A/N: And another drabble...this one won first place. Squee!
A little boy rises at dawn, greets the day with open arms. When he doesn't find his father sleeping next to him, or elsewhere in the shrine, he is confused.
"Master? Where is papa?"
The old man is kneeling, his hands wound tight with rosary beads. The boy has never seen him look so serious, or sober, when he prays.
"Leave him be, boy," the old monk says quietly. "He knows his time is near."
He finds his father in a dark room, hidden from the morning light that bathes rest of the shrine. His father's face is dark, wet with tears and he's shaking…
"Papa?"
His father's eyes are desperate, night without hope of dawn.
A little boy screams, held back by their grieving master, and watches as his father's life ends. A curse is reborn in that moment, as the sun rises again, so does evil.
Pain, red-hot as a brand, breaking across his soft palm like an executioner's daybreak call. An orphaned boy sobs into the arms of an old man, wakening to his curse, his fate, his eventual defeat that began with the first rays of rosy sunrise, on the last morning of innocence.