Disclaimer: I claim no rights to the property of "Inuyasha". If by any way, I offend or something, I apologize in advance.

Author's Notification: This is a story set in a completely alternate universe from the Inuyasha one. It isn't a twist on the original universe. My own universe where there are many pocket-realms and such where the youkai and monsters of like origin and classification.

On another note: I am using the Japanese words in this because in the English language there are no words for youkai. Not because I am lazy. So, there is a reason, and if anyone wants to complain or flame (Bring it, people! Think'st thou canst char mine hide? Bah! 'Tis but a fallacy!).

Youkai can be gods or ghosts, they can have material form and can be insubstantial at the same time... They aren't gods or ghosts in the sense that we have. Unless you practice Wicca, Paganism, Tao, are a Native American keeping the old knowledge alive or a buddhist. Or a very spiritual person. In Shinto the legends are just fraught with Romanticism. Romanticism: Nature = alive & powerful = individual and aware = supernatural = everyday things becoming EXTRAORDINARY! = Horror.

Summary:

A normal girl, with a powerful secret unknown and larger than she could ever imagine, becomes embroiled in a fight for something she has no desire to defend. And she is their only chance. Balance must be maintained, balance between all races of demons and all races of humans, from the Christian Satan and his devils to Japanese youkai and the spirits of the dead. But balance cannot always be so easy to obtain. Sometimes, one must sacrifice what was never known. Sometimes this sacrifice is bigger than anything one could have imagined.

"Your glances seemed to be drawing my soul through mine eyes, as the sun draws the mist from the skies." -Josephine Slocum Hunt, "You Kissed Me"

Prologue: The Dreaming

She knew she was dreaming, she knew, but she could not resist giving herself into believing for one second that this terrifying and fantastic vision was real. That it was all real. For she had been having this dream for many months and knew from experience that it was better if she merely went along with it. Even though she never really got to the end....

She was tired, the ache of fatigue soaked down to the marrow of her bones. All of her companions were exhausted. This would be the last battle, their final stand. This would decide their fate. The wind smelled of death, iron, miasma and smoke. The odor fumed the air noxiously, so much so that she nearly choked on it. She was dressed in a black indigo-threaded hakama and a silvery-white hitoe. Miko robes, but not the usual colors of white and red. Strange, but then, that is the way of dreams, to be strange and unnatural, so she accepted it. Her bow and quiver of arrows were clutched tightly in her left hand, while the other was held by a youkai. He was tall and strong and silver – and red like blood. He had a fierceness about him, but the expression deep in his eyes said that he was wounded. She knew how he had been wounded and what the wound was. It was not a physical hurt, but a much deeper scar that ran through him. A scar of old betrayals and bitterness.

His hand tightened around hers as he roared a cry and raised his sword (or was it a fang?) towards the bloody sky. The ground shook with his people's answering call. The multitudes screamed for blood and the male youkai beside her could provide them with that. A number of other youkai (but, didn't she exorcise youkai?) surrounded her, companions and compatriots. They had supported and protected her from the beginning. The youkai holding her hand studied her with the tenderest of looks, the expression so adoring on the foreign face that she felt her heart ache. For him. He thought he was going to die here, she had realized in this dream. He thought he would not exist after this battle. She went to him and laid her head on his shoulder, then gazed into his eyes. And he kissed her.

It was nothing like she had ever felt.

Not in life, not in the waking world.

He met her with passion yet gently, tentatively, as though he were afraid of breaking her in two. He knew that he could. They both knew it. And the crowds cheered as they saw this. A black-haired youkai smiled at her, and in the dream she smiled at him, and the she who was dreaming this remembered that smile from somewhere but she couldn't recall....

A small girl-shaped being that shone with a gentle light on the other side of Kagome giggled from her perch on a two-headed dragon. An alabaster youkai, taller even than hers(hers? She possessed this youkai in some way?), put a hand on the little female's shoulder and she smiled up at him, the sweetest smile. She knew these two, and it warmed something in her to see that the cold youkai had responded in such a way to the little one's smile. She knew he was prone to violence and killing anything he deemed inferior.

The she that was dreaming wondered why the self in the dream did not find it unnatural that a being glowing with divinity should love a youkai. She also wondered why, in the dream, that self loved a youkai. But this is a dream, she reasoned, of course I am in love and will forever love him. My Inuyasha....

A hand was pulling her, someone was shaking both of her shoulders, and she shook her head. No, I don't want to leave Inuyasha...how will we win, how will they survive without me...?

"Kagome, wake up. Come on sis, it's gonna be time for you to take me to school soon. We gotta go in an hour!" Souta shouted in Kagome's ear. She opened one eye. Her precious little brother was leaning over her, smiling, worried. "Sorry.... You just wouldn't wake up..."

"Well, I was dreaming." She cracked another eye open, groaning. "What time is it?"

Souta ignored her question and tilted his head, brows knitted in a cute frown. "Is it the same one you keep having over and over?" He watched his sister nod tiredly as she pushed him off the mattress. "Shouldn't you tell Gramps about this? He could make some protective charms for you..."

Kagome shook her head, now perusing her dresser for a pair of socks and a brassiere. "No way, Souta." She smirked, "Waving Gramps' protective charms around would be about as useful as stabbing a bakeneko with a lollipop and threatening it with the power of artificial grape flavoring."

Souta cackled at the thought, "Yeah." He sighed and grinned, "I guess you're right. In a couple of years, you'll finish your training and take over the shrine, won't you, Sis?" He sat back down on his sister's bed as she flit about. She was always late, always sleeping in. But, luckily for her, he was always an early riser and helped her get ready.

"Yeah. I will." Kagome walked into her bathroom, slipping on the damp floor from Souta's earlier shower, "Oof. Hey, Souta, hand me one of my blouses, would you?" She stuck her hand out the crack of the doorway.

"Here you go." He handed her a white blouse of the uniform of the school she went to and then the blue plaid, pleated skirt. "But, Kagome?"

"Oh, thanks," Kagome stumbled out of the door and back into the room, tying her hair up into a high ponytail. She hopped around, trying to get her legs into her knee-high stockings, "Yeah?" She bent and gathered her books, putting them in her messenger bag. Anything other than a briefcase was strictly against school regulations, but she had lost the one issued by the school in a particularly messy exorcism. It was now a pile of ash, lost on the winds. "What is it, Souta?"

Her little brother looked at her with such a serious expression on his face that she almost giggled at him. But, she would never be that mean. He was being serious so she could at least be the same for him. "You should be careful. I've had some dreams, too. For a long time. They keep repeating and they're all the same thing."

Kagome glanced at him sharply as she straightened her uniform. "What dreams? Tell me."

"Sis, you're standing on a cliff...looking down at a place where there's a lot of grass and a lot of...youkai died. The air smells bad, Sis, like it's gonna swallow me up and it's like I'm choking on it.... You're surrounded by friends. All your friends are youkai and I've never seen any of them." Kagome's amusement fell away as her heart grew leaden and cold. No. That can't be.... That's my dream... "And at the ends of those dreams...you die...."