—Finally, this time has come.

The ogre grins, clutching the letter so tightly it nearly tears.

✧• ──────────── •✧

This is a story from a long, long time ago. Though, by an ogre's reckoning, it might have been only yesterday.

Once, there was a small ogre child. With innocent eyes still too weak to see all the mountain held, he was an ordinary child who would tear up at the slightest stumble. For several years, there were no other children in the village, and the little ogre was all alone. Yet he roamed the mountains freely, and despite a lingering loneliness, he never doubted that this was the world he belonged to.

One day, while running about as usual, he realized he had reached the foot of the mountain. He stood at the boundary shrine, a place he had been told to avoid because of its proximity to the human village.

(Is that... a human child?)

From the shrine, the ogre child looked down upon the village. His eyes were stolen by a single human standing in the distance.

How lovely, how pure.

That human child, with an appearance so different from his own, left a powerful impression. From that day forward, the ogre child's world was painted in vivid colors.