Prologue:
The tower was filled with emptiness. The corridors hadn't heard the sounds of laughter in years; only the whispers of the past fading into the cold gray stone remained. While the tower was not technically abandoned it remained decaying with disuse and lack of acceptance from its lord. Sesshoumaru was the name it called out; echoes faded into the shadows cast by the moonlight.
When the tower's lord inherited it he immediately ordered all who dwelled within the strong limestone walls to leave and never return. The lord Sesshoumaru held no love for those who had made their lives within the tower or any for the man whom he had inherited it from; his father the great Inu no Taisho. He openly resented the Taisho and anything that was in any way linked to him – excluding himself.
While the lord respected his father in respects of courage and ability he detested him for the weakness which was his ultimate downfall – he lay with a human woman. What the lord Sesshoumaru found more dishonourable was how his father and loved the half breed child the woman bore. "Someone to protect." The words whispered on the breeze through the changing leaves. The last words said to the young lord by his father.
"Perhaps I do have someone to protect…father," Sesshoumaru said while staring up at the abandoned tower with a small human girl behind him on the beast Ah-Un. Sesshoumaru had returned.