Youou has been trying to protect his clan for weeks now. If he didn't have the magic which runs through him he's sure he would have collapsed after the second sleepless day, unable to keep up with the constant stream of resetting warding, alarms, traps, fighting off anything that breaks through the barriers.
He is young, true, but he is strong, stronger than most people here, he knows this well. After all he'd been taught by his father, spells to protect, to trap food, to clean water, hundreds of them at his disposal, flowing from his fingertips like fire, utilised for different purposes now.
He knows despite this that he is losing, ground slipping away inch by inch, his friends and family who had tried to protect him slain.
As he loses their bodies slip away, snapped up by the beasts surrounding this place, demons, as soon as they pass the barriers he's trying to hold so desperately.
Even his mother is dead now, within the very wards that she had upheld for years.
He still can't understand the sword, protruding from nothing, her eyes, shocked and then empty as he'd seen her spirit leave her, the apology that had rolled from her lips, seeing him.
It sticks with him, only worsens the tears he's trying to hold back as he scribes in the air the words which will save them somehow, seal this town until he can do better, fix this somehow.
There's a breach, in the wall behind him, the one which cuts through the house which had belonged to his aunt and uncle.
Youou wipes his tears on his sleeve and summons some of the magic he has still, running though he feels so weak, already writing the spell which draws the water from things, the one that his father had taught him to dry clothes after rain. He repurposes it now and then he feels the wards knit themself back up again where the had split.
Alarm shocks through him and he drops the spell, letting it fizzle out in the air. A sense of foreboding fills him, of being trapped, and he does the only thing that he can think to do.
Youou retreats to the room where his mother lies in a puddle of blood which has long since dried.
He doesn't touch her, her body preserved with a spell which had been meant to preserve old documents, passed down through their clan through the ages, he's scared that it won't hold if he interferes, that she'll somehow disappear from him, like his father's body, the only remains the tattooed arm which had been flung through the barrier by a demon that no longer exists.
So Youou sits as close to her as she can, door open so that he can see whatever might be coming, fire the attack he is already readying, murmuring softly to keep a smaller defensive bubble around him and his mother.
And then it is not a demon but a man who approaches from a long way, hands held up, surrender or peace, Youou doesn't know which but he's desperate enough to beg.
"Can you help her?" He asks, tears streaming down his face, "Can you help my mother?" The boy begs.
The man is tall, long hair colder than Youou's own but just as dark. It falls like a curtain as he crouches, offers his hand to Youou and smiles, gently, sadly, softly.
"If you come and live with me, let me teach you, I will do what I can for her." He says, voice strong.
Youou nods, not thinking about the proposal at all but suddenly wanting to be gone from this place where he lost so much, wanting to do whatever he can to have his mother back.
"Please," he begs, taking the man's hand, "please take us with you."
The man smiles and it is warm despite how oddly pale he is.
"Of course, child." He says, helping him stand up, frowning.
"You've exhausted yourself," he comments, looking intently at the boy, "how long have you been fighting alone?" He asks, already casting a spell which looks a little like the wind spell that Youou had used to send feather and flowers flying across the village.
"I- I don't know," Youou admits, looking at the ground and wiping his face with one sleeve, feeling tears start to well in his throat again.
The man frowns, drying the tears on Youou's face with the edge of a dark robe, trimmed in blue. It's soft, far softer than anything else Youou can even imagine. It comes away smeared with mud and dried blood but the man doesn't seem to mind.
"That's okay," he reassures the boy, "don't worry about that. What is your name?" He asks, squeezing his hand just a little.
Youou looks back at his mother, floating now.
"My name is Kurogane." He tells the man, thinking of the tattoo his father had had, the one which snaked his arm, the protector of their family for generations.
Yuui has been running for days now, hiding out in caves he cuts from the ice, sleeping when he can, eating any animal he can manage to catch or any food he can manage to steal when he passes close to a place where there are people.
He hates them all, can't help it, can't help but hate these people who let his country die, let him and his brother be trapped in that cursed tower, let it fill with the bodies of the people his own family killed.
All they'd done was to be born. Was that really such a curse that their mother had killed herself out of shame, that they'd had to be locked away from the public, that their father had had to kill his nephews and his brothers just to keep the power he had. Had they really cursed their country so badly just by existing?
It had only been a few days since they'd both been shipped away to that cursed tower, split from the only comfort they'd ever had, forced to yell with breaking voices just to know that there was someone else with them, someone else alive in the world which filled with bodies so quickly, freezing into a mountain in the bitter cold.
It'd been so short a time and yet they came so quickly, villagers and lesser nobles, maids and servants and then guards, still clad in their armour and swords- like their dad had been waiting for this, planning it.
The bodies came so fast and Yuui had felt guilty at first, taking clothes to keep himself warm, furs, woolen things, coats and vests from children who'd been tossed in, some younger than even Yuui and Fai themselves. That feeling quickly faded as the desperation increased.
Fai's voice had grown weaker quickly, his words from reassurance to lamenting about the cold, the endless cold, the colour of his fingers and toes, laughing, broken laughing which Yuui couldn't get him to stop no matter how much he begged.
He couldn't get him to catch what he tried to throw at him from the pile of bodies which only increased more and more, something, anything which could help him be okay, stay warm.
Eventually Fai had stopped, gone quiet.
Yuui had been thankful at first, kept at his work, kept piling up the people he'd known of in passing, the chef, his aunt, that one guard who had let them out in secret.
And then he had tried to call to Fai, gentle at first and then urgent as he heard no reply, not even that barking laugh.
Some part of him knew what had happened, felt it in the chill that bites him even through the many, many layers he's wrapped himself in, the hollowness in his stomach, the thirst in the back of his throat.
Eventually Yuui had fallen silent too, wrapped himself up so tightly that his tears couldn't freeze to his face as he wished that he could leave, get out of there somehow.
He'd redoubled his efforts after that, piled the bodies up higher, more precariously, searched pockets for the occasional pack of sweets, sandwich, tiny flask, lighter.
And then his father, the monster, had come too, alive.
He hadn't stayed that way for long, the sword in his own hand taken by Yuui in desperation, to not die, never die, not like his brother, not like all these people.
His blood had been the only warm thing he'd felt for so long but he'd scrambled away from it, sword still in his white knuckled grasp.
It's beautiful to him somehow as he cleans it on the outside of the outermost coat he wears, shining a yellow gold and inlaid with blue gemstones.
It's too big for him, he knows, but he can't bring himself to part from it as he works, a companion of sorts as he climbs up, climbs out of the hellish tower which had taken everything from him and into the blinding fields of snow.
Yuui walks away from the trenches made by the carts, in the opposite direction that his father's footsteps had came from.
It is only about a week before he is caught by a girl, younger than him, sneaking into the kitchen of one of the big houses of the village he's managed to find shelter in.
She'd smiled at him, as if she knew him, as if she was unafraid that he is covered in blood in the middle of her kitchen, sword glittering dangerously in his hands.
"You have been treated badly, haven't you?" She'd asked, voice soft, as if she could know anything of it, as if she cared about the horrors he'd seen.
He'd lunged at her and she'd merely raised a hand and he'd found himself stuck, blade point hovering so close to her hand that he doesn't understand why it can't pierce it, strike home in her chest as he means to do.
She comes to stand beside him and he can't move, do anything to stop her, as she touches the side of his sword and then he falls, point driving through open air and into the wooden slats of the floor.
Yuui stares at her, so confused that he can't do anything except try to pull his sword from the ground.
"Let me arrange a bedroom for you." She says, turning her back to him and leaving, robes whispering along the floor as she lets herself be defenseless.
Yuui manages to free his weapon and watches her for a moment, deliberating.
"Why?" He asks, voice breaking, raspy.
The girl doesn't turn back but stops for a moment.
"Because you have been through awful things," she says after a pause, "and you deserve better."
The girl keeps walking, as if he wouldn't just stab her in the back, as if he should just believe her words, ones that he's never heard before.
Yuui finds himself echoing her footsteps.
"What is your name?" She asks after a moment, not pausing in her path.
Yuui thinks for a moment, feels guilt claw at him once again, swallows it down.
"My name is Fai." He tells her.