The boy thought he was finally done for. He clearly felt the flesh on his neck tear and the relentless, painful sharp thing digging in between his bones. Thinking his neck would be cut in half, he closed his eyes. - P87
The boy who had become a young man started to latch onto the small glimmer of hope of leaving the cave on his own. - P88
The only thing he wore on his body were those manacles and shackles. Scored onto his naked body, on his arms and legs and vertebrae and both racks of ribs, were a hundred and twenty large, triangular scars. - P88
It would insert a sharp, hard thing into the boy’s vertebrae and suck. Starting near his backside above his pelvis and working its way up, vertebrae by vertebrae, toward the boy’s neck. - P85
Then a sharp, hard, and indescribably terrifying and painful object punctured his vertebrae. - P86
Despite this, the boy prayed that someone, whoever that may be as long as it was someone, came to rescue him from this cave. That they would take him wherever it may be as long as it wasn’t here, to a place where this pain and darkness did not exist, he prayed with all his drained, wasted heart. - P86
Of course, no one came to his rescue. Since no one knew the boy existed, no one realized that the boy had disappeared. - P86
They both lived in the same cave, but the world of the boy and the world of the insect were so different. While the boy had finally found another lifeform with him, it was completely disinterested in the pain, expectations, or hopes the boy held. - P87
Not the cries of someone driven mad with fear, but the tears of someone who understood and was saddened by their own loneliness—the tears of a human being. - P87
Whenever the youth struggled in fear, the bald man pressed down with his fat, white hand on the scar on the nape of the youth’s neck. It was strange how well he knew how to make the youth obey. - P92
The oils made the triangular scars on his body shine like threatening tattoos. - P92
the youth felt the shockwave of every bone and joint breaking within him. Even in the painful throes of being shattered into a thousand pieces, during that single leap he could still hear the sound of every individual break and crack, one after another. - P93
The left arm stretching out before him was covered in something hard and glistening, like gray scales, and his hand and fingers looked like they were hewn from rock. That gray hand, looking nothing like a human’s, was now wrapped around the ferocious-looking young man’s neck, and squeezing. - P98
But in that moment, he could finally connect the sound of breaking, the bone-shattering pain, and the gray, stony scales that appeared from the triangular scars along his limbs and back and ribs. - P99
The youth would later remember that just then, he sprouted black wing-like limbs from his back and whacked away the giant that had been lunging for the youth’s throat. - P101
When he was done, he lifted his head and stared up at the sky where the rain was falling from. The raindrops hit his face and slid into his mouth. He drank them in; they were sweet and refreshing. - P102
They were a translucent gray. Perhaps she hadn’t been born this way, but a thin membrane had formed on her eyes and clouded her vision. He thought her eyes were beautiful. The woman was more beautiful than anyone he had ever seen before. - P106
Once upon a time. All legends start this way. - P110
According to a sorcerer, the best sacrifice was a prepubescent child. - P110
The absurdity of the conclusion made him feel helpless. The strangers who stole his childhood with their sorcerer and beliefs, the despondent life he had lived on the brink of death, it had all been meaningless in the end. - P117
And once his tears had finally ceased, he began to walk toward the rising sun, in search for that place in this world where his life was waiting for him. - P117
The moment his fingertips brushed hers, the woman transformed into thousands of water droplets and scattered into thin air. - P116
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