
But at this moment, looking at the innocent child sleeping in Luka's lap.
Yuki felt that perhaps this was the family he didn't want to lose again.
In the entire room, only Yuki and Luka knew that this innocence could turn into a storm.
Yuki's eyes remained fixed on them.
But his mind was connecting the dots of the events that had occurred just a short while ago.
He remembered when he had squeezed the deep blue wound on Lane's foot with his fingers.
There wasn't a single flinch on Lane's face.
He hadn't felt the pain at all.
But Luka's behavior had completely shifted in that moment.
Yuki recalled the scene when Luka had lunged forward to stand before him.
The anger in Luka's eyes was like that of a predator protecting its cub.
Yuki realized that even if Lane hadn't felt the pain.
Luka had felt it in his own chest.
That single moment had made everything clear to Yuki—what Lane meant to Luka.
Looking at Luka and Lane sitting together, anyone would say they were peers.
Their stature, their innocence, everything was identical.
But the way Luka was stroking Lane's messy hair made him seem older.
Yuki slowly loosened his clenched fists.
He decided he would no longer be just a spectator.
In this darkness where everyone was an enemy.
Luka and Lane had given him something he could never buy from the market—a purpose.
The dungeon walls were still as cold as ever.
But a new fire was burning in Yuki's chest.
It was a fire born not from the fear of losing loved ones.
But from the conviction to protect them.