Why hello there everyone! I simply could just not pass up this sudden burst of emotion while watching one of my all-time favorite anime's, Kuroshitsuji, back over and this is where this prologue derives from. I know for damned sure that I should be updating my other stories though, and I promise you, I'm almost done with them, so I decided that this could be a new installment to my page. x3

"Danse Macabre" - yes, with the 's' in Danse, from season two of Kuroshitsuji, roughly translates to "Dance of Death".

Ichigo Kurosaki will be in place of Ceil Phantomhive and Hichigo Ogichi Shirosaki in the place of Sebastian Michaelis. A lot of similar shit will happen but the outcome won't be the same as you think it will, this and that yada yada. xD In any case, I do hope you like this new story. I'll see you soon!

Danse Macabre

Prologue: In Fate of the Devil's Arms

~oOo~

Third Person POV


To reveal that of a pure nature is something Ichigo Kurosaki was certainly not capable of doing. To the untrained eye the orange-haired negotiable was simply a man – an innocent man who had been blackened by the death of his family, a child who had been surrounded in flames for the better half of his childhood and most of his faint adulthood. He was just a teenager. A boy. A mere kid who had no idea how to take a hold of the real world and alter it into his own idealistic's, to reform his nature so that he would be pleased in his gathering game of human nature.

But then again, that was to the untrained eye. To the unworthy. To the unsociable.

There were times when Ichigo was thought to be inhuman; his cold nature and his ability to sustain such welcoming friends was frightening – however, that was not the most frightening aspect of his exquisite mansion most commonly stated as to be 'in the middle of no man's land.' No, see to it that no one that has so much as irked Ichigo Kurosaki has lived to tell the tale.

At a young age the little Kurosaki had witnessed his family pass in a terribly painful fire. His previous mansion, under the proud name and rule of his previous ancestors, had been burnt to a crisp and he had fallen into the pits of despair – the smiling Kurosaki that many had once known had fallen into the pits of hell and no one, pray, no one, was able to break him free of his self-induced cage he had locked himself in. Not a single soul lived out there to grant him the wish he wanted so desperately to be granted. The wished he yearned to be granted.

It was then that someone had reached out to him, eyes ablaze with a new fire – a fire blasting warm, yet deadly, yellow flames. Yet how could it still remain to the fact that no one living could have succeeded in his wish being granted? The answer was quite simple if you asked the Kurosaki himself.

It was the fact that his savior, his alternate chess piece, the snake under the vines and the horrors awaiting under his sleeves, was, per say, not human.

A fiend, some would say. A devil cloaked in white, a sinful angel cast from the heavens above – to Ichigo, he was once a mere chess piece in his game of revenge. A simple glowing white figure standing in the middle of the sixty-four space of checkered black in white – a 'daemon.' A demon. That was all he was.

He had received the contract with a demon at the quaint age of twelve. He could have been in his right state of mind, but he also could had not. There were times in which Ichigo wished he had not created such a damned artifact as a blood-pact, but then again, the young Kurosaki had always known that mere thought was blasphemy. There was not a single chance he had regretted it in the next five years of living; if not for the demon he would have not succeeded as far as to be able to accomplish his goal.

He knew that someday the demon would tear his soul from his body and gobble it up like a freshly made cake, so delicate and yet so painful, and he would proceed in making a new contract with a new being at a new time and he would continue to live on for centuries to come – and he wouldn't be remembered in any other form but 'dinner.' However, that was the price he would have to pay for his revenge.

And when that day came, Ichigo Kurosaki would not utter another name from his lips other than the sole being he had 'sold his soul to the devil' for.

The bitter yet blissful sound of the name that rolled off his tongue like sweet lavender in the middle of hearty summer, the name that prickled blood from its rosy thorns and proceeded to grasp at the blood pooling from his slightly ajar mouth, the name that continued to heap shivers upon shivers out of his tanned, lustful frame of pure perfection – a simple name. That's all it was.

The name that Ichigo had learnt long ago would be the name of his demise, the sole reason that he would fall and crumble onto the checkerboard as his game had finally reached its end – an accomplishment.

The name that would tumble from his lips as he won.

And that name….

As bittersweet as it was….

As white, as clear….

As loving, as hating, as penetrating….

As hearty….

As hurtful….

As promising….

Ichigo found that the man he had damned to be his butler was none other than the definition of 'blackened whiteness' or 'stained purity.' The orangette still couldn't figure out to his day how the whitened mass of beauty was nothing but a 'demon' and not a 'fallen angel', but in his place he was nowhere capable to judge. Maybe he was the true demon – cloaked in the simple name of 'Servant'. Maybe he was the blackened soul that was forced and chained to the ground in his own agony – maybe he was the cloak of darkness that soiled the perfect brightness of the demon he was to call his own.

He couldn't….

Where there are people in the world he lived in that he admired once or twice, people that would more or less peak his interest for a millisecond or two – there are also the choice many who had blackened his heart more and more and more until his own destruction. There were nasty people. People also stained with hate that would rival his own. There were those who would, more or less, risk their lives for the Kurosaki, and then….And then….

There was him.

Ichigo could go into depths how deeply he cared for the demon, how every day he would look upon eyes crusted with molten and his heart, long ago shut down and tossed into the pits of blackness, would pump with embarrassment or fury or just….A feeling that he was unable to believe he was able to feel. He would cry out to the heavens and weep out his sorrow, wondering how such perfection could be altered into something that would devour his soul someday, one day, any day to come.

And yet, Kurosaki was still able to think that, maybe, that that was the reason that he had grown to adore his butler. Maybe the promise of salvation from the world he lived in brought a simple calm to his soul – maybe that faithful day that he would one day face was not so scary as it may seem.

Ichigo Kurosaki was prepared for that day.

Once he received his revenge, he would let this man have at his soul like many other people before him had let the demon do.

When he had finished his game, his life-sized, beautifully painful game of never-ending chess, he would do it.

He would let Hichigo Ogichi Shirosaki, son of the Akuma no chichi, son of the 'Father of Demons', consume his soul.