Chapter 1 What he lost.
Never forget you were born of flames
Forsaken by heaven, Cursed by hell
Yet I shall never regret my path
As I stand in Limbo let my sins burn
Let this hell be my kingdom
Let my flames judge them all
Rise, my sanctuary of flames.
Inside a sea of flames family was running, a mother and two kids was what remain. The father was the first the go, he had been taken by surprise when the fire started and the ceiling of the house fell over him while he was making sure his family were leaving safely. The mother wanted to believe it was a fast and unpainful dead but it was a lie, as she run while holding dragging both of her sons outside that hell. She knew most probably her husband was still alive buried under the rubble but there was no way to save him and it was dangerous. Not for her, in this moment she couldn't care less about herself what mattered was her sons, she wanted them to live.
That was the reason she keep pulling them through the flames, ignoring the pleas of help, ignoring the yell of pain and ignoring the corpses lying on the street. No one could blame her, she was driven by the need to protect that which was important to her.
But will alone wasn't enough. Eventually the flames and the destruction reach the family. The mother was the second to die. As they continue to run a wall from a near house fall over them, as a mother she throw her sons out the way but leaving her without the strength nor the time to get out in time ending with her being crushed by the wall.
The two kids with no more than ten years old could only see the blood coming from under the wall. The younger one cry for her mother, the older one couldn't no matter how much he wanted to. His parent had died so he needed to protect his younger brother, they would leave that hell together.
But fate is cruel, as the very moment he grabbed his brother an explosion blow the younger one further into that hell while consumed the older one into flames.
The younger one found himself alone lying on the floor. He couldn't feel his left arm, sometime the brain block the pain so the person won't die from shock alone. So the boy didn't realize his left arm had been blown off and that he was in deaths door. Still drive by the will to survive he began to crawl, he slowly began to craw while leaving a crimson trace.
But no matter how much he move the scene never change.
All he could see was hell.
All he could hear were screams.
All he could feel was despair.
He didn't knew why he was still trying to live, he didn't have anything left his family and friends had been claimed by those flames. Yet he continue to crawl without a meaning, unknown to him black mud began to surround him, in his condition he couldn't escape, even in perfect condition he wouldn't be able to. The black mud reach him, and instead of burning him or consuming him like the others he make him a question. The reason for this, was that he felt something different from the boy, something he had been searching, and something the others didn't have. A wish.
"Tell me, what your wish is?" a voice asked the kid.
The kid stopped crawling, he began to look around searching for the owner of the voice. To this day he still doesn't know why but he answer.
"Can you bring them back?"
"No" the voice said with no emotion. The boy go back to crawl.
"But you can regain what you lost." The boy stopped." It won't be the same thought, what had been lost can't be recovered but it can be replaced."
He didn't understood but still decide to listen to the voice.
"I wish to regain what I lost." and the very moment those words leave his mouth everything was consumed by darkness. He didn't saw how all that black mud began to enter his body and how a black arm emerge to replace the one he has lost.
In the middle of that hell, a man wearing a black suit with a drenched coat found himself wondering without purpose, a defeated man tired after spending hours searching for survivors of a disaster he had caused. It was so depressing he would laugh, he had tried to save the world but instead of doing that he had caused the death of many innocent people who didn't even knew what was happening.
As the man continue to walk, the tears he had cried had already vanished and he could barely see with his sullen eyes. The man had reached his limit a long time, the fact that he continue to stand and walk was something that couldn't be put into words. Yet the man continue to go, he continue to search for a survivor in this point he was no longer driven by the wish of saving someone but to save himself. He was searching a way to atone for the disaster that had happened, he blamed himself even he has some part of the blame it wasn't entirely his fault he didn't know that would happen, he had acted with the best of intentions but that's what make it even worse.
Then he finally found some hope, a boy lying on the ground, but it was weird there were flames around him but they seemed to avoid him, as if the boy were their master. The man known as Emiya Kiritsugu walk closer to the boy and look with horror his left arm. Till the shoulder the arm was completely black it looked more like charcoal than and actual arm.
Kiritsugu got closer to the kid as the flames began to die and enter the arm, seconds later crimson glowing lines appear in a strange patter Kiritsugu couldn't recognize. Normally he would have wonder about the arm or why de didn't have any wounds but in his joy from finding a survivor he forgot about it, he cover him with his coat and take him to the house he had bought from to use as base during the war. He look at the boy in his arms, he had white skin and short black hair as he make his way back the boy slowly open his brown eyes.
Kiritsugu looked at him and the moment their eyes met, he said the words he wanted to say since he found him.
"Thank god you're alive."
Then the boy close his eyes once again. He woke a few hours later in a rundown house, he looked around in the room, wondering where he was and what had happened. Then all came back, the flames the death of his family but for some reason he couldn't remember his wish nor his encounter with the black mud. Tears began to fall through his cheeks, a while later Kiritsugu enter the room with a glass of water.
He really didn't know what to do in this situation, he hasn't been the type of person to cheer up other maybe in the past but the present him couldn't do it. He couldn't do anything but watch the boy cry, he couldn't blame him and with each tear that fell his guilt began to grow. Not being able to keep watching it he hug the boy as he continue to cry.
"They…sob…are…sob…gone." he managed to say.
Days have passed, the boy had told Kiritsugu he didn't have any other relatives so he decide to take care him. He make the arrangements to fix the house so the boy would be more comfortable, but he knew it was for naught, the boy may not have any external wounds but he knew that the fire had leave him with deep emotional and physiological wounds, to the point he didn't even care that his left arm was now a black one with crimson lines.
While thinking about this he didn't notice a girl with long brown hair tied in a ponytail wearing a school uniform wandering around the house. The girl, Fujimura Taiga, was searching for the room of the boy Kiritsugu had bring home. She the war ended she had been hanging around there lately mostly because her family were the one remodeling the house.
The reason she seek the boy was simple, she liked to help others in need. During last days she had seen Kiritsugu worried and after knowing about the boy she deduced he was the reason. She enter the room and found the boy of black hair sitting on the bed, his eyes were dead and have a white cloth wrapped around his arm. Even though she was curious about his arm, she forgot all about the moment their eyes met.
This was the first time she had seen eyes like those, so devoid of life and hope, the boy seemed as a living corpse. The boy only looked at her for a couple of seconds before turning away.
That time she left unable to say anything. The next time, she couldn't speak either but she manage to seat near the boy. Kiritsugu didn't know why she visit him every day but he couldn't be more grateful for it, as he believed she could do a better job helping him.
So during the next week she continue to visit him, talking with him about many different things. During the first days he remained silent but little by little she manage to make him open up
"Who are you miss?" those were his first words directed at her.
Taiga smile as never before introducing herself, after that he slowly began to speak more with her.
The first time she saw him smile she almost cry from the excitement, the boy looked at her worried.
"Miss, is something wrong? Why are you crying?" he asked
"Is nothing" she said with a smile while caressing his cheek.
A month have passes since he was rescued by Kiritsugu and he finally leave the room, he still wore the cloth around his arm as he knew it would be troublesome if someone saw his black arm.
On the other hand Kiritsugu had been trying to figure what in the world that arm could be. He began to check it and found the arm itself possessed a great amount of Magic Circuits of Rank A and he saw how they began to expand through his body.
This left Kiritsugu speechless, he knew he wasn't part of a magus family as he had made a study of the city before the war in order to avoid any surprises and besides the Tohsaka and Matou there was none. So before the war the boy in front of him had been a regular human, so for him to have such quality and quantity of magic circuits was something that shouldn't be possible.
Still what surprised Kiritsugu the most was that the body of the boy didn't reject the arm more over it was accepting him and it would be just matter of time the magic circuits in the arm became completely his. This gave the boy a potential he has never seen even in the oldest families.
"Dad? Is something wrong?" the boy asked his foster parent.
Kiritsugu didn't want to scare the boy and after he had go through he wanted him to live a normal life.
But the magus Killer was too naïve, the possibility of a normal life for that boy had vanished the moment he survived such hell. Even if the boy didn't have any power he was twisted, in this stage he didn't show it but he was afraid of loneliness he was afraid of losing everything again.
Eventually Kiritsugu was forced to teach him magic in order to control his power, as with each day that passes it was harder to suppress all the magic power coming from it in the form of flames. The flames never harm the boy but burn everything around him, crimson pure flames that were as deadly as they were beautiful.
The worst was that he didn't have any way to suppress such power and in the moment the boy lower hi guard the flames got free. In less than a week a couple of fires had happened inside the house. He couldn't do it on his own he needed help, but the question was who.
Three years have passed the boy was now reading a book named "My Fight" by Adolph Hitler inside a plain. The boy hadn't change much in appearance, but now he was wearing a red leather jacket with a matching black shirt and pants and in his left arm he was wearing a black glove.
"I can't believe you are reading that." a voice make him take his eyes from the book.
"Why?" he said while turning his eyes to the blue haired woman who had just spoken to him. "Miss Ciel leaving aside his acts he made many reforms that would late become the foundation of our present world."
"I would never understand you Hellhound."
"Really? I just being fair, the history is written by the victors and they hide many things from the defeated I think it better to see both sides." He said with a smile.
The Executioner would have never expected when she was ordered to check some phenomena's occurring on Fuyuki three years ago because the priest in charge of that area was unavailable to found the Magus killer and much less a boy with a strange arm and while looking at the same boy she had met at that time she couldn't help but began to remember.
She found the Magus Killer by pure chance, Kiritsugu couldn't curse his luck enough the moment he saw Ciel landing on the courtyard with three black keys on each hand before dashing at him. The battle was short, being taken by surprise and being unable to fight properly because of the curse of Angra Maiyu he found at the mercy of the Executioner in matter of minutes. He had been too worried about the boy and helping him to control his power he forget to be more cautious. Still he couldn't let the Executioner he had seen how the church treats unique beings like him and all the things they could do to him in order to understand how his arm work.
"Time Alter" he said in a whisper before the Ciel finish him off. "Double Accel!"
He kick the blades aiming at him and put some distance, as he tried to run out the house just to realize the Executioner didn't follow him, she knew that even though he was a treat he wasn't the one creating the phenomena's reported. She entered the house the very moment Kiritsugu put some distance and began to check the each room at great speed. Kiritsugu couldn't follow her, as he was still suffering the aftereffects of Time Alter.
She felt a source of power coming from one of the rooms and she enter just to find a boy sleeping in it. She knew the power was coming from him and even though she didn't like the idea of killing a boy she knew that sometimes it was necessary. She moved silently, so at least the boy would die in his sleep and without pain. She raise her black keys and stab the stab the boy.
"Miss Ciel!" a voice she knew very well make her stop remembering.
"What is it Hellhound?"
"The plain already landed we are in Germany we need to keep going."
Ciel stood up just and took her luggage, she didn't want to remember more she was ashamed that she had decide to take the life of a kid. The fact that the kid survived and he didn't have a grudge didn't make her feel any better.
That's the reason he didn't call him by his name, she always call him by that nicknames others have put him "Hellhound". After that incident she had agree to help Kiritsugu raise the boy, in other words train him so he could use his power properly. The black glove he wore was something she had managed to get from an acquaintance and not only let him release his power at will but it had an illusion spell so to others his arm would look normal.
After the first two years, Ciel had begun to take him along in some of her assignments from the church and because every time he fought he create such flames that make other believe they were in hell. That's why others began to call him Hellhound, but his personality was completely different from that, at least in her eyes he was a kind person.
However this time, she was the one tagging along with something he wanted to do.
"Are you sure want to do this?" she asked as they leave the airport.
"Yeah, dad doesn't have much time so I want him to have some peace."
Ciel just sighed as she began to follow him. Two days later they arrive at their destination.
"I know I don't have to right to complain as I have put you I worst situations; but this is crazy!"
"Look we aren't here to fight, we just came here to retrieve something."
"And what would you do if they don't want to give it to you?"
He just smile.
"That why I bring both you an this." He said as he show her a black big case.
She sighed again as she looked at the magnificent castle in front of them, the Einzbern Castle.
A few days before Kiritsugu had decide to tell him about his life before meeting him.
How he had become a freelancer, how he had murder a very great amount of people in order to achieve his ideal. How he had manage to get a family and end up losing them because of the war. The boy didn't say anything until he finished, once done Kiritsugu had expected a lot of things but he never in his life expected the words that came next.
"We will talk after I bring my sister back."
"What do you mean?!" he asked
"You said that you daughter, Ilya is still in Germany right? So that's where you had been going while Miss Ciel take me away."
Kiritsugu didn't know where this was going.
"So I just going to bring her back." he said with a smile.
He took his jacket and exit the living room in where they had been talking to prepare for the trip.
Kiritsugu couldn't say anything. He was still trying to process everything that just happened.
"I'm going with him." Ciel said also standing up.
"I wonder for how long that boy would continue to surprise me." She said with a small smile.
"You and me both." Kiritsugu said.
Back to the present they were in front of the barrier surrounding the castle.
"I can't believe, we are doing all this for a little girl."
"Well if I can I will try to grab something nice from you alright?"
"Don't joke around, get serious!"
"Alright mom." At this Ciel eyes widen. The boy raised his left arm and in matter of second it was wrapped in crimson flames. The flames died revealing an ominous red claw with black glowing lines in it and his shoulder now had the form of the head of a silver dog his brown eyes had turned a bright crimson hue. "Black seal 30% unleashed!"
With his left arm he made a quick slash over the bounded field and make an entrance for both him and Ciel. He began to run where his father had told him where Ilya could be while Ciel go to the front door to create a distraction, trying to forget the fact he had just called her mom.
The boy reach the area of the castle where he tough she could be and make appear an spectral arm next to his left one and stretch it to grab the edge of one window and pull himself, once there he use it to break the window so he could enter. He enter and make sure he hadn't hurt anyone and after turning back his arm to normal he began to check the rooms.
After a few tries he enter a room with a petit girl with long silver hair with red eyes wearing white robes reading while seating on a big bed. The girl look at him with wide eyes.
"Hi there" he said
"Who are you? How did you get here? Why are you missing a sleeve?"
He really hated that each time he used his arm he needed to destroy the sleeve of one of his jackets.
"I enter through the window down the hallway and I really need to explain the sleeve? It's rather embarrassing."
Ilya look at him with eyes full of distrust. She didn't know how an intruder could have entered the castle and the weirdest thing was that she didn't feel any hostility from him.
"Forget the sleeve! Tell me who are you?!" she said losing her patience.
The boy think for a second he didn't have a last name, he never adopt Kiritsugu last name even though he consider him like a father but he didn't want to leave all his past behind. But he didn't remembered his real last name either, he hadn't use it in a long time and after the fire part of his memories became blurry he could still remember her family but still some details were missing.
"My name is Edward Hellhound. I'm your older brother" he said with a smile that leave little girl in complete shock.
So i tough about rewritting A cursed fate as more ideas coma into my mind. A completely different set of servants from the usual fifth war. Nero remains as Saber, i still wondering about putting servants like Morgan as Caster or Agripina as a Assasin. Still Review thanks!