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"How can things change so quickly? Why did this have to happen? This morning he was alive and now…" Kazuma's empty voice echoed quietly in the thick night air. He was speaking to no one, but the soft, distressed words continued to tumble over his pale, shaking lips.

"He didn't deserve to go this way. Not him…" Kazuma pulled his knees to his chin and wrapped his arms around himself, willing the warm anguished tears pooling in his eyes to go away.

Kazuma sat beneath the stars the entire night, his shoulders shaking from grief and exhaustion and his face buried in his gloved hands. Only the warm dry air of the desert and the waning moon above comforted him through the long, lonely night.

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