The darkness seemed endless.
Uesugi Sasuke curled up in the cold hollow of a tree like a wounded little beast.
With every breath, the agony of his broken ribs surged like a tide, battering his taut nerves.
But he dared not make a sound.
The monster's roar, his parents' dying cries, and that thick smell of blood replayed in his mind like a nightmare.
He did not know how he had escaped.
Perhaps it was the kunai that had appeared out of thin air in his hand, perhaps the unfamiliar dark blue training clothes he wore, or perhaps that sudden blaze had given him a chance to survive.
Time passed slowly in the deathly silence.
Until a faint ray of light pierced the dense canopy, dispelling the suffocating darkness of the forest.
Dawn had come.
Only then did Sasuke dare move his stiff body slightly.
He carefully crawled out of the tree hollow, covered in dirt and dried blood.
Sunlight filtered through the thin mist between the trees and fell upon his face, carrying a trace of warmth.
The additional knowledge in his mind told him that this could kill "demons."
That monster should already be dead, or have fled.
It was safe now.
Yet that thought brought him neither joy nor relief.
His heart was hollow.
He dragged his battered body toward home, step by step, like a puppet without a soul.
The closer he came, the stronger the mingled smell of charcoal and blood grew.
At last, he stopped before that once so familiar clearing.
His home was gone.
The wooden house in his memories, simple but filled with laughter, had become a charred ruin from which thin wisps of smoke still rose.
Last night's fire had burned away every warm memory of his life so far.
Sasuke walked into it in silence.
The charcoal crunched beneath his feet, grating harshly in the stillness of the early-morning woods.
Then he saw them.
Where his parents' room should have been, two blackened bodies lay silently, burned beyond human recognition.
His father's body was still pitched forward, as though even in his final moment, he had wanted to shield his wife beneath him with his back, which was not particularly broad.
Sasuke went completely rigid.
His blood seemed to freeze at that moment.
He did not cry.
Nor did he scream like a child.
An emotion deeper than grief and colder than fear engulfed him in an instant, like an icy current from the deepest abyss.
It was hatred.
Pure, absolute hatred that threatened to burn even his soul to ashes.
Like a poisonous vine, it grew wildly around his heart, coiling and tightening.
He turned silently and found two usable farming tools in the ruins: a hoe and a shovel.
Then he began digging in the open ground behind the house.
One stroke.
Then another.
Like an unfeeling machine, he repeated the motion mechanically.
Rending agony shot through his broken ribs, but he ignored it.
The rough wooden handle rubbed blood blisters into his palms, drawing blood, but he ignored that too.
He kept digging like that, sweat mingling with dirt and blurring his vision.
He did not know how much time had passed before two deep enough pits finally appeared before him.
He stopped, walked into the ruins, and carefully gathered his parents' incomplete remains, bit by bit, before gently placing them in the pits.
He did not look for wooden boards to make grave markers.
Before the two freshly filled graves, he simply dropped heavily to his knees, his back straight.
Then he touched his forehead to the ground, kowtowing three times with an audible thud.
"Father, Mother."
His voice was hoarse and dry, without a trace of the childishness it should have held, only a coldness and resolve beyond his years.
"I will avenge you."
"I will kill every demon in this world. Not one will remain."
This was not a cry born of impulse.
It was a blood oath a man had sworn to this cruel world, offering his own soul as a sacrifice.
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