There wasn't much left of the castle. In fact, if not for Hachi's insistence, Sango would not have believed there was ever a large structure in this place. Little remained except some small piles of rubble and a few crumbling foundations. It looked as if the rest of the building had simply been plucked from the ground and carried off somewhere, no matter how impossible that was.

Sango trailed along with the others as they slowly made their way through the ruins, searching in vain for something that looked even remotely familiar. But with so little remaining, that would be difficult at best. She wished she could remember anything from her previous visit to Naraku's real castle that would help her determine whether this was the right place.

"So this was Naraku's castle, huh?" Inuyasha asked.

"It would seem so. There's a faint trace of Naraku's miasma still clinging to this place," Miroku told him.

The hanyou looked out over the desolate ruins. "So what? Maybe the castle really was here once, but it's gone now. And so's Naraku. What does any of this matter? We're just wasting our time."

"It's strange," the monk agreed. "We've been led to a false castle before. This could have been the real one, but there's hardly anything left."

Their voices faded somewhat as Sango explored further afield from the rest of the group. The arrangement of some of the lumps of earth and piles of rubble had began to seem familiar, though she couldn't say if that was because they actually were familiar or just because they resembled scenes from her nightmares. And yet…

She could not shake the sudden imperative: there was something important to be found here, and she must not simply pass by without finding it.

She knelt, partly to get a closer look and partly because she no longer trusted her legs to support her. Trembling, she almost knew what she would find before she even began to look. She brushed aside a layer of soil and felt as if a great emptiness had opened up inside her chest where her heart was supposed to be. She dug deeper, more frantically, heedless of the mess she was making. There was no mistaking this. Her worst fears and greatest grief had just been confirmed.

Her voice trembling, Sango told them, "This is the right place. Naraku's castle was here."

"Sango-chan, what have you…" Kagome trailed off as she realized just what Sango had unearthed.

"It's my father's armor," she said, as if there could be any doubt. Agonizingly familiar, and undeniable proof of the atrocity that had occurred here.

This really was the place where her father and all the others had been buried, after Naraku's deception forced Kohaku to kill them. This was where she had been buried and had clawed her way out of her own grave, desperate for revenge. Where Naraku had manipulated her, setting her against Inuyasha. It all came flooding back—the confusion, the anguish, the pain…and the terror of awaking to find she had been presumed dead and buried along with the others.

She couldn't move, couldn't speak, could barely breathe.

Until now she had held out some hope, no matter how remote, that the others would turn out to be alive just as Kohaku had. But now the proof was before her and irrefutable: her father and the others had died here.

Naraku could not turn them into enemies, the way he had with Kohaku, but they had been here this whole time. Dead, and left to rot in the soiled earth of this terrible place.

Her companions had come closer by now, forming a loose half-circle around her that nonetheless threatened to suffocate her.

"Back then, when we didn't know anything about Naraku, the best fighters of my village were summoned to this place," she told them, speaking in a daze as the memories washed over her. "Naraku used my brother Kohaku to kill them all, and then buried the bodies in a corner of the castle garden." She needed them to know just how painful her memories were, but couldn't bring herself to say aloud that she had been attacked and buried as well. Some of this she had told them already, and some they had probably already guessed. Some, she would never tell them. It was too much. "So there can be no doubt. This is the place."

"Oh, Sango," Kagome murmured, her voice brimming with sympathy.

Not for the first time since that fight in this castle, Sango felt herself on the brink of a breakdown. Her breaths came hard and felt airless in her lungs, her eyes blurred with tears she had not yet shed but might at any moment. The castle and its evil occupant might be long gone now, but this place still held almost unimaginable power over her. All of her worst memories had happened here. The other slayers had all been killed here, or corrupted.

Miroku suddenly knelt beside her. At first she could not comprehend what he was doing as he dug his hands into the earth and began to remove the remains buried there, placing them reverently on the fabric of his koromo, which he'd spread over the ground. But his voice was soft and infinitely gentle when he spoke, and the words eventually reached her: "We can't leave your father and the others in an awful place like this."

Numb and overwhelmed by emotion at the same time, all she could say was, "Houshi-sama."

"We'll take them to a more appropriate place," he went on as he continued his work, "and we'll give them a proper burial. Is that okay with you, Sango?"

"Yes," she breathed, and, "Thank you, Houshi-sama."

Gratitude was all she could offer him, though it would never be enough.