With the first thread of cold light breaking the forest's darkness, Yujiro opened his eyes. He immediately jumped from the tree, despite the aches that tore through his entire body. He couldn't take it anymore, and he began to run frantically toward the village. He gasped, running with longing to see his loved ones, and with terror at the thought of what might have happened—a feeling he didn't understand but that pressed hard on his chest.
As he reached the village borders, his frantic pace gradually slowed and turned into a heavy, dragging walk. He approached his home.
The door was wide open.
Fear crept into his chest like a frozen grip. He approached the door with hesitant, almost silent steps. There was no sound of life, no familiar humming of his mother in the kitchen, no laughter from his younger siblings. He pushed the already open door and stepped inside.
The air was heavy and still, and the smell… a sharp, metallic, pervasive odor that was unmistakable. Blood.
Yujiro froze in the middle of the hall. What he saw was no longer a warm home, but a brutal massacre. Blood splattered across the wooden walls, furniture shattered and overturned, and scattered remains lying haphazardly. His family… his father, his siblings, all were there, eternally silent. The scene was so horrific that Yujiro's mind initially refused to process it.
He raised his eyes with difficulty and saw something moving slowly and quietly in the dark corner of the room.
A massive beast, its mouth filled with jagged, sharp teeth, was calmly, terrifyingly, devouring the remains of one of his family members.
A sudden crack.
The sound of a broken piece of wood under Yujiro's foot.
The creature turned toward him very slowly, as if annoyed by the interruption of its meal. Its yellow eyes gleamed with endless, animalistic hunger. Then, the beast lunged toward Yujiro with lightning speed.
Yujiro rolled to the side at the last second, crashing onto the blood-soaked floor, and began to unconsciously crawl backward. His right hand touched something cold, slimy, and drenched in blood. He turned in terror… his mother's head, her open eyes staring up at the ceiling and into eternal void.
Time stopped. Vision ceased.
All his fear, all his pain, all his shock, melted into a single moment and transformed into pure, burning Rage.
"YOU BASTARD!!!"
Yujiro screamed a chest-shaking cry, tore the old decorative sword hanging on the wall, and charged with insane randomness. The blow hit the beast's flank but became lodged in its dense body, preventing him from pulling it free. Yujiro backed away, desperately throwing everything his hands could reach: a plate, a broken piece of wood, until he found a small axe and threw it with desperate force. The axe struck the beast's shoulder, violently pulling it away and knocking the decorative sword onto the floor.
Yujiro ran, snatched the sword from the ground, his hand trembling as tears began to stream down his cheeks. He looked one last time at the corpses of his family, then at his mother's head, and the blood boiled in his veins.
Suddenly, the air around him unnaturally shuddered.
A dark red aura began to leak and surge from his body, as if rage itself had decided to manifest before him. He felt a fire ignite in his chest, his heartbeat drumming in his ears like war drums. Every ache, every loss, transformed into a glowing red energy that enveloped him like a fiery cocoon. His sword began to glow the same color, whining as if it had come alive.
Yujiro let out a deafening scream that tore the silence of the cold world.
He lunged at the beast, his flaming sword slicing through its body from top to bottom, cleaving it in half with a single strike of supernatural force.
The beast fell silent, and its body completely melted into a black, steaming sludge on the floor.
Yujiro staggered back and collapsed onto his knees amid the wreckage of his home, his body shaking uncontrollably, and tears pouring down with intense heat.
They were not just tears of rage, but the tears of someone who had just realized that everything he had loved in this world was over.