The fire flickered merrily in the fading light of the day. Its flames reached up and seared the delectable cow meat as four pairs of intense eyes watched. Uninterested in the cooking food, the fifth pair of burning sky blue eyes focused solely on the destructive red flames as the licked against the velvet black sky as though trying to burn it. Fed by thousands of souls in pain and the skeleton of a once grand city the flames seemed to want to consume the land itself and leave behind only a gaping emptiness. The heat could be felt even from the cliff's great distance. The flame's leaped up the fallen tours climbing higher and higher, roaring in outrage that one should escape, promising that his one would be caught, that this one would join his city in ashes. If they could not consume his body, they vowed to consume his soul. A child's tears fell unnoticed, hidden by the roar of laughter around a campfire and the roar of an inferno.

And still the group ate, Hamel dishing out the cow's meat to the angel as though nothing else mattered. Flute laughing along with the angel and Raiel fawning over the angel. Angel of Death. The fiery blue eyes slowly moved from the fire to the white winged angel. Flames of raw pain lapped at the young prince's heart as he watched her laugh, laugh with his friends. Flute joked and smiled with the Mazoku as though she were any other person. Her voice rang out cheerful and strong, the sound of hope and of encouragement that had helped him through so much. Flute stood suddenly to show her exuberant happiness, to keep the horrifying mazoku from killing him.

"Monster!" She screamed her face shining with defiance "This is my companion! He's going to kill you!" The mazoku had repaid her for her protection. Five vicious lances had pierced through the body that he'd slept against when he couldn't stand to be alone in the room. When the night terrors became too real to his young imagination, his mother had opened her arms to him and held him, keeping her him safe until they'd retreated back to their closet or the depths of the under the bed. And those terrors had killed her for that.

Trom choked back a sob as he recalled his father. Demanding but loving, always looking after him. He had let his son run away rather than let him face death? Death had been around him then, and now, she followed him, professing to be a friend and a companion as she cheerfully shouldered her scythe and said all the killings were behind her. But she still wore her outfit, the outfit she'd worn as death. It was as damning as any vile black, hooded cloak would have been. She'd fooled them all, Flute, Raiel, Hamel, even levelheaded Oboe. But Trom knew what she'd was, what she'd done. He could still see the bright red that covered her wings, destroying the whiteness that she pretended was there.

His parents had been destroyed, his city, friends, family, home, birthright, Mother, Father, history, memories. They mazoku had left nothing. She's left nothing. Nothing but fire and pain and duty. He clenches his eyes tightly, trying to black out the other emotions, the shameful ones. This time, the inferno of rage consumes the fear he might normally feel. In the barren aftermath of the back draft, the young prince decides what he will do, and a ravaged country continuous to burn.