Then it enveloped others.
The young mother kneeling by the roadside with her baby in her arms saw crimson-gold light rise beneath her knees, wrapping both her and her baby in a thin, warm cocoon.
Her sobbing stopped abruptly. She raised her head in a daze and stared at the crimson-gold membrane, as faint as diluted ink, not knowing what had happened.
Crimson-gold light slowly rose beneath the feet of the old craftsman crouching on a shop's threshold, waiting to die, and enveloped his curled-up body. His clouded eyes shifted slightly, and his lips moved, but no words came out.
Crimson-gold light surged from between the roots of a mangrove, enveloping the middle-aged man hiding deep inside its hollow, the bundle in his arms long since loosened, along with the dozens of shivering civilians beside him.
His closed eyes flew open. He stared at the pale golden light covering him, his hands trembling slightly.
Crimson-gold light passed between the bars of an iron cage, gently wrapping around the body of the slave locked inside, an iron collar still hanging around his neck.
He froze.
The slave trader still stood outside the cage, but the crimson-gold chakra swept past him without pausing, as though it had ignored him entirely.
In the residential districts on islands ten through thirteen, crimson-gold light rose from the ground around a father crouching in a corner with his son in his arms, enveloping them both.
He looked down at the glowing membrane around the child in his arms, then up at his neighbor, who had no light around him. His lips parted.
Crimson-gold chakra spread across the entire Sabaody Archipelago, screening and enveloping.
It was so quiet that it seemed almost gentle, yet that gentleness held an unquestionable absolute.
It worked simultaneously across every inch of