A Whisper in Crimson

The moon above the northern sector was an eye, half-lidded in contempt, watching the doomed players from behind its veil of ash. The skies had not cleared since the count dropped to 23. Like a mourning god, the world seemed caught between breath—anticipating the scream of violence that always comes when children are asked to act like gods.

Rin sat alone beneath a shattered pillar of stone—once some great monument to something forgotten. The others had scattered, staking their claims among the ruinous wilds within the North Gate, scheming, hiding, sharpening their hatred.

But Rin... Rin had no plan. Just the echoes of his heartbeat and the memory of a boy he killed not to win, but to survive.

His hands trembled. He watched them. Pale fingers now stained at the edges—one dried streak of red curling down his thumb like ivy.

"I didn't want to..." he whispered to no one, as if the dead boy's ghost clung to the silence.

"That is the first mistake, little ember."

The voice came like silk slitting a throat.

From the fog between ruins, a figure emerged.

Not walking—gliding.

His coat was too long for the earth. It fluttered like a banner soaked in wine and shadow. His boots made no sound. His face was half-shrouded by a mask the color of old ivory, and the other half wore a gentle smile. Crimson threads danced down the length of his cane—a sword in disguise, curved and poetic.

Rin scrambled back. "Who are you?"

The man tilted his head. His voice was honey through a knife's edge.

"I am the silence between every heartbeat you've forgotten to count.

I am the bloom beneath a corpse that never saw spring.

I am mercy's funeral hymn, sung in perfect rhyme."

Rin sat in silence, not being able to form any words. He just looked at the mysterious figure that was in front of him, not identifying itself. Finally he spoke up,

"I never meant to kill him, but I had no other choice." His hands shook, body trembled, "I'm a fool." He said simply, then the figure spoke up

"Those called fools are the only ones brave enough to see the truth."

Rin stared, frozen at the words of the Man.

"You're... one of the Advocates."

A gentle bow, not of greeting—but of confirmation. A performer bowing before an audience of one.

"They call me Red. The Red Advocate.

Poet of Blood.

Whisperer of Choices.

Your uninvited conscience."

His cane tapped once against stone. A red petal fell from it, though no flowers bloomed here.

Rin swallowed. "Why are you here?"

"Because your hands are still soft, Rin.

Because you doubt the merit of murder.

Because you looked into a dying boy's eyes and tried to mourn something that was never yours to grieve."

The boy lowered his gaze. The guilt welled up again.

"I didn't want to kill him... he came at me. I just—"

"Ah." A raised hand. "Intent. The weakest currency in this cruel world."

The Advocate stepped forward, slowly, until the space between them vanished into cold breath.

"You believe in mercy.

You believe in fairness.

You believe that monsters deserve a second glance."

He crouched before Rin, eye-level now. His voice softened like the wind before winter.

"But Rin... this isn't a game.

It's a dirge dressed in glittering lies."

His fingers touched Rin's wrist—not hard, not painful. But they were cold. Too cold.

"This place is a butcher's theater.

And you?

You are meat with dreams."

Rin clenched his fists. "So I'm just supposed to kill without thinking?"

The Advocate smiled—not wide, but deep. The kind of smile that knows too much.

"No. Think.

But think in knives.

Think in exits.

Think in the math of blood, not in the poetry of hope."

He stood again. "You're lucky," he said, now walking away, his voice a phantom echo behind him.

"Most die before they understand the rules.

But you, Rin, have been given a curse:

You live long enough to learn them."

Rin looked up, voice cracking. "What do you want from me?"

The Advocate paused, silhouetted by moonlight and dust. Then he turned his head halfway, just enough for his eye to gleam.

"To watch you shed the cocoon of innocence.

To witness the boy who weeps become the man who writes elegies in steel.

To see the gentle fool become...

the name the world forgets to breathe before it dies."

He lifted his cane and tapped it once on the stone.

"Remember:

Mercy is beautiful...

but she bleeds too easily."

And with that, he vanished. Like a trick of light, or a phantom in a dream too vivid to forget.

Rin sat there for a long time after that. The silence returned, but it felt thinner now. Hollow.

He stared at his hands again. Still trembling. Still soft.

But the words of the Red Advocate circled him like wolves.

"Think in knives."

"Write elegies in steel."

"Meat with dreams."

The next morning, the North Gate awoke not to sunlight, but to screams—frantic, serrated things that tore the silence like blades across flesh.

Another body.Another echo.Another tick of the clock that no one could see, but everyone could hear.Count: 21.

He had been popular, the one who died.Not noble, not strong—just loud.He laughed with others, shared stolen rations, made nervous jokes about surviving.Now he was just meat in the dirt.His eyes were wide, glassy with terror—arms contorted like broken branches around a ruin of flesh, hacked and torn so mercilessly it no longer resembled a boy, but a message carved in gore.

Not Rin.Not yet.

But when Rin stepped into the circle of flickering firelight, something in the air split.The way he walked—no longer shuffling like prey.The way he looked—no longer hollowed out by fear, but sharpened by it.

He didn't meet eyes.He measured them.

Each face a possible enemy.Each heartbeat not his own a threat.He didn't want to die. But something cruel had whispered to him the night before, something beautiful and red:

"Mercy is a silk rope—and you're tying it around your neck."

So he looked at them like a butcher learning the names of sheep.

And far, far away—on a balcony of dusk-colored stone carved into the broken jaw of the northern cliff—The Red Advocate watched him.

He always watched the ones who changed slowly.

Rin, to him, was a perfect kind of poem:Unfinished.Naive.Flawed.But brimming with unwritten violence.Potential always made him smile.

The Advocate leaned on his twisted cane of blackened bone, the winds of the canyon hissing through his crimson veil like a hymn.He whispered to no one—except the air, and perhaps to death itself:

"One soul inches closer to the edge.The lamb finds its teeth.The clock drinks another drop.Oh, darling child—There is no mercy in a world that dreams in blood."

Below, the North Gate's inmates began to separate into clusters.Alliances made of trembling hands and backroom glances.Words like "trust" tossed around like broken knives.

But not Rin.He sat alone beside the scorched stone wall, watching the smoke rise from where the body had been.His eyes did not water.His breath did not shake.

Something in him was cooling.Hardening.Crystallizing into a shape he did not yet recognize—but the Advocate did.

Because the world was watching,and the game had only just begun.

And somewhere in the skies above the tower, the ash began to fall again,soft as feathers,and just as heavy.