Fire, Death, Destruction, everywhere you looked all one could see were the aforementioned adjectives. Wood creaked and groaned, as the raging fire threatened to burn the only hindrance between itself and the outside world. Flashes of lightning and muted thunder were evident in the sky, symbolic of the horror taking place in the mansion atop the Yomiyama mountains. Cries of agony and despair could faintly be heard, calling for assistance that would never come, a savior, that would never arrive as the inferno silenced their cries forever, erasing everything in its sight.

However, one was undeterred through the fire, racing through the long hallways desperately looking for an answer to the solution. Flowing red hair in pig tails berated her face, making her wish her hair was shorter than it was as everything fell apart around her. She knew the person who instigated the problem, and took it upon herself to right that wrong before anymore innocent students lost their lives.

Running through the seemingly endless hallways, she heard a young man's scream of terror, and a sinister laugh as sounds of an apparent struggle seemed right around the corner. Steeling herself for the inevitable, she tightly gripped the piece of steel she found from a broken chandelier in her hands, and sprinted full speed to answer death's call.

"Tomohiko, why are you doing this?!", a distraught boy screamed as his fellow classmate stood before him, with a knife at the ready to send the dead back to death.

"Don't you see, I figured it out when Teshigawara pushed me off the cliff, send the dead back to death, it's the only way to stop the curse", said the deranged boy in glasses as he prepared to deliver the final blow and end the calamity.

"Please Kazami, come to your senses, I'm not dead, you're killing innocent people and you're about to kill me!"

"Shut up!" Yelled the boy long gone as he raised the butcher knife, his tool of destruction in the air ready to spill the brown haired boy's blood across the similarly colored carpet.

Hearing the struggle approach its climax, the girl doubled her pace, and arrived at the doorway of a room just in time to witness her friend, her calculating ally, raise a knife against a helpless classmate. "SEND THE DEAD BACK TO DEA-"

CLAANNG!

The sickening crack of the steel pipe against the skull of one Tomohiko Kazami rang throughout the hallways, echoing off the long corridors. The now useless body dropped the weapon, slumping back against the wall as skull was shattered and blood ran free down the ruined head. Pure, unadulterated fury could be seen behind those amber orbs, the fire in the background accentuating her appearance as an angel of death.

"How far you've fallen, friend. Everyone's desperate, but you've killed two students, what does that say about you, hmm?"

The timid boy slightly behind was rendered speechless, as he watched his friend bleed out against the wall, realizing it would have been him if not for his convenient savior stepping in.

"I don't think you deserve to live anymore, so I think I'll end your suffering, you can keep Yukari company in the afterlife." The girl raised her left hand, the bloody steel bar ravenous for a piece of Kazami's flesh, before an unknown force prevented that bringer of death from coming down.

"What are you doing here old man?" The girl questioned as the instructor looked upon the scene in anguish and remorse. "Trying to preserve what little life I can," the teacher answered as his unwavering grip on the girl's left hand persisted.

"What right do you have huh, you abandoned us, left us all to die like the rat you are, yet you dare lecture me on killing a classmate, my own friend!" Furious, the girl tried wrenching her hand away, but was frustratingly halted once again as the old man, with technique suprising of his age, wrestled the piece of steel out of the girl's hands, spinning her safely out of the room and into the hallway.

The girl had no counter, knowing she was beaten, and rushed off down the hallways once again trying to end this hellish nightmare that had befallen the students of Yomiyama North.

"Are you alright?" the teacher asked the boy, still reeling on the floor from his near death experinece.

"Yes, I think I'll be okay."

A slight smile graced itself upon the old man's features despite himself, "Well that's good to hear, at least one student doesn't have to die today." Taking another glance at the body of his friend turned enemy, the boy asked his sensei if there was any hope for Kazami, since he was simply desperate, acting on an uncontrollable fear that drove him to insanity.

The teacher stole one glance at the body on the floor, and knew it was over. Giving a subtle shake of the head, the boy knew it was fruitless, as blood continued flowing out of the lifeless boy's head.

"I understand, Tatsuji sensei, I just wish things could have gone differently."

"As do I, as do I," Mr. Chibiki said as they both watched the boy's life fade away in front of their eyes, helpless to stop death as it gleefully took Tomohiko from reality and into eternal silence.

"Will this ever stop, is there hope for us Tatsuji sensei?" The boy looked upon his teacher's ragged face, evidence of the miserable life he and all other staff at Yomiyama Middle endured as they lived through the calamity again and again.

"I don't know Sakakibara, I don't know."

The roaring blaze of the inferno was raging stronger than ever, but seemed as a whisper to the grieving teacher and student, who knew the loss of life and depravity of it all would haunt them forever.

"Regardless, you'd better go after that girl, I know she's just trying to help, but she's mentally unstable right now and might do more harm than good."

The student known as Kouichi Sakakibara stood, dusting himself off and preparing to lend his own hand in ending the calamity. "I promise, with every breath in my body, I'll try to fix this," Kouichi said with a fire in his brown irises that had not been present several moments ago. Giving one last nod to his sensei, he dashed out of the room, racing after the girl who had just saved his life not five minutes earlier.

"I'm coming, don't worry, just you wait, I'm coming, Akazawa."

Looking down in grief, Tatsuji tried one last time to rouse the student known as Tomohiko Kazami, hoping against all hope that death had not taken its claim upon the poor boy's soul. Kazami would give no response, as the last remaining pulses of his heart flickered out against the raging flames, lightning and thunder outside amplifying death's presence around the mansion beneath the Yomiyama shrine that cold, horrid night.