"...Raelor... Raelor... Raelor... Raelor..."
Ren turns as cold and still as ice.
His mind is flooded with memories, flashing by one after another. Every single one is so vivid it feels like he's living through that night all over again.
Raelor standing in the doorway of their house, just like three years ago.
The sound of the intercom while Ren and his family sat around the dinner table, waiting for Raelor to arrive.
His father, Aoshi Toya, getting up to answer the door.
And then...
...the beginning of the end.
Aoshi's charred body collapsing to the floor.
The cries and screams of despair that carved themselves so deeply into Ren's soul that he can still hear them ringing in his ears.
And finally...
"Iris... Ren... take Yuzu and run! Now!"
...his mother Eliss Narkhalis's final desperate cry before the succubus was brutally killed, fighting with everything she had to buy her children enough time to escape.
And after the storm... complete stillness.
