He was like an ancient god, watching the hopelessly naive boy he had been back then, as though in mockery, or perhaps in pity. At the time, no one had imagined he would strike at the doll they considered insignificant. But who could have known that this had been a carefully laid trap all along?
He had been the one to draw Miss Doll there.
He had made that last-minute adjustment after seeing that Lynn and Silver Fantasy's fate had not unfolded as they had planned.
They always gave themselves one fallback after another.
And in the end.
They had led him to this cruel conclusion.
"Child, this isn't all we want. You don't matter, and neither do those powers."
"What matters is that you must change."
At that moment.
He saw the Clown reach out toward her.
Time itself seemed to slow at that moment. Once again, within this illusion of memory, he witnessed the scene from that day. Before that unshakable power, at the very moment he had compromised and submitted as far as he possibly could, the Clown had killed the person who mattered most to him, right before his eyes.
Back then, all he could do was watch it happen.
Watch death descend.
He saw the blood spilling from her, that vivid red blood so terribly real.
At the very moment she had gained a heart, when she had finally, just as her mother had once hoped, shed the curse of being a doll and become an ordinary girl with bonds in her heart.
And then...
Bzzzt-
The thick barrier shattered with a thunderous crash, and the last glimmer in her eyes seemed about to fade beneath that fatal blow.
But it did not.
The thick barrier broke into countless motes of light, drifting down like