Suwa falls.

The last chapter was a brief look at the progression of Kurogane from a young boy who wanted to protect everyone to a man consumed with the desire for strength. I wanted to go back to that young boy because I love this episode of the show, because Kurogane's story and loss have stuck in my mind so vividly since the first time I saw it, and because I didn't do nearly as much with those memories as I needed to. So here is his rage, his grief, as best as you can describe the mind of someone who is overcome with it.

The young boy trembled in grief, eyes bulging out of his head as one fragile hand clung desperately to the heavy folds of fabric that lay draped across the floor. Dark hair spilled out across the ground, the strands tangled and caked in blood and trailing like the forgotten web of some monstrous creature, broken and torn where its prey had broke free and ravaged its prison. The white kimono was saturated, its owner's lifeblood running in tiny rivulets to the ground and spreading a stain that darkened the wooden floors of the castle.

The blackened sky cast all into shadow shot through with red from the dim moon as if the sky itself was bleeding. Demons swarmed the land, crushing the outer rampart under heavy feet and sturdy claws, trampling homes and people alike, the sounds of crumbling stone and muffled squelching drifting over the castle walls. Shrieks rent the air, some of horror and some of painful agony, and flashes lit up the sky as body after body was turned to stone. The smell was terrible, the stench of death rising up from the tainted earth - blood and entrails and excrement fouling the air.

Through hazy eyes, the boy looked up at the monster that had torn through the roof, its red eyes cold and indifferent despite the fire within that made them glow. The massive body heaved with its breath, shaking the ground along with the trampling of its brethren and the pounding of feet of the villagers as they scrambled for safety. The lifeless gaze seemed to pin the monster in place, holding its eyes and its bulky body. The young Lord of Suwa held command even over the monsters that crossed within the bounds of his land and the monster remained motionless as the boy's grief-clouded mind made sense of the calamity that was overwhelming the world, his world.

His mother, a gaping maw through her chest on the floor behind him, her blood pooling under and seeping between his toes. His people, screaming and dying in droves, their bodies littering the streets and the walls; their blood a river, an ocean ankle-deep through the streets and slicking the weapons and flesh of the few who still tried to fight through the gore, through the fear.

Eyes of red looked up at the monster ravaging his home and saw a silver blade, dripping the black plasma of demons, and an arm, the head of a black dragon snaking across the flesh turned to stone.

No.

Eyes of red looked up at the monster that dropped all that remained of the former Lord of Suwa.

No!

Eyes of red stared without comprehension as the arm shattered, bits of rock scattering across the blemished wood and the sword struck through the floor, a silver dragon with a tail of deadly steel; his father's blade.

NO!

A rich, deep voice filled his mind, the last instruction, the last wisdom imparted by the Lord of Suwa. "Remember, strength is not for yourself, but to protect the people that you love."

The voices of his people rose up from the earth, screams of terror piercing his ears and churning in his belly. Fear and death sat heavy in his mouth, tasting foul like metal and a lump on his tongue. With each drop of blood he saw spray through the sky, with each howl ending with sickening crunch or a muffled cry or the sudden silence of lungs turned solid, with each inhale doused in the scent of iron and broken flesh, his people died. The lights of Suwa flitted out one by one, the darkness of the sky enveloping the earth. Even the gods were silent, letting the catastrophe go on and on, ignoring the prayers grasping and straining for Heaven with blood-soaked fingers. They were helpless, completely at the mercy of their doom with no priestess to carry their pleas and no Lord to protect them.

The boy reached out and caught silver scales, fingers trembling as they gripped tightly, wrapping around the hilt. The boy heard the dying howls of his people, felt the sticky gore from his Mother's veins under his feet, saw the flakes and bits of crumbled stone of his father's body and knew grief, knew pain, knew despair. He felt loss so deeply it hollowed out his insides and gutted him, leaving him wishing he could lie down and die, gasping out his final breaths with his arms around his Mother and his Father's sword by his side. He looked out at the broken ground, the shattered walls, the ocean of blood and maimed bodies and remembered his vow to protect and he raged.

Red red red red red red red! Red eyes, red blood, red sky.

Red grief that fogged his mind and dripped from his eyes and flushed his face.

Red blood dripping from his hands, his sword, his sleeves, his feet, splashing with every step and falling from the mouths of demons like rain.

Red sky tainted by the red moon that ached from the sorrow of the land underneath its glow.

Red sky clouded by the mist of blood that clogged his every breath, sprayed from countless bodies and hanging suspended in the air.

Red rage swallowing up his vision, turning everything in sight crimson and hazy.

Monsters! Demons! They took EVERYTHING FROM ME! Kill them! Kill them! KILL THEM!

Nothing mattered but the death of the next monster, nothing but their black ichor falling in rivers and washing away the ocean of red.

So much blood. He was soaked in it, he was running on it, he was swimming through it and he was spilling it. It seeped into his skin and clung to his eyelashes. It coated the inside of his mouth and throat and consumned him, enveloped him till he felt like he was sweating it out of his pores. He was drowning in blood and he reveled in it, shivered in the ecstasy of cloven flesh and defeated enemies. His body thrummed and sang with scarlet euphoria chasing away fear and grief and memory. Thought was swallowed by a crazed lust, a mad desire, a wild yearning for death, for strength, for blood.

His conscious mind was slipping away, sliding through the tendrils of sanity that attempted to grasp onto them, to hold him together, to maintain his self. There was the fleeting impression that his soul was splintering, shards of it falling to the earth and dissipating on the wind, and then that too was guzzled up by fury.

He was lost in his own wrath, scattered by his own savagery, quelled under his own strength.

Hagenamaru disappeared.