Tomo - a name not given to him at birth, but his all the same - dies, feeling as if he's been burned from the inside out. His muscles stiffen as purplish sparks dance upon his skin, and he falls, thinking of soft smiles and fur beneath his fingers. He dies just as he lives, always moving to protect others.
As Sabito, things aren't all that different.
Before, his blood had crackled with sharp, unpredictable lightning. That much hasn't changed. But now, it's more like a storm.
His heart is charged with electricity, and his blood runs like rivers through his veins. He finds it soothing, rather than discomfiting.
He finds himself at peace, despite everything. He runs and plays as if he'd been any other child, and he goes home each night to be pecked on the cheeks by his parents, embarrassedly rubbing their kisses off even as he hides his pleased smile.
Nothing good lasts forever.
He'd heard that more than once. Had thought it too bitter for his tastes, and had proclaimed that if such a thing is true, he'll just have to change fate.
Sabito would never go back on that. But as his world crashes around him, he can't help but wonder if they were right.
He returns home in the morning one day, having been ushered inside the previous night by a friend's parent who'd told him that he shouldn't wander outside alone.
It's the scent of rusted iron that hits him first.
"Mom?" he calls out, stepping inside. "Dad?"
He ignores the red that paints the walls until he can't anymore. Until he sees an old man with a tengu mask leaning over half-mutilated bodies, hands clasped in front of him.
Sabito does not think before he moves.
He rips off his shoe and throws it at the man, and launches his full body next. The man is startled enough for him to land a hit, but his wrist is caught a moment later.
"Boy—" the man begins, but Sabito doesn't listen. He throws out his foot, sweeping it outwards, and nearly causes the man to stumble.
Despite this, he does not fall, and Sabito finds himself immobilized in a too-gentle hold.
"I'm sorry," the man tells him. Sabito's face crumples.
He knows, from the moment he steps inside, that it's not the man's fault. And he believes him when he speaks of man-eating demons, because no human or god - not even the Shogun - would be cruel enough to leave behind nothing but scattered remains.
(Realistically, he knows that some people have and would. But those people are far and few between, and despite the compromising situation, he does not think the old man is one of them.)
He buries the bodies, and for the first and last time in either life, he prays for those he's lost.
Sabito follows the man up a mountain, and is put through the most hellish training of his life.
He knows he asked for it, but by a week in, he's beginning to think the man - Urokodaki, he learns when they leave his home village - is a sadist.
Nonetheless, he goes through the training without too many verbal complaints. Urokodaki is helping him, after all.
The style is fine, but not perfect. When he hesitantly mentions this to Urokodaki, he tells Sabito that eventually, he might be able to make a style of his own. For now, though, he should work on the basics.
And so he does.