"Shinji! Shinji help me please!" The small voice of Shinji's brother Hakaru was the only thing that made its way through the thick smoke. There was no light, nothing to see. Shinji stumbled blindly, waving his arms in an attempt to find a wall, something to hold on to.

He fell over, his lungs burning and his stomach emptying itself on the wood floors. When he was done, Shinji started to crawl in the direction of his brother.

"Help me Shinji, help me!" A blood chilling scream followed Hakaru's cry. Shinji's hoarse voice tried to call out, but his throat was too raw from the smoke. Despite this, he continued to crawl as well as he could to the last place he'd heard his brother.

But he could find nothing in the overwhelming darkness. No matter how hard he tried, his hands continued to grasp at nothing.

There were people in the darkness, people that did not belong to his clan. He could hear them, moving, creeping through the smoke, slaying all that they came in contact with. Shinji could hear the cries of his people, the cries of his family as they were slain.

Then, out of the overwhelming darkness, came a voice that did not belong.

"Wake up," it said softly, too calm in the surrounding chaos. The voice repeated its message, once, twice, again and again, until the vision of the fire began to fade.


Shinji's hand felt the ice he was pressed up against. Now that he'd regained consciousness, he knew that the voice in his dream had belonged to Yukihime.

Come, child, you are almost free. Do not give up yet. Yukihime's voice pressed into his mind, and he mustered up the strength to keep going. As the demon had said, the way out was close. There was another storm drain that, for some reason, was shorter than the other one, and Shinji could reach it. Something told him that the ice had gotten thicker.

As he pulled himself out of the drain there were quite a few odd looks from passersby who pulled their children away from the boy emerging from underground. He couldn't blame them.

The one person who did not shy away was Rin. He happened to be walking across the campus to his dorm. At the time, Shinji did not know who Rin was, other than the fact that he was a student at True Cross.

"Hey," Rin said nonchalantly, approaching Shinji as he crawled out of the drain, "You're the new kid, aren't you, the one Mephisto brought to us."

The way Rin spoke there was no question in his tone. Though there was a hint of curiosity to it, he seemed too tired to care anymore. There were bags under sunken eyes that had lost an energetic glint they used to hold.

Shinji stood up and dusted himself off, still worried about his appearance, something that had been drilled into him at a young age. He nodded in response to Rin's question, sensing a purpose behind it.

"Well, do you know what's causing these attacks?" Though Rin only asked a question, there seemed to be so much more behind it, a senseless desperation that can only emerge when all hope is lost. Rin wanted, needed, something to hold on to. No one had told Shinji how many attacks there had been, or how long they'd been happening, but from that one incident he concluded that there had been many. No one, he surmised, becomes that forlorn without good reason. He looked down, suddenly guilty for letting Rin down, and shook his head. He had no idea what had been the cause of the attacks.

"Oh, okay." Rin's eyes left Shinji's face, the small glimmer fading back into a look of pure despondence, "Well, do you have a place to stay?"

Shinji shook his head. He didn't really mind though, he'd been sleeping on rocks and under trees for a long time.

Rin chuckled, "Mephisto really is forgetful. Alright, come with me, my brother and I have plenty of rooms."

He walked off, not really leaving any room for arguing. Shinji, having no way to call Rin back or express that there was no need for that kind of hospitality, shrugged and followed. As he did, he looked around, at the park, at the trees, taking in the still beauty that came with an ending day. There was, however, something that bothered him. It was too cold. The summers in that area never required the use of a coat, and yet, Rin dawned one, the children who played so merrily in the park all wore one. The surrounding trees were already beginning to lose their leaves, and the local shrubs were dying. Shinji sped up.

As the two boys walked up to Rin's dorm, Shinji faltered. He wasn't an expert on buildings, but that one looked too rundown to have someone living in it. Rin had a little trouble opening the door, for which he apologized absentmindedly. Inside, they were greeted with a metal staircase and a hallway that stretched to either side. To the right there were sinks and bathrooms, and to the left it was boarded up and there was a magic circle painted on it. Shinji pointed to it and raised an eyebrow.

"That?" Rin said when he noticed, "Yeah, don't try to go over there, something is… sleeping."

Whatever is over there, Shinji decided, is not asleep.

Upstairs, a boy Shinji recognized as being the teacher was sitting at a desk, reading. He looked up and raised an eyebrow,

"Rin, what's with the unplanned company?"

He didn't seem as discouraged as Rin in the way he spoke or the way he held himself. Shinji wondered for a moment, what could have happened to make the two end up so differently.

"Mephisto never told him where to sleep, so I offered one of our rooms. You alright Yukio?" Rin started to walk to his bed, but stopped, as he was caught a little off guard.

A flash of anger danced across Yukio's face, "Why didn't you ask me? I live here too, you know."

Rin flinched, "Sorry Yukio, but we have plenty of rooms and I didn't think it was gonna be that big of a deal."

Shinji started to back out of the room, feeling bad for adding stress to the current situation. He figured he could just leave, and spare them the trouble of kicking him out.

"Wait," Yukio growled, "don't leave, you can stay. That wasn't about you."

Despite the fact that he was addressing Shinji, Yukio's eyes never left Rin. Rin's eyes, however, stayed on the floor. He mumbled something that Shinji could not hear and walked over to his bed, collapsing. He looked up and noticed Shinji again.

"Oh sorry," he put on a forced smile, "Just pick a room, we don-" he looked at Yukio, who continued to glare for a moment, but eventually nodded his consent, "We don't care which one you use."

Shinji nodded and bowed to show his thanks. He crept out of the room, scared of disturbing whatever was going on between the brothers.

Despite the abundance of rooms, there was only one with a bed that allowed Shinji a view of both entries to the room, the door and the window. It was at the end of the hallway and, by his calculations, directly over the "sleeping" thing. Though the room was bare, it had accumulated copious amounts of dust, so that just by sitting down on the bed, Shinji could create clouds thick enough to put a thunderstorm to shame. He didn't care, the very act of sleeping on a bed had become foreign to him, and he rather enjoyed doing it again.

This lovely, blissful sleep did not last long, however. After the sun had gone down, Shinji was awoken by a voice in his head, one he did not know. It was thin, high, something that almost reminded him of the wind.

Let me out! Let me go! I want out!

He bolted up in his bed, only to be forced back down again by an overwhelming sense of nausea and dizziness. There was a war going on in his head, between the new voice and Yukihime, who had decided it was another demon trying to take over.

Shinji, Shinji, she said in a panic, this is strange, it is unnatural. Make it go away Shinji.

There was, however, nothing he could do, for this voice, whatever it was, was not in his head, it was simply contacting him there.

Let me go! This isn't fair, it isn't fair!


The next attack happened in the park, on the children's playground. It was early, exceedingly so, and no one was hurt, but that wasn't the point. The point was that someone could have been. There could have very easily been a dead child or two in that attack.

As with the last attack, Shinji stepped back and looked for a bigger picture. As with the last attack, there was an image hidden within the ice. As with the last attack, it was something Shinji knew, something that dredged up memories of a horror lived as a child.

Rather than the blood and flesh of innocent people, this image was created by bending and breaking the playground into the shape of a garden. In the middle of the garden there was a tall wooden pole. There was nothing carved on this pole, nor was it composed of several pieces of wood. It was made from a single tree, a tree whose bark had been used to protect the very first garden ever planted by that clan from harsh winters. It had been erected there as a reminder of the sacrifice that the tree spirit made. Of course, no one in the present day believed that anymore, but it was still fun to tell the stories.

Shinji remembered those stories. He remembered sitting around an old man, a grandfather. He remembered being clustered as close as possible with other little children, cousins, friends he'd grown up with, all trying to get closer to the grandfather because he spoke so quietly. He remembered being infatuated with those stories of demons and monsters, because he believed that there were more good things in the world than bad.

He remembered being proven wrong. In the aftermath of the fire, the charred corpses of people he knew, people he recognized. The melted glass of picture frames, and the piles and piles of ash. He remembered heads that had been severed from their respective bodies.

Shinji took a moment and walked away from the scene of the attack. It hurt too much to look at, to think about. He could not keep away the intrusive thoughts of the fire. They had always been there, but they were starting to come back with full force.

Calm child, it is only a memory. It cannot hurt you anymore. Keep your eyes on the present, for that is what can harm you.

Shinji skidded to a stop, suddenly realizing that his feet had carried him back to the dorm he was staying in, and there was something terribly, terribly wrong. For the wall to the left, the wall containing the "sleeping" thing, had been entirely torn away.


Hey guys! I hope you enjoyed the new chapter! As always, let me know if you see any spelling or grammar errors that need fixing. I've noticed that I can be pretty bad at remembering to put lines in between scenes, so if you spot a time jump that isn't separated, let me know and I'll fix it.