"I'm home! Father, Mother! Come look outside, there's—" Sasuke Uchiha's terrified voice rang out from beyond the door.
But the moment he stepped into the living room, his voice cut off.
Blood-red moonlight dimly illuminated part of the room.
The first thing he saw was a familiar figure kneeling with his back to him—his older brother, Itachi Uchiha.
But in the next instant, the sight on the floor in front of Itachi seized all of Sasuke's attention.
Blood.
A vast pool of it was spreading slowly from beneath two people lying on the floor, soaking the tatami. It was the source of the thick, metallic smell filling the room.
The two people on the floor were his parents!
Sasuke's mind went completely blank.
He recognized the patterns on their kimonos, his mother's smooth, long hair, and his father's broad back.
"Uh!" A strangled whimper escaped his throat.
The shuriken he had been practicing with clattered to the floor.
Sasuke could not make sense of what he was seeing. His small body began to shake uncontrollably, and his pupils contracted with terror and shock.
He staggered two steps forward. His vision blurred until the whole room seemed to break apart into a mosaic.
"Ah... ah... ah!" He let out a wordless cry, his breathing turning rapid.
Only then did he jerk his gaze toward the brother who had remained kneeling silently in the pool of blood.
"B-Brother?" Sasuke's voice trembled badly, carrying a desperate trace of hope. "What... what happened? How could Mom and Dad..."
Itachi, still kneeling on the floor, raised his head with agonizing slowness.
Sasuke saw a cold face he had never seen before.
His brother's face was spattered with blood. Worse, the eyes that had always looked at him so gently now held a strange, terrifying crimson