With the first cold streak of light breaking the forest's gloom, Yujiro snapped his eyes open. He leaped from the tree immediately, ignoring the aches gnawing at his exhausted frame. He began to run frantically, ascending the familiar mountain paths toward his home. He was panting, running with a desperate longing to see his loved ones, and a terror clawing at his chest over what might have happened in his absence.
As he neared the secluded house on the mountainside, his pace gradually slowed. The silence was eerie, unlike the usual mountain stillness. He caught sight of the door... it was wide open, swaying slowly in the cold wind.
Fear seeped into his chest like an icy grip. He approached the door with hesitant, nearly silent steps. There was no sound of life—no familiar hum from his mother, no laughter from his younger siblings. He pushed the door and stepped inside, only to be met by a sharp, pungent metallic scent... the heavy smell of blood that filled every corner of the room.
Yujiro froze in the center of the hall. What he saw was no longer a warm home, but a gruesome slaughterhouse that his mind struggled to comprehend. Blood was splattered across the wooden walls, furniture was shattered, and his family... his father, his siblings, they were all there—lifeless, silent corpses forever.
He raised his eyes with great difficulty, only to see the culprit—or so he believed—standing before him. In a dark corner of the room, a massive beast with a mouth full of jagged, razor-sharp teeth was calmly, horrifyingly devouring the remains of one of his family members. To Yujiro, the image was clear: this monster was the one who had invaded and destroyed their lives.
Snap!
Yujiro's foot betrayed him, cracking a piece of broken wood. The monster turned with agonizing slowness, its yellow eyes gleaming with animalistic hunger, before lunging with lightning speed toward the stunned boy.
Yujiro rolled aside at the last second, crashing onto the blood-stained floor. As he scrambled backward, his hand touched something cold and clammy. He turned in horror to see his mother's head, her open eyes staring into the eternal void.
In that moment, time stopped. Fear and pain melted into a single crucible, transforming into a rage so pure and searing it bordered on madness.
"YOU BASTARD!!!"
Yujiro let out a scream that shook the wooden cottage. He snatched an old ceremonial sword hanging on the wall and charged with frantic desperation. He plunged the blade into the monster's flank, but it got stuck. Yujiro recoiled, throwing anything his hands could reach—plates, debris—until he found a small axe and hurled it with a force that struck the beast's shoulder, causing the sword to fall to the floor.
Yujiro ran and reclaimed the sword, his hand trembling and his tears falling like lava. He took one last look at his family's bodies, then at his mother's head, and felt something boiling in his veins.
Suddenly, the air around him rippled unnaturally. A dark red aura began to surge from his body, as if his rage had decided to take physical form. He felt a heat igniting in his chest, and his heartbeat thundered in his ears like a drum. Every ounce of pain and loss transformed into a red energy that surrounded him like a fiery cocoon. His sword began to glow with the same hue, moaning as if it had come to life.
With a deafening roar that tore through the mountain's silence, Yujiro lunged. His flaming sword sliced through the monster from top to bottom, cleaving it in two with a single stroke of superhuman strength.
Everything went still. The monster's body melted, turning into a black sludge that evaporated into the ground. Yujiro collapsed to his knees amidst the ruins of his home, his body shaking uncontrollably, his tears scalding. He realized in that moment that everything he loved in this world was gone, lost to the mountain cold and the blood of his kin.