There was too much blood.
Natsu sank to his knees on the forest floor, staring in disbelief at the broken body before him. This can't be real. It can't be her. It can't be real…
Her golden hair, stained red with blood, fanned out underneath her like a halo. Both of her legs were bent at an unnatural angle, and her left arm had been torn off at the elbow. A wide gash ran from her right hip up through her stomach. Her brown eyes were wide open, frozen forever in shock and fear. The light pink of her guild emblem stood out against the excess of red, and he gently lifted her hand off of her chest, bringing it to his.
He squeezed her limp fingers, silently begging her to squeeze back but knowing it was a futile hope. His thumb traced the edge of her guild mark, and he thought back to that day he brought her to Fairy Tail, how wide her smile had been when she'd proudly showed him the back of her hand. Now he'd never see that smile again.
Grief overtook him. He screamed up at the sky, feeling his strength and his magic slipping away. As the tears fell down his cheeks, something started to build inside him, like a fire he'd never felt before. A cold fire, feeding on his anguish and taking over his senses. The fire burned him from the inside out, his flesh and bones stinging and aching as his vision blurred. He looked into her eyes one last time before he blacked out.
When he awoke, something was different. His magic had returned, and he felt stronger somehow. There was also a burning desire to test that strength on a large scale, but he pushed the thought out of his mind in favour of starting small. The energy he felt when he made a fireball in his palm was strangely familiar, but he couldn't quite place it. As he looked down at the flame in his hand, he noticed what looked like a large red tattoo on his forearm. The lines curved and intersected to form a scale-like pattern that ran the length of both of his arms. Higher up, the marks grew thicker and were woven together tighter, so tight on his shoulders that it covered all of his skin. In the back of his mind, there was a nagging feeling that these new marks were covering something, but he couldn't figure out what.
The trees overhead rustled in the wind, letting the moonlight shine through. The light glinted gold on something nearby, catching his attention. A girl lay before him, clearly long dead, and a tiny part of him way deep down screamed in pain. He ignored it, inching closer to the body and lifting her head up. Something about this girl made his urge to destroy grow even stronger. His body seemed to act on its own, scooping her up to hold her bridal style, and he got the feeling that he knew her. Her hand was draped over her chest, and the strange pink symbol on it sent a small wave of deja vu crashing over him. Her wide eyes, hazy and unfocused, stared into his as her head rolled to the side. He almost felt something, but the thought was quickly smothered and he dropped the girl back onto the ground in his confusion at his own feelings, or lack thereof.
Some of the girl's blood had leaked onto him, and he lifted a hand to his face, licking one long claw. He looked down at the girl, crumpled on the red-stained grass, and decided that he liked the feeling of blood on his hands.