Chapter One

Rebirth

Shirou dragged himself forward. His whole body burned from fatigue, but he still advanced. It wasn't too hard. One foot in front of the other. As long as his heart was still beating, he could at least do that, even if he fell like he would break down and die from every step the took. His lugs burned; even breathing brought pain now. He could see it. He could clearly see it, even if his mind was in a haze. An image of what it lugs should be like by now. Two twisted, charred lumps of flesh about to fall off. The mental image made him want to puke his own guts out.

It was getting harder to pull another breath by the moment. His mind had been bleached white, and he felt a sort of pressure in his skull, like he could come unwrapped from the core of itself at any second now and float away like a tumbleweed in a high breeze. It was a nauseating sensation. Better to concentrate on his own body, though. Yes, that was better. Because... because he could still heard and see everything else and he didn't want it, he didn't want any of it.

The cries for help, the pain-filled screams. The mothers who begged him to take their children with them, while holding the babies up towards it. The people who tried to save others where they could have escaped, only to die a miserably death themselves. The people who saved others at the cost of their own life, only for the ones saved to die soon after the so called heroes drew their last breath. The people so badly burned that they could only stare at him with pleading eyes, even though he was only a child and he couldn't do anything. All those people who meaningless disappeared... the cries of those who had already disappear still resonated with it, mixing with the cries of the people who were dying right now.

People he knew.

The people he had grew up with.

He pushed those dark thoughts aside. Those were thoughts used to being pushed aside since this hell started, so they disappeared quickly. He sucked in a breath, just enough to allow him to move. All right. One foot in front of the other. Rise and repeat. It wasn't so hard. He could do this. He wasn't going to disappear here. It had to happen because he had already gone a long way, and all that effort would be lost if he died here. All the people he had let died to save himself would have died for nothing.

He gritted his teeth, and walked on. The radiance of the fire, and the smoke made it hard to see more that a few feet in front of him. Which a real problem, because the wreckage which looked like the remains of a battlefield from a movie was spread everywhere. It would only take tripping on a piece of wreckage to fall, and if he fell, there was no getting back up. He barely had the streght to walk at this pace, so getting up was out of the question.

This as a test both for the body and the mind, perhaps more so for the mind. He was only eight years old, but he understood that clearly. He didn't know how the fire had happened. He didn't know what happened to his father. Maybe he had heard him dying somewhere along the way; that wouldn't surprise him. He didn´t know what he had done to deserve this, either, but the anger at all of it had been throw away long ago so he could live on.

Before he had even realized what was happening, his mother had pushed him off the house to save him, while she remained inside as the house crumbled to dust, crushing her inside. He could have prevented that if only he had been a more mature child. But the hatred he felt towards himself had also been throw away; it was unnecessary at this point.

He had remained for a few minutes staring at the wreckage of his ruined home, thinking that he would see his mother emerging from the burning remains any second now, and take him by the hand and lead him out of there, because he was small, scared and he didn't know what to do and none of this was supposed to be happening. And when it became clear she wasn't going to appear, he hoped this was nothing but a dream. The pain of his lugs burning had dispelled that illusion, so hope had also been throw away.

Shirou had turned his back on the house and started walking through the fire, the wreckage, the dying people and the corpses, looking around numbly as the people he knew disappeared. Looking as the places he had grew up, the shops his mother set him to buy stuff, the park where he had played with his friends burned up, disappeared and soon even the ashes of what was left where picked up and throw away by the merciless, uncaring wind. Looking as everything he had ever know disappeared in front of his own eyes, telling him with certainty that it was over, that there was nothing he could do and he not longer had any place to return back to. So his own self had been discarded. If you took away a child's friends, home, family, there was nothing. His mind died so his body could survive.

He was only barely aware that his legs had started trembling more that usual. His vision was wavering, and the haze everything was covered in now made it felt distant, like a scene from a video game. The thought was somewhat funny. If he had the streght to spare for it, he would have laughed. His vision tumbled... no, he was tumbling down. He fell on the cold, hard ground, on his knees, to weak to do anything but gasp piteously. He couldn't die here. He knew he couldn't die here, but he didn't have the streght to stand. He crumbled down like a doll, and then he finally accepted the truth. He would die. It was a self evident truth. There was not way he could have survived such a hell, from the beginning. Hell wasn't a hell if there was even one survivor.

Black spots started to swim around his vision, and...

Something hidden deep within one of the many sharps scattered around this hellish scene stirred. It had no consciousness, nothing that would be called life. There was an impulse that was almost a law giving shape to the dark energy boiling withing it, the law of fulfilling a wish. Its only wish. The thing didn't understand the world like other people understood it; it didn't have the concept of world in its mind-if it could even be called a mind-to begin with. But it knew that there was something nearby, a container. A chance.

The energy moved across the now red ground from dried blood and the reflection from the burning fire, looking for the container which was still half alive. It enveloped the containers prone form, and seeped into it from the many wounds of his body, entering the deepens recesses of its body, and binding them together like two halves of a whole. Soon, it would be its.

Soon, its sole wish, which had burned inside of it from thousands and thousands of years, keept alive only because of its unending hate, would be fulfilled.

With a gasp, Shirou's eyes shot open. He couldn't allow himself to dream now. He knew that if he dreamed in this state he couldn't never wake up again. He didn't completely understand what he had been doing, but he needed to move. Now. With an effort, he gathered together the shards of his consciousness. He gritted his teeth, and... surprisingly, he got to his feet without much effort. It didn't even hurt all that much. There was some sort of dull throbbing, but aside from that, he felt surprisingly good.

He was really lucky; he had died during the few seconds he had lost there, on the ground, only half consciousness. He took a step forward. He wavered, somehow managed to straightened himself, and keep on walking. He felt a sudden, stab of pain in his chest that turned his mind white. A crack. He had heard... some sort of crack. He probably had broken something, but his body had not even spammed due to the pain. Like it wasn't even his own anymore.

He looked down at himself. There was a bad burn on his right arm, showing the pale white bone beneath. The limp hung uselessly. And, before his very eyes, the wound started to close. It hurt, it hurt a lot, but it really was closing. In a matter of his minutes, the skin was unmarred, like nothing had happened before. He swallowed the bile and the coppery blood in his throat. No, no. He couldn't get distracted. It was a hallucination from the heat. The healing, the burn, or both. He had to keep on walking while he still could.

He looked up, so he couldn't get distracted from such stupid things. He was eight years old, but even he knew that didn't happen in the real world. Fires like this weren't supposed to happen either, but really, that was a complete different thing. Something cracked beneath his feet. A piece of one of the houses. At least, he hoped it was that, and not... something else.

Shirou managed to advance for long, but eventually, even his renewed streght failed him. He fell on his back, unbalanced, without making a noise. He looked up to the grayed sky, only a half conscious. It was covered by clouds. It would rain soon, or maybe not. At this point, it couldn't really muster enough effort to care about it. Whatever the fire went out or not, the damage was already done. That it wouldn't reach other people because of it wouldn't erase the fact that so many people had disappeared here... and he would soon join them.

He reached out to the sky with a trembling, outstretched hand. There was no reason. He just thought the sky was a long way away. Even that last bit of streght failed him soon enough; his hand felt... and was grasped between two big, rough and calloused hands. Shirou stared numbly at the man in front of him, the tears of happiness running down his face like blood streaks and his wide, hope-filled smile. He didn't understand. He didn't understand how he could be so happy, just for seeing somebody alive in this red hell. The man wasn't even from here, and yet, that expression of his...

It was repulsive. There was no reason to be happy. This part of the city had burned down, taking its people with it. The earth had be salted, too, so to speak. Nothing would grow here anymore. But despite that, despite that the man should have damn well know that better that eight year old child, the man in front of him was smiling. Like his survival was in anyway a compensation for the tragedy that happened here. The man drew him into a hug.

And that moment,

(the starting penalty is five)

Shirou felt... something. He couldn't have described the feeling with words. It was an impulse, some sort of tugging from somewhere inside of him. In his heart. He knew immediately even though he didn't know how he could know that the man was similar to him, in a fundamental way. That they had a connection that wouldn't be severed. He could heard voices, moaning something of which he could only catch the noises, and even that only confirmed it from him. It had to be this way.

He let his tired body relax, and drifted out of consciousness.