Preface

The dull, throbbing pain of my shoulder ebbed and rose with the tempo of my stride. The thud of my backpack against my upper thighs and bottom, creating an constant sound of cloth against cloth as I continued forward, smacked against sore muscles. The sound was both welcome and unwelcome for the loudness of it, echoing in the eerie silence of my usually sound filled campus, no matter how empty of other students it became.

There was always the bird's flapping wings, the distant sound of cars on passing roads, the slight buzz and hiss of the various electronics and plumbing across the campus, but not today. No, not today.

Today, as soon as I left the library, it felt as if time had stopped, as if I was the only living or moving thing left on earth. The janitor that was usually right outside the closing library with his golf cart wasn't there today creating sound with his trash bags and the banging and creaking of opening and closing doors. Even the shutting of the door behind me seemed to burst and echo with the sound it had caused. I'd turned back startled, only to find that the inside of the library seemed as quiet and lifeless as the outside.

Now as I headed towards my pick-up area, I only hoped that Mom was really there, waiting in Dad's truck to pick me up from school like she always did at this time. As soon as I had stepped out of the library, I had fumbled for my out-of-date phone to check the time, once again wishing I had gotten a new watch. Well time hadn't stopped, but as I made my way to the pick-up area I found myself constantly checking the time, that being the only thing keeping back fear-induced hysteria from the lack of sound around me.

The loud clacking of my dragon and tiger phone straps comforted me as much as it frightened and annoyed me in it's ability to fill the hollow air. My fear grew, as did the speed of my breath and beating of my heart as I rounded the last corner keeping the parking lot out of view. As a solid light thump of my feet finally got me into view, I almost sobbed in relief at seeing the familiar dark red truck with Mom visible from the passenger seat window, looking at her phone as if she were about to call me.

My pace quickened before I told it to, relief seeping into tense and tired muscles. As soon as my body relaxed, reality flashed to nothing, the ground beneath me vanished as did the rest of the world and my feeling of life. Oh, I was aware, too aware of the complete oblivion that surrounded me.

Everything was white and empty; devoid of sound, smell, color, taste, or sight. My senses roared at the lack of it. My nostrils flared and my breathe hitched in panic at the lack of taste and sound in the truly empty air, the air itself was so clean it's purity caused my mouth to dry and my lungs to freeze with its impossible cold heat.

I knew my eyes were open because if they weren't, the shaded safety of my eyelids would at least give the courtesy of some sight or color, but my eyes were frozen in the shock of absence. My ears and head roared the throbbing, pulsing, beating pain of my frantic heart. My head pounded from the sudden rush of blood, my ears were blocked with the red pulse of it.

Then, just as sudden and me as frighteningly helpless as before, a voice with a presence too vast and wise and lonely for me to even hear at first through my paining ears echoed in my frozen mind, vibrating it's being into my very bones.

THE TIME HAS COME FOR YOUR REBIRTH. YOUR LIFE WILL BE CHANGED FOR THE SAKE OF ANOTHER. YOU WILL BE EQUIPPED WITH EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO SUCCEED IN YOUR NEW LIFE. THIS IS ALL THE WARNING YOU WILL BE BEGONE FROM MY DOMAIN, FOR YOU CANNOT EVEN SEE AROUND YOU THANKS TO YOUR FEAR AND UNSUITED SOUL. BEGONE.

My frozen hot lungs struggled to fill with air from my ragged gasp as the intense brightness of the star-studded night sky appeared before me. My eyes stayed glued wide open at the incredibly clear sight of the night sky as rushing air whirled through loose hair and sharpened ears. A tingling, tickling sensation across my numb body had my eyes switch to myself only to see my clothes, my backpack, my hat-everything I was wearing disintegrate to nothing until I was naked and falling through the dark sky.

My mind struggled to comprehend my situation, ignoring the past moments in order to understand the present. I knew I was falling, therefore I wasn't in the weightless void of space. I will reach some form of land beneath me and probably die from the impact. The thought gave the same feelings as the eerie silence had, fear and comfort. I waited. And waited. And waited, watching my hair grow the more I fell until it became a shrouding cape the length of my body, stopping right above the heel of my foot. This didn't matter to me, nor did the longer-than-my-body fur scarf-thing that had attached itself mysteriously to my bare shoulder after I passed through the fog of a thin cloud. The fur was painfully white and a spark of familiarity flickered in my numb mind, rousing death-dampened thoughts to surroundings. My cold-prickling ears twitched slightly at the sounds accompanying the rushing wind-the hushed steps of small creatures scurrying across grass, leaves, dirt, the wide variety of creature's calls from birds to insects to ones that didn't sound human.

My body trembled for the first time, feeling slight vibrations in the air indicating the close presence of a shifting floor beneath me. Focused eyes locked onto my own body as I passed through multiple silver clouds, the clouds themselves sucked onto my persons and shifting into the shiniest, softest, most beautiful kimono I had ever seen. It's color was strictly white, the flowery patterns printed on it silver and gray and pale gold. My lengthened hair seemed to stain with the mysterious dye of my new kimono for it ran down silver, streaked with the same pale gold on the kimono.

The clap of thunder beneath me warned me before I rocketed through a dark storm cloud darker than the night and blinked to regain my vision. My kimono had been dyed pitch black though the thread remained silver and grey and gold, but the gold was darker and deeper. My hair also was dyed pitch black and now the darker gold streaks were accompanied by silver and blue ones as well, too dark to look like a rainbow but pronounced enough to look like the starry sky from the way the silky locks glittered in even the dimmest light. My skin which was also paled to an impossibly smooth soft white had now regained some color, but was not near close to my old subtle tan nor the peach of normal people and then the gravity around me vanished and held me upright in a small bubble of silence similar to the one I felt as soon as I stepped out of the library.

The crashing of the sounds I'd previously heard in the sky rushed into my head, the gentle sound of ripples forming in water the most prominent. I looked down to see that white-socked, straw-sandaled feet were quite impossibly standing on the rippled surface of an incredibly clear lake.

Moments passed as I waited for the ripples to settle so I could see myself in the reflective lake. What my body looked like now was no surprise to me. What was surprising was my unfamiliar face or rather the dimensions of my surroundings. It was flat yet multi-dimensional and detailed and I immediately identified it as the wonderfully scenic work of Rumiko Takahashi or more specifically the scenic artistry found in InuYasha. That figured out, I wondered at the goddess like beauty that was now my face. My nose was straight and proud, my eyes and facial markings the same as Sesshomaru's except for the colors. My eyelids were purple not red and the cheek marks were red not purple, as well the crescent on my forehead was a lighter blue than his.

Even by InuYasha standards, I was beautiful, much more so than Kagura or Kaguya-Hime or even the mysterious admirer of Sesshomaru-sama in her single appearance. My thoughts puzzled over my last comparison, wondering why such a random, not-well-known character was added to the comparison list when the last image I saw of Mom flashed through my memories. Then the mental pain erupted, stabbing and slashing through my memories erasing one thing, something that was in all of them and replacing it with another and if not possible, erasing it all together. I had staggered to the dirt-packed shore by the time it was over, my breath coming in shallow silent pants. My hand clutched my racing heart while the other leaned heavily on a boulder. Little did I know my misfortune would not end there.

As soon as my normal breath had returned, no sooner did a mob of demons ambush me. Knowledge came quick to my head as shrieking demons tore and scraped and cut at cloth and skin. With that knowledge came the ability to wield power I knew I now had. The power itself wasted no time letting itself go for it released, without much help, from my fingertips into acidic projectiles and whips that steamed when it hit enemy flesh.

Again my breath came short as blood poured down gashes and scrapes across my bloody body, most of the blood not my own. Shockingly, the wretched sight did not make me sick, only bone tired and dangerously drowsy. I stumbled on numb legs through the trees until I fell into the hollow cradle of a tree well protected by its roots and fell into a sleep filled with dreams of only Sesshomaru-sama.