Soft white petals fluttered through the snow-swirled night sky. A bell was tinkling quietly, as a thin woman with long white hair trod through a dimly lit room. Glittering tear tracks lined her pale cheeks, mauve eyes glowing slightly red. Shizuka Hiou looked morosely around the gloom, three bodies sprawled on the floor around her bare feet, pools of blood slowly oozing from their mangled frames.

One of them, the boy of thirteen, with blood caked into his white-blonde hair, was crying. His body shook uncontrollably, trembling with his tears of rage and pain. Through his blurred amethyst eyes, Zero saw the lifeless bodies of his parents; their mouths hanging open, their wide eyes reflecting the dying light of a few sputtering candles. His mother's face, so pretty and bright in life, was now bloody and so mutilated Zero's stomach wrenched sickeningly. There was a Hunter's sword still clutched in her limp fingers, the blade all but shattered away.

The other lay as it had been when the final blows were struck, tightly holding to her husband's. Zero turned his head, not looking at his father. He couldn't bring himself to lose the memory of him, lose it to this image of a distorted corpse. The Pureblood walked away, her bloodstained hands clasped lightly behind her back, and the bell tinkled at her waist. Zero raised his head, glowering at her, to see her looking at him with a sullen expression. Her tall, slender figure was silhouetted in the doorway, the thin curves of her body perfectly defined. Then a second, smaller shadow appeared beside her.

"Run…" Zero whispered, weakly reaching a hand across the bloodied floorboards towards them. "Run away…" The boy beside Shizuka didn't move, his pale face spattered with blood. Zero's eyes filled with tears, as he saw the malevolent smile of the woman of the blossoms. "Ichiru…" She reached a bloodied hand to his brother's shoulder, and he saw her long fingers flex. "If you hurt Ichiru...I will k-kill you...!"

The two shadows moved away and out of sight, and Zero's head collapsed onto the floor. He was shaking with the violent force of his sobs, the pain from his neck splitting open every vein in his body. Blackness ate away at his mind, and he slipped into unconsciousness. The darkness swirled around him, consuming his very mind as the muffled sound of wings flapped and circled about his ears. It was as if Death itself had come flying towards him with his great wings of bone and black feather pounding like willow branches, skeletal face grinning as his long Scythe reached for his soul.

"You can wake up, you know," he said, voice much calmer than Zero had ever imagined the Reaper could have possessed. Slowly, rather uncertainly, the boy allowed his silver eyes to open. He lay, hovering in nothingness, suspended like the moon on the fisherman's string amid a vast expanse of dimly flashing lights and a sea of soft black feathers. Zero sat up, shivering; as he hugged his arms around him, he found that he was naked. Quickly, he drew his legs to his chest, staring around in dread. "How innocent..."

"Who's there?" Zero called, breaths forming an icy fog before his frightened eyes. "Wha-what's going on? Tell me, who's there? Oh, please, tell me who you are!" He heard quiet laughter, but no figure appeared before him. "Show yourself!" he cried, agitated at the ridicule this unseen person called upon him in this place.

"I've been here this whole time," the voice said, and Zero turned his head to see a blackened and burnt branch protruding from thin air in the darkness behind him. Perched upon it was a raven, sleek and beautiful and cruel, with eyes that glimmered with a dark crimson luster. "Now you see me..." The bird flapped its great black wings, and it was enveloped in a cloud of dark feathers. A moment later it was gone, and Zero was left staring around to catch sight of it. "...and now you don't," the voice sounded from all around, echoing through the vast expanse of emptiness.

That voice was cool and ever-so etched with amusement, and Zero sensed the self-satisfied smirk the lips it belonged to assumed. It angered him, but also made his heart thump louder in fear.

"What do you want with me?" he asked in an almost petulant voice.

"I've been watching you for some time, you know." Zero felt something sharp and thin upon his shoulder, and he turned his gaze to the clawed scales of the raven's legs as it sat upon his skin. "You and your brother. A shame, what happened to him..."

"Shut up!" the boy cried, trying to swat the bird away but it only dug in its claws and ruffled its wings in a dignified sort of way; though its claws had pierced his skin, Zero could not feel the pain there should have been. Indeed, though his body was bloodstained and bruised, nothing ached or agonized him. But that didn't stop the tear to come rolling down his cheek at the unbearable thought of what that Pureblood witch could have done. "Ichiru..."

"It's all because of him that I'm here," the raven said, and Zero felt the strange creature nuzzle its beak against his silver-white head. He frowned suspiciously, eyes rolling to watch it with beady expectation; his vision was slightly blurred by the threat of tears, but he wiped his eyes as he felt himself question the raven's meaning. "I wish to form a contract with you, Zero Kiriyu."

Zero's eyes widened.

"How do you know my name...?"

"I know everything about you," came the reply, and the bird flapped from his shoulder to hover before his face, razor-sharp beak a mere inch from the boy's thin, pale-skinned nose, "and I know what is in your heart." Zero became transfixed by those scintillating red eyes, the rubies boring deep into the amethyst. They began to glow with a bright light, and it was as if a film had begun to play in those large round irises. Zero saw everything. He saw two tiny boys tucked in the crook of a mother's arm, saw them playing together in the snow. He wanted to look away, to draw his eyes from this strangely horrible sight, but he could not. "I know your every smile..."

The boy saw himself and his twin, laughing together as they received praise from a man with matted black hair, a patch covering one eye. Zero gripped his bare shoulders, nails clawing his skin.

"...I know what you feared most..."

There he was, Ichiru, in bed with fever running high, hardly able to breath and slipping in and out of dangerous consciousness. His skinny chest roses and fell rapidly, the numerous pills having no effect but worsening his condition. Zero had fallen asleep alone that night, crying.

"...every tear you have shed..."

His lip trembled, and his cheeks became hot as he felt the salty beads slipping from his eyes. Words could not describe now what he saw, but it became harder and harder to pull away, desperate to escape this agonizing recollection this ungodly creature was now forcing him to endure. "All of it..." Zero's chest contorted, breaths becoming scarce as he heard his parent's screams echoing throughout his head, bellowing his name as their blades cut through the falling snow at her - the Sakura Queen of the Purebloods. "...has been in waiting for this day."

His teeth bared, Zero clenched his eyes shut and leapt to his feet.

"Stop it!" he roared, his voice reverberating in the never-ending silence. He clutched at his hair, threatening to rip it form his scalp as he stamped his feet and tried to eradicate the sounds of their voices by bellowing over them. But the louder that he screamed the harder it hurt, their faces - mutilated, defiled, bloody - flickering before his eyes like shadows cast by a candle in the wind. "MAKE IT STOP!"

"I know the single desire of your quivering soul," the raven said in a gentle voice, and it resumed its place upon his left shoulder. Zero was quivering in rage and grief, tears burning his eyes. There was an uneasy silence, broken only by the muffled sobs of the young boy. "Revenge."

Zero let his hands slip from his head, and he looked at bird beside his face. For a moment he said nothing at all.

"Yes..." he whispered, voice rather hoarse and afraid.

"I can help you to achieve it."

"H...How...? You're just a bird, aren't you?"

"I am not a being of any common rate," the raven replied, its beady red eyes fixed upon Zero's, "for I am the creature that dwells in the darkest shadows of the world in waiting for those delicious souls who have one sole craving they are willing to do anything to achieve." Zero's brows furrowed, ever so slightly. "I am a demon, you see."

The demon-bird let out a quiet caw of laughter as he watched the boy's mouth fall open.

"A demon...?" Zero breathed, drawing away his eyes and staring down at his hands - they were shaking. He clenched them into fists. "Then you're no better than a vampire. I hate them, and I hate you. You'll promise me my revenge, but I bet you'll only try to find ways to swindle me and any other innocent human along with me."

"I am unlike the others of my race," the demon said, in a voice that seemed so wretched that Zero almost questioned his own prejudice - almost.

"And what is it you want from me, exactly?" he asked, trying to keep the snap away from his tone. "You say everything has led to this day, and for what? A contract of some sort and revenge? I don't believe you."

"As a demon, I can do whatever it is that my Master - he whom I have formed a contract with - commands me to." Zero paused, considering this, but he did not relinquish hold of his suspicion. "I would even shoot the moon from the very sky if you wished it."

"Why would I want the moon?"

"Why indeed, when it is so clear your heart wishes for something so much more intimate?" the demon purred, and Zero bristled. "That is what you want, isn't it?"

"It is," he said shortly, voice cold.

"Is it your wish to form a contract with me, for myself to become your ever-loyal companion for the coming times, to achieve your heart's desire? I must tell you, now, that this deal comes at the price of your very own soul."

Zero fell silent, and was so for a very long time, and the demon respectfully waited - he'd lived many millennia, so it was no hardship to wait for a boy such as this to ponder his choices. It was true, Zero now wanted nothing more than to kill Shizuka. She, who had destroyed everything, deserved to die in a way more terrible than that of his parent's murder. And yet...the price of his own soul? To renounce hold of the very thing that made him human, what segregated him from the horrors of the vampire scum. But then, his face flashed before Zero's eyes.

Ichiru... she had touched him, defiled him, and by now...what? What had she done to him? No matter the cost, he told himself, she wouldn't get away with her sins.

"I wish to form a contract."

"Oh?"

"Don't seem so surprised," Zero muttered, "after you sought me out just to hear those words. But I'm ready."

"Is it your wish to join with me until your desires are appeased?"

"It is."

"Are you prepared to surrender of your soul to me upon completion of our contract?"

Zero closed his eyes, bowing his head the merest fraction. For Ichiru, I would do anything...

"I am."

Suddenly, Zero felt a blinding, white-hot pain sear through him like a deadly poison. The raven flew from his shoulder, blood dripping from its claws. He had raked through Zero's skin, creating four long gashes in a strange design that now burned violet as lines began to etch themselves like a pattern from the wound. He slumped back, and now he was falling through the nothingness, hair whipping his face as everything began to twitch in and out of focus before his eyes. The pain was agonizing, as if he were being ripped apart from his throat. He saw the demon diving after him, wings clapped tight to its sleek body as it sped after him through the flurry of black feathers.

"Name me so I can serve you."

"I don't want to name you!" Zero cried, eyes clenching shut against the venomous pain of his neck - little did he know it, but the agony he was experiencing was the demon's sealing wax of the sacramental sign of his contract, unique to every human-demon pair. "I couldn't force something upon something with it's own mind and feelings!"

The demon was surprised, for never before had a human been so considerate.

"Then you may call me by the name I was last appointed; Sebastian Michaelis, under the Earl Ciel Phantomhive."

"Then you can be Sebastian, if you want it to be your name, or else you can name yourself!"

Once more, the demon couldn't help but feel himself falter; what a strange human this one had so turned out to be. He'd never been allowed before to name himself, nor asked whether he liked the name he'd be given. Now that he thought about it, as he soared after his newest Master, he had grown strangely attached to his previous name, and he found his lips tweaking in the very slightest curve of a smile.

"And so I shall be Sebastian; call out to me, now, and cry for your deepest wish," he commanded.

"Sebastian Michaelis!" Zero cried, and his descent began to slow as the demon was enveloped in a shroud of rustling black feathers. "I ask of you now, in exchange for my soul - help me avenge my family, and kill the sole person who led my life to such misery."

The feathers began to dissipate, and a black-nailed hand emerged from the black cloud to lock long fingers with his own.

"Yes," Sebastian Michaelis replied, and Zero saw the shine of black hair against pallid skin as he slipped into unconsciousness, "my Young Lord."