When I woke up, it was ten minutes past midnight. I stepped out of the car and walked toward the village… and froze.
It looked nothing like the place I had seen before.
The streets were empty and silent. The floating flames were gone. The stalls had vanished as if they had never existed. The trees no longer glowed. Only the two full moons lit the village faintly.
I followed their light through the abandoned streets until I reached the colosseum again. Earlier, Sona and Luna had rested on either side of it, but now both moons were centered above it, side by side in the sky. In that absolute quiet, where even my heartbeat sounded too loud, I heard strange noises echoing from inside the colosseum.
I was terrified, but I forced myself to walk through the gates. They had been closed earlier, but now they stood open. Inside were stairs leading upward on both sides. I climbed one without thinking. The stairs ended at a corridor with another set of steps leading up and down. One wall had windows looking down at the arena.
I took the stairs upward. At the final step I stopped and looked at the sky. The moons seemed to touch. Luna appeared to be swallowing Sona, leaving only a red crescent visible.
When I looked down into the colosseum, I saw the stage in the center. Ten poles stood in a line, and tied to each pole were two people, a man and a woman, bound back to back. I barely registered them. I was searching for mom and dad.
I walked through rows of seats, climbed stairs, circled corridors, calling for them. Then I heard it, a baby crying from a large glass room a few meters away.
And I do not know why, but my heart leapt. I imagined it was the baby from before. I started running toward the sound, hoping, even craving, to see him again. I imagined holding him, playing with him. Somewhere in that hope, mom and dad slipped from my mind for a moment. I wandered through the corridor, chasing the cry.
Soon I reached a magnificent door on the side of the hall, carved and gleaming as if it hid something great. I stopped in front of it. The baby's cry was louder now, coming clearly from the other side.
As I pushed the heavy door open, a faint glow met me. Inside, a baby lay on a table behind a glass wall. It took me only a heartbeat to recognize him. Even from the doorway, I could feel his warmth, the same gentle warmth I had felt in the car. And the moment our eyes met, he stopped crying.
He turned his tiny head toward me, smiling. Without thinking, I walked straight to him. When I reached him and began stroking his hair, watching him giggle softly, all the noises in the colosseum suddenly vanished. The silence that followed felt unnatural, ominous, so complete that I could hear my heartbeat racing in my ears.
Curious and uneasy, I leaned closer to the glass.
On the other side, the huge lion from before walked across the stage toward the row of poles. With each step it took, its body shifted. First its tail vanished. Then its back legs reshaped into human legs. Its mane dissolved, its fur receded, black hair sprouted on its head. Its lion face folded and twisted until a man's face appeared in its place.
By the time it reached the center pole, the lion was gone entirely. In its place stood a naked man, unashamed, unflinching. The glowing symbol I had shown you earlier was etched into his chest like a tattoo.
He spoke quietly to the couple tied to the pole, then turned toward the audience and began a long speech. I could not understand a single word, but the villagers hanging on his every breath applauded him as though he were their king.
I tried to understand what they heard that I could not, but nothing made sense.
When he finally finished, the deer, bears, tigers, cheetahs, foxes, and lions I had seen earlier walked onto the stage. One by one, just like him, each transformed into a man or woman. Every one of them bore the same symbol on some part of their body. Most carried it on their arms, legs, stomach. But one woman had it just above her chest.
She was breathtaking, with long, thick, lustrous red hair. Even at sixteen, I felt something stir in me watching her. She whispered into the man's ear, her lips brushing his skin, and he raised his voice in response.
"The time has come for the end to begin and the evil to overtake the throne. Let us end the end before it begins and burn the evil."
At once the entire colosseum roared, "Evil to ashes; Nirvana to life. Evil to ashes; Nirvana to life…"It rose like a fever, a chant swallowing the air.
The beasts turned humans walked to the poles. I hardly noticed them. My eyes stayed fixed on the woman with the red hair as she strode toward the first pole. And then, suddenly, while watching her, my gaze drifted to the couple tied there."
Mary fell silent. Her eyes dropped to the drawing of the watching eye, unfocused, distant.
A small tug on her dress brought her back. The baby in her arms pulled at the fabric with his tiny fingers, giggling. Mary looked at him, but instead of smiling, her face dimmed with grief.
She took a breath and continued.
"The couple tied to that pole… were mom and dad.
The woman with the red hair bent down, picked up a wand from the floor, and whispered something into it. When she lifted it, a stream of liquid sprayed out, drenching mom and dad. They did not fight, did not scream. They only stared blankly at the audience.
Mom did not even notice when her clothes turned see through, when her skin showed beneath the soaked fabric. She just kept staring straight ahead.
The woman lifted the wand again, and the liquid stopped. The man at the center raised his voice.
"What should we do to the evil?" he shouted. And everyone answered, 'Burn it.'
"What should we do to the people filled with evil?"
"Burn them," the villagers and the human-beasts shouted together.
Then he turned to the poles behind him. "These couples are filled with evil to the extent that they can no longer see light. They can no longer hear truth. They cannot even walk upon the ground we walk. What should we do to these people?"
And everyone screamed back, 'Burn them."
The whole building shook with the roar of voices shouting, "Burn them. Burn them. "The man at the center smiled as if he were basking in the sound, then shouted back, "Burn them!"
The woman with the red hair whispered into her wand again, lifted it, and touched the tip to dad's legs.
A spark flashed. Then fire.
In an instant, his clothes burst into flames, and the blaze leapt to mom the next moment. Both of them ignited before my eyes.
I forgot the glass was between us. I ran, thinking I could reach them, but instead I slammed into it so hard my nose started bleeding and spiderweb cracks spread across the surface. I staggered and then hammered my fists against the glass, screaming until my throat burned.
Two men in the corridor ran toward me and grabbed my arms. I barely felt their hands. I kept kicking, clawing at the air, trying to reach the glass again.
Mom and dad… they were not screaming. They were not fighting the flames. They did not move at all. It looked like they had already died before the fire even touched them.
I wanted it to be a dream. I squeezed my eyes shut, praying that when I opened them I would be back home in bed. But when I opened them, the flames were bigger, brighter, devouring them completely.
I do not remember everything clearly after that. My memories blur. But I am sure I struggled against the two men restraining me, because when I try to recall it, I see shattered glass in front of me. One of the men, who had been holding me back, was suddenly gone.
The next thing I remember, the other man stood at the broken edge, looking down toward the ground below. I kicked him from behind and he toppled through the gap.
When I looked down, I saw them. A cat lying motionless, its skull cracked. A dog with a metal rod pierced through its neck. Both marked with the same symbol as the lion man.
I looked toward the audience, and every single person in the colosseum, including the woman with the red hair and the lion-turned-man, was staring straight at me.