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After hearing the account, the young man in the suit felt a cold absurdity creep up his spine.
But the three familiar yet unfamiliar faces before him, and the "himself" lying in a pool of blood
, all silently bore witness to the course this world had taken.
"Even so... you shouldn't have-"
"You don't understand."
The middle-aged prisoner interrupted him, his bloodstained gaze passing through the cage's shadows to settle on the Otherworldly Visitor.
There was no hatred in those eyes. Instead, a thin, almost illusory longing surfaced.
"Under my rules... traitors have no right to live."
"Even if that person is Rossi."
The Seastone chains scraped softly, the sound echoing deep in the dim corridor.
From that chattering Otherworldly Visitor's words, he had already pieced together the outline of another world: Rossi was still alive, standing at the pinnacle of power; the Donquixote name was carved into the summit of the Red Line; there were brothers he could trust to watch his back, and a place he could call home... It was precisely the vision he had pictured countless times with his eyes closed behind cold iron bars, yet had never touched.
"Hey, other me!"
A hoarse roar burst out of the neighboring cage.
A mountain of a figure rose against the bars. His thin prison clothes could not hide the old scars crisscrossing beneath them, like countless centipedes crawling over stone.
Even bound in specially made chains, the oppressive presence of an apex predator still seeped through the iron bars.
"I hear you people set foot on Mary Geoise's paving stones? Met that... 'God' who hasn't lost in eight hundred years?"
"It's not something you 'heard.'"
He turned his head, his gaze sweeping over the metal cover fixed to the man's right ear. "It's a fact.