Yami No Matsuei Fan Fiction ❯ Evanescent Days: Everybody's Fool ❯ Everybody's Fool 1:01 ( Chapter 1 )

Evanescent Days: Track 01

Everybody's Fool v.2.0

Yami No Matsuei Alterverse

by Daemonchan

::warning:: SPOILERS!! AU - 3 years following Kyoto. Kurosaki family information stolen from Gensoukai and Kamakura Hen. All that stuff with Kurikara never happened. Manga and anime based. Translations from theria.net.

::author's note:: I rewatched the anime and decided that I like Hisoka's powers there better. He isn't just an empath, he's a weak psychic and psychokinetic. Otherwise, he couldn't have read Tsuzuki's mind and he wouldn't have known how to find Maria just be touching a doorknob. I'm unsure of timelines so I've moved them around for my own purposes...Oh, and I'm making this up as I go...

::disclaimer:: nothing in this fic but the storyline is mine. Lyrics borrowed from Evanescence and characters from Matsushita-sensei.

::lyrics::

-Yatonokami-

Impressions and telepathic thought

*~*~*~*

::perfect by nature
icons of self indulgence::

Kurosaki Nagare was a desperate man.

His body was failing, changing and weakening under the influence of the trapped demon, the Yatonokami. The skin hidden beneath the fine silk of his kimono was mottled blue green, ever increasing patches hard with overlapping scales. His nails had to be trimmed daily, a task that he took to doing obsessiely to keep them from becoming a demon's talons. His eyes were bound beneath a film of gauze, barely enough to still see, but sufficient to mask the slitted pupils and golden irises.

Throughout history, the male heirs of the Kurosaki name carried the burden, holding the demon within their bodies until they could pass it on to their children. Kurosaki Ren, the first of the noble family, had slain the demon's body, trapping the beast within his own soul and those of his sons. Centuries of servitude and sacrifice had worn the nobility of the cause thin...Nagare would sell his soul and the soul of his children to rid himself of the horrible demon.

Only, Nagare had no children left to pass on the curse.

-Failure...soon I will be free...- The snake demon crawled along his veins, pushing the limits of the human skin. He had never been so close to freedom...

Nagare had betrayed Ren's sacrifice, wanting nothing more than to erase the angry demon's presence. He had promised his son, sold his heir's soul long before he was even born. After Hisoka's death...the demon did not take kindly to failure.

Punishment was cruel and unusual. His wife, Rui, was in the throes of a demonic pregnancy. The demon lord was only a spirit within a shell...he would need a body once he finished with his last Kurosaki prison. Nagare was too weak to fight the Yatonokami's influence on his mind and body, binding his eyes and body to hide his shame. The demon would soon claim his body and be loosed on the world again, to once again ravage Kamakura.

His will to protect the people of the village had been meager even before his son's death. He had been raised to privilege, ruling the village below as if he were a deity himself, the people's thanks for Ren's heroic deed. But, the Kurosaki's power came with a staggering price. The first payment had been soul shattering. Nagare's first wife, Kasane, had given birth to their daughter, Hisoka. Dark traditions followed the keepers of the Yatonokami. The first born child was to inherit the curse, and that first born had to be male. Hisoka-sama had lived only a short time, yet her death haunted him in all moments of his life.

Nagare had been unable to make himself show any kind of affection to his second born, his son. Hisoka, given his sister's name to cover the damnable truth that he was not the natural heir, had been an unnatural child, able to peer into his parent's minds and hearts, leaving every secret bare to the world. Nagare's guilt and shame returned with every piercing emerald glance.

The Yatonokami seemed to take particular glee in Hisoka's abilities, often hinting that the boy's empathy was a result of his influence. He would gloat of Nagare's weak body and will, finally able to overcome the barriers of his entrapment and effect what form he would take next: a boy with the power to read minds and hearts.

Nagare felt a stab of fear at knowing that the demon had come to have so much power over the Kurosaki blood. The child was there to serve only one purpose in life...to take up the curse of the Kurosaki family as the god killers of Kamakura. A half demon boy...with a demon god's soul.

Thoughts of Hisoka came more frequently as he weakened, haunting him waking and sleeping. Nagare hadn't said the boy's name in years, either aloud or to himself, since before they kept him in the dungeon beneath the house, letting him out only at night when the people of the village could not discover his unnerving powers. He had seen the demon behind those eyes and hid the boy from not only the world, but the demon within his own body.

The boy's name was a reminder of the darkest moment of Nagare's life. Even seeing the character on paper made him hear the wail of a child, only to have that sound cut off by hands he knew belonged to his own brother, Iwao.

Kasane had killed herself soon after, throwing herself into the lake, now to walk it's shores as a restless specter. The Kasanekefuchi was known only to the Kurosaki family for it's tragic tale. After Kasane killed herself, Nagare could not let go of her memory, marrying her twin instead, always seeing his true beloved in her sister's face. Kurosaki Rui had given birth to the male heir, Hisoka, and Nagare had been able to breathe easier knowing that he would only have a few more years with the demon forever taunting in his mind.

The demon never counted on something as mundane as disease destroying his chance to regain his former glory. How stupidly ironic.

Hundreds of years...secrets and lies...the pledge to protect the people of Kamakura in return for unrivaled wealth and power.

-Nagare-

The Kurosaki patriarch hissed in anger, struggling feebly against the demon god's influence.

-Isn't it enough that I torture your wife? Must you continue to fight the punishment for your failure?-

Somewhere in the house, Rui let loose a scream of raw horror and agony. Nagare began tearing his plain kimono away, nails tearing into his marked skin, trailing blood across his body. The demon's mark flared brightly, shifting from what seemed merely an exquisite tattoo of a snake to iridescent scales up his back and shoulders, and flowing along his chest.

-Hisoka was mine. My final freedom from the cursed Kurosaki line. His life for the release of the Kurosaki family.-

Failure. Nagare and Rui had failed with their son, beyond their choice to abandon him to a dark existence in the dungeon below the house. One accidental night and the boy was beyond the Yatonokami's reach, his soul half in the living, half dead. Even after death, the body was too wasted and diseased for the demon to take.

His displeasure had been swift and terrible. Nagare fell to the ground, one great cough bringing up thick blood from his stomach. His inner organs were being moved and crushed as the demon continued his path to inevitable freedom.

-My freedom comes with your death, Nagare. And I shall enjoy every moment until you take your last breath. Won't death be sweet after all?-

The laugh that Nagare thought was just in his own mind actually bubbled from his own lips, so menacing and evil that it sent the servant in perpetual attendance scurrying from their master's chambers. It soon become a chuckle that ripped through his wasted frame, and died as he fell to the floor, unmoving within the bright puddle of his own blood, completely exhausted.

Kurosaki Nagare was a dead man.