Japan, Village of Onimura, February 28, 2004, 2:00 AM (Feb. 27, 5:00 PM, GMT +9:00)
 

Northern Pavilion

The corridor was so dark that Camus could hardly see where he was walking. He wedged the long sword in his belt, and kept in his right hand the short one. Following the cold surface of the wall with his left hand, he was walking with the fear of running up against something and falling. And especially, he was terrified by the idea of being attacked by one of the monsters.

He suddenly made out a sliding door in front of him; a pale bluish light was diffused from the paper panes.
Camus hesitated a moment: should he come back, or keep going? He thought again to the attackers he had pushed back a few minutes earlier and shivered with fear. He didn’t want to cross their way a second time. It was better to advance.

He pushed the sliding door, and felt a cold air beating his face. He froze, surprised to see himself back to the streets of his village, in front of the house of his father...

‘My God! This woman and this child… Standing in front of the porch, of this door that doesn’t want to open!’ thought Camus, while his heart started to beat strongly enough to break his chest.

The woman was freezing in her poor black coat. Her long chestnut hairs were beating in the wind. She held the hand of a little boy, quite as frozen as his mother.

“Let us come in, for god sake! I must speak to him!” shouted the young woman against the door.

This one opened on a servant with a condescending face.

“Please go away... Lord and Lady de Grandfort have no intention to receive you!”

“But, he’s his son!” insisted the young woman, showing the little boy on her side, “Tell Philippe that his son is outside, waiting in the snow!”

“Go away!”

The door slammed shut in front of the young woman, while the little boy started to cry.

The landscape seemed to vanish around Camus, as if it was taken into a twister. He carried his hands to his head, and closed the eyes as if he was trying to drive out this vision, but the tears of the child made him reopen the eyes.

The young woman was now lying on the snow. Her face had turned to blue by cold and death. Her son was knelt beside her, in tears, and was shaking her body with all his remaining strength.

“Mom! Mom! Please awake!”

He didn’t seem to understand that she wouldn’t awake any more.

Camus walked to the child, but this one didn’t pay attention to him. Or couldn’t see him, maybe. But Camus, was looking with intensity the face of the little on, his body too thin for his age, due to the deprivations, his disheveled hair, and his miserable coat.

It was himself, when he was a child, who was crying in front of him.

Camus suddenly wanted to take “him” in his arms, and to run, far, very far away. To escape the future he already knew, so disastrous, and marked by despair.

‘The past cannot be changed... The past should not be changed...’ The words of his dreaded Master rose from the depth of his memory.

“The past cannot be changed... The past should not be changed...” repeated Camus.

He deferred his attention on the face of the woman. A beautiful face that he knew so well: the face of his beloved mother.

A shade profiled along the wall, not far away from the body. The child turned around, almost frightened by the presence he had felt so close to him. Camus kept looking at him, and didn’t turn around. He knew already who was coming on this direction. Aganon, the Silver Saint of Unicorn. It was him who had found Camus and brought him to the Sanctuary, and to his uncommon and terrible destinity.

‘ The past cannot be changed... The past must not be changed...’

The scene had changed in a new eddy of snow. Camus found himself in the garden of the Lord de Grandfort’s castle. He didn’t have any difficulty to recognize it, as he had already come there.

He heard voices from the entrance of the garden, and hid behind the cold trunk of a tree. He slipped an eye out of his hiding-place, preparing himself to be the spectator of a scene he had been the actor. Because there was no doubt: it was him, at the age of 18, who was walking in the garden, in company of the Lady de Grandfort. Him, wearing a black coat, his long blue hair floating in the wind, offering his arm to the Lady.

Him, preparing to kill her...

The end of the story, Camus knew it already. He had lived it, or no, rather played it, before seeing it again and again in his worst nightmares. However his eyes couldn’t slip away from this scene.

The couple stopped close to the tree. The young Camus pushed back his long hairs, which were obstructing his face, whereas the Countess passed a tender hand on his face. The young man took her on his arms and without asking her permission, kissed passionately her lips, then slipped his hands along her back, holding her more firmly.

The kiss seemed to last an eternity. But when it stopped, the face of the beautiful Countess was blue and cold. Her eyes had remained largely open with fear. Without any emotion traversing his face, Camus loosened his pressure, and let the cold body fell at his feet.

“No!” howled Camus, hiding his eyes in his hands, like if he wanted to escape from this vision. This memory, this horrible memory that had haunted him during the last months of his life, had come back.

“You killed her! You killed her just to take your revenge on me, did you? Look at me, and answer me... Anton de Grandfort!”

Camus raised the head, surprised by this voice and the name he had been called. His real name. The name he had repeated in his head an incredible amount of time, without never actually hearing it. And especially from his father, Philippe de Grandfort, who was now standing in front of him, exactly looking like he was when Camus had seen him that evening.

“Then, my son, are you proud of your revenge! It was not enough for you to take the love of my wife, you had also to take her life… But why? Why do you hate me so much?” questionned the Lord of Grandfort.

Camus felt fury going up on his throat.

“Yes! I took the person that you were cherishing the best in this world… To make you pay for letting my mother die! For forgetting me, your son! So that finally you understand what it is to be alone in this world!”

“Anton, I didn’t know that you had come, your mother and you, to ask for refuge this evening. It’s my parents who gave the order to let you out…” mumbled Philippe.

“Lies!” Camus howled, in tears.

“No, they told me the following day. I sent people to bring you back, you and your mother. And they found her body, under a porch, but you, you had disappeared... After, I made research; I hired detectives, to find you, during years and years... but in vain. Until you return, that evening... Until...”

The voice of the Lord choked with emotion. The father and the son were almost breathless, both in prey with sobs and contradictory feelings.

“Come in my arms, my son!” begged the Lord, opening his arms.

Camus hesitated. He had so often dreamed of this moment, without ever believing that it could become reality. He was to walk in the direction of De Grandfort, when a hand grasped his shoulder and hold him back.

“No, don’t go there, it’s only an illusion!”

Camus turned around and saw Gabriel, who had just taken shape in front of him.

“It's just an illusion created by one of the demons that haunt this residence. You have to go away from here, quickly!”

“But my father!?...” protested Camus.

He looked on the direction of Philippe de Grandfort, but this one had disappeared, as well as the background of the castle, replaced by the darkness of a tatami room. Camus turned the head in any direction, completely at lost with what had just happened. Was he becoming insane?

“Take your swords, and leave. Go up on the roof. Find your companions there!” ordered Gabriel, whose face was as calm as in his first appearance.

“What?”

“Go up on the roof. 1t’s the only way to escape!”

“But it’s impossible! What are you doing here! You’re dead!”

Gabriel smiled.

“Yes, but from now on, I am you, and you, you are me !”

Western Pavilion

Shura opened the sliding door, and moved back of surprise in front of the scene that was taking place in front of him. A fire was crackling in the enormous chimney of an upper middle-class living room. The atmosphere could have been pleasant and cosy. But the scene taking place there was alarming.

A terrible anguish clasped Shura, as if somebody had tied invisible fingers around his neck and was strangling him slowly: he was back to that evening... The evening when his family had disappeared...
This evening when his whole life had turned to a terrible way...

His father was holding his mother by the hair.

“Witch, don’t let me catch you adoring Satan one more time!” he howled.

“I do not adore Satan... You're sick! Let me go!” groaned the poor woman. She had had caught the wrist of her husband and was trying to release her hairs from the painful pressure. She slipped a look to her 5-year-old son, Shura, who was crying, frightened by what was happening in front of him.

“Try to pretend that’s not a fetish!” thundered the father, holding up a kind of doll made of paper and fabric.

“It's a good luck-charm!” justified the woman, tears coming up to her eyes.

She received a new slap as a first answer to her explanation.

“Are you making fun of me? A good-luck charm! With needles set on it? Witch!” he howled again.

A second slap made redden the cheeks already soiled by the tears. Close to her, Shura cried twice as much.

His father turned his face towards him.

“Shura, look at her… Look at what happens when somebody deviates from the right way! It's an absolute necessity to keep your faith in our Lord! Abnegation to God, all in your life must be abnegation towards the Lord, in order not to fall into the traps of demons!”

The eyes of his father shone so much of conviction that the little boy stopped instantaneously crying, impressed by these words, which he couldn't really understand.

The attention of his father came back to his wife, who he obliged to rise by drawing on her hairs.

“Stand up! And come back to your room!”

The pain on her head becoming unbearable, the woman tried to push her husband back, so that he stops his torture. But he was too strong for her, and didn’t move. Furious, he slapped her and pushed her back violently. The young woman felt behind, and her head ran up against the corner of the marble chimney.

Her husband froze, frightened as he realized what he had just done. A pool of blood widened slowly on the left side of the head of his wife, whose eyes were still open. He knelt beside her, cherishing the brown hairs.

“Alexandra, you should never have drawn aside you from the right way...” he murmured, at the edge of the madness.

“Mom!” young Shura exclaimed, running close to his mother.

His father threw him a strange glance, while at the same time he caught a log in the chimney.

“Go away Shura! Run away from here while you have time! Your father must stay here, to finish what he has begun!” he murmured.

“But, dad!” insisted the kid.

“Go away ! Shura!” he howled.

Shura took to his heels, and ran in the corridor, then in the garden. Arrived at the gate, he heard his father howling: “And never forget, Shura! You must always serve God, or you’ll end just like your mother! You must be the most faithful servant of the Gods!”

When Shura dared to turn around, he was in the street, and the house of his parents was on fire.
　

Shura carried his hands in front of his eyes, as if he wanted to protect his face from the incandescence of the flames, which was turning the beautiful residence in ashes.

He felt the tears rolling on his fingers, then on his cheeks and his lips. A soft breeze cherished his skin and pushed him to open again the eyes. He found himself in front of the trees of a forest, in the Spanish Pyrenees. The forest where he had taken refuge during one year, actually. During this period, he had almost never come back to the village, and survived by his own: fishing fish in the river, gathering wild bays...　Two times only he had ventured downtown, and had had been driven out by the villagers, frightened by his pitiful and dirty aspect. He had been called "demon", of "kid of the devil", surnames that had despaired this child, who always remembered the words of his father.

One day, a man had come in the cave where Shura was living: the Capricorn Saint, his future Master. He had quickly put under control the kid, violent and wild. Then he had talked about the Goddess Athena, and the Sanctuary... Listening to him, the boy had sworn to himself that he would become the best servant of this Goddess.

The scene of this meeting faded progressively and Shura found himself again in the living room of the house of his parents. A peaceful fire was still burning in the chimney. And his father was still knelt near the body of his wife, an incandescent log in the hand. He approached it to the body, and set fire to the blue dress of his wife. Flames licked the dress, then the hairs and white skin of the young woman.

“Father, stop, please!” begged Shura.

“Tell me, Shura... You had always known it, hadn’t you...? That your mother was a witch... That she was inhabited by the demon... And that you, you also were...” laughed his father. He remained without moving, his glance set on the macabre scene, which he was putting in scene.

“Father, stop, please!” cried Shura, carrying the hand to his ears, to prevent the voice of his father from reaching him. But the words still reached him, hurting, deprived of love and of reason.

“Yes Shura, you have always known that you were inhabited by the demon... It is for that that you put yourself at the service of Athena... That you became his trusty servant...! To escape from the influence of the demon!”

“No!”

“But now, you are afraid, you can’t make it anymore... The balance that you had established by becoming the servant of Athena is broken... You are afraid to be taken by this demon, which formerly inhabited your mother...”

“No!” shouted Shura, shaking the head.

His father took a step towards him, reaching out his hand.

“Join me, my son... I am the only one who can help you rebuilding this balance that had been broken... I will prevent this demon from taking possession of you!”

Shura moved back, feeling his reason was weakening.

He felt a hand setting on his shoulder, reassuring. He heard a familiar voice whispering to him:

“It is only an illusion, Shura!”

Shura turned around with surprise.

“Armando! That’s impossible!”

“Look at him, Shura…”

Under the eyes of Shura, the vision of his father surrounded by the flames grew blurred, then disappeared as by magic.

“Shura, you must escape from this house... It is under the influence of demons of the night and of the nightmares... They feed from your desires, your fears, your memories... ”

Shura turned around again and faced the strangest vision than he had ever seen; his double, the man of whose body he was living in. Armando.  

“What tells me that you are not a new illusion of these demons!” answered Shura, suddenly a bit wary.

“Because we are only one from now on... ”

Southern Pavilion

Angelo was running in the corridors, almost breathless. It's only when he was sure he had lost his attackers that he slowed down, anf finally stopped. He leaned on a wooden pillar, forming an angle in the corridor.
He was exhausted, and had to admit, slightly frightened.

“You’re loosing your self-control, Angelo...Calm down...” he told himself.

He closed the eyes, and tried to breathe more quietly.

“I am almost entering in meditation, now, like this old thing of Shaka! What a pity!” he murmured ironicaly.

“Maria, throw me the ball again!” shouted a child’s voice.

Angelo started and turned around.  He found himself in front of a white wall and the wooden door of an old building, entrance of a dark corridor.

“... Leading to a small court, paved with irregular stones, where we used to play, Maria, Anna, Fabiolo and me... My god, we are back in Palermo!” whispered Angelo.

His throat tightened, while his heart, beating too wildly, was almost hurting. He walked in the corridor, and felt a little freshness in the shade of these dirty and dark walls. Then again, the pricking sun struck his amber skin. A sun of July: torrid and relentless.

Angelo quivered: could it be that it had returned to that day?

In the court, young Angelo was begging his elder sister, Maria, to send him the “ball”. The so called thing was an amalgam of rags and plastics that their father had made so that they can play soccer. An horror to which Angelo held more than everything else, and tried to monopolize the most. The only problem was that his brothers and sisters wanted to do as much. Frequently, soccer games ended in fierce fights among the four children, and the present of the father had brought more dispute than amusement.

That day, Angelo gained the upper end: he struck his little brother Fabiolo in the head, then scratched Anna, before plating on the ground his elder sister, Maria, who held the trophy. He bit her wrist, to make her drop the ball. Maria howled with pain, alerting their mother.

She caught Angelo by the collar of his T-shirt, and took it inside the family apartment, which was at the ground floor.

“Madre-mia... Why did we call this kid Angelo? He’s a demon, not an angel!” grumbled the mother.

She pushed the kid inside, who had clung the casing of the door, well aware of the punishment that his mother was going to  inflict to him:

“Now, go and stand in the corner!” ordered his mother, pointing at the dirty place, wedged between the bed of his two daughters and the wash-hand basin.

“But, mom!” begged the child. He raised his eyes towards his mother. Two small blue fountains were ready to overflow.

“Yes, now I remember why we called you Angelo...” sighed his mother, suddenly tenderized.

The little angel smiled, sure of his victory.

“Go to the corner, or you’ll get a smack too!” shouted the mother.

Frightened by the idea to undergo the supreme and ashamed punishment, Angelo ran to the corner, bursting in tears and heart-rending sobs. He waited until his mother left the place and slipped below the bed of his sisters.

She would enrage when she saw that, he knew it perfectly. But more than anything else, he hated to stand at the corner.

 Angelo looked at the scene, a smile on the lips, and tears in the eyes. Then his glance turned to the courtyard, toward his mother, then his brothers and sisters. Toward their terrible destiny.  

His family met this destiny a few minutes after the father had come back home. He had brought back with him a big envelope, filled with notes. He was standing on the steps, showing the reward of a mysterious job to his wife, who was too surprised to see that her little angel had escaped from the corner, and had felt asleep below the bed. In the courtyard, the two sisters were giving hard time to the only brother staying on the field.

Suddenly, tires screeches then foot steps resounded in front of the building, strong enough to awake in start young Angelo. He slipped an eye out of his hiding-place, and held back his cries. Later, he would learn that it was called “instinct of self-preservation”.

Two of the men made fire. Bullets hit Anna and Fabiolo in the head. Blood soiled the pavement, while the cries of his mother shattered the silence. One of men caught her by the hair, and drew her inside. The second man punched his father in full belly, and obliged him to follow him inside. Another bodyguard caught Maria, who howled of terror.

Angelo tried to stop the man who was pushing his sister inside, but two hands gripped firmly his shoulders, and prevented him to move. Angelo rocked behind and felt a cold breath on his neck.

“Lorenzo, let me! I have to stop them! They’re going to…” begged Angelo.

He struggled against the pressure that was keeping on the arms of Lorenzo, but couldn’t free him.

“I am so sorry Angelo, but I cannot let you go. Don’t you see it’s an illusion? Built on your memories, buried in the depth of your soul, just aiming at destroying you!” whispered Lorenzo.

“No, let me go!” howled Angelo.

“Out of question!”

Lorenzo was giving no chance to protest.

Angelo closed the eyes, and tried to drive out of his mind the sounds of detonation. But each of them tore his hears, making his body shivering with revolt and despair. Cries of his parents and his sister stopped, and Angelo burst in tears. He knew that they were dead, and imagined him, young Angelo, who had remained hidden under the bed, and who had almost stopped breathing. Looking at his mother, whose face was turned on his side, eyes remaining open, blood running out of his mouth… A terrible but so fascinating death mask, that the child would look at during hours and hours, until he would decide to escape from his hiding-place. And then, afraid by a strange noise coming from one of the body, he would flee, his heart full with fright and hatred. The boy would go to the port, and hide in a warehouse. It’s where his future Master, the Saint of Cancer, would find him, crying and already releasing a lugubrious cosmos. Death Mask would be born.

“No, I don’t want that… I have to stop that…!”

Angelo was struggling against the arms of Lorenzo to go way, when the scene in front of them changed again.

They were now in the residence of Castiglione. The godfather who had ordered the assassination of the family of Angelo.
16-year-old Angelo was there, standing in front of the bodyguards of Castiglione, ready to fight. He was wearing black clothes, and with his terrible smile on his teenager face, he was more looking like a vampire, right coming from a novel, rather than a human. He had just come back to Palermo, right after his dubbing as Gold Saint of Cancer, revenge torturing his soul.

Angelo closed the eyes, reminding what had happened then. That evening he had butchered the Castiglione clan. That evening he had really, fully become “Death Mask”, killing the small part of humanity that was left in him. Revenge, far from bringing comfort or release, had plunged in madness and darkness. Until his own end.

The pressure of Lorenzo on his shoulders and his chest increased and became almost painful.

“Easy, Angelo, easy... The demon is weakening. Everything gonna be alright in few minutes… Don’t sink in bad memories!”

Another swirls, and Angelo found himself in a dark but stylish office. A woman in her forties, with long black hair, was seated at her desk, typing on her computer. A scene that could have looked banal, if a magnum 357 wasn’t set close to the keyboard.

The woman raised her face, and smiled.

Angelo had the vague impression that he knew her.

“So, finally, you came, my dear brother!” she exclaimed.

“Your... brother! ?” Angelo repeated, incredulous.

“No! Don’t tell me you don’t recognize me! I am your sister… Maria!”

The woman rose, and looked at Angelo with rapture. The young man was still prisoner of the strength of Lorenzo, and had stopped struggling, too surprised by what he had just heard.

“That’s impossible!”

“Maria... Your eldest sister, who you had abandoned in this filthy place without a look… Without trying to check if she was still alive”

“Maria... No! I was six years old, I was afraid...”

“Maria.... Who now is at the head of the Castiglione clan, which you failed to destroy seventeen years ago... I was as much proud of you as I hated you that time!”

“No, It can’t be!” Angelo murmured, shaking the head.

“Maria, your sister... Who would like her brother to join the clan!” she added, offering her hand to him.

“No!”

Angelo looked at this white and tapering hand with bulging eyes.

“Listen, Death Mask! Join me... You know very well that killing people is the only thing for which you have ever been gifted!” laughed Maria.

“Not I am not HIM any more!” howled Angelo, covering his hears with his hand. But the laugh of his sister kept echoing in his head.  

Angelo released himself from the arms of Lorenzo and felt on his knees. He hid his face on his hands, shaking the head, trying to drive out this nightmare from his mind. He staid in that position seconds or minutes, or maybe an eternity. He couldn’t say.  

“Angelo, stand up! The illusion is gone now!”

The voice of Lorenzo... Angelo raised his face out of his hands, tears running on his cheeks.

“Angelo, you can’t stay here... The illusions will soon start again, and I won’t be able to protect you indefinitely...”

“You are my guardian angel, aren’t you?” asked Angelo, drying his tears.

“Yes, Angelo, in way, I ‘ve become your guardian angel...”

Eastern Pavilion

Ambre hadn’t met anybody since her last fight against the three demons, in the corridor of the first floor. She had been wandering in this maze of corridors and staircases for at least one hour. It’s what she had counted, although she was not sure of anything. Which floor was it? The 15^th? She had the feeling to have lost notion of orientation by running like an insane.  

She stopped in front of a kind of window, and tried to slide the paper palisade, in vain. She took the shortest sword she had put on her belt, sliced the palisade in two, and kicked the pane, which felt silently on the roof on the Pavilion. She sticked her head out of the hole she had created, and felt a hot rain biting her cheeks. The atmosphere was muggy, and the four building, shrouded with darkness. Even the noise of the rain dropping on the tiles had something of unnatural and scaring. Ambre suddenly made out with horror that the courtyard had been transformed in a kind of swamp: the Benz was half-dug in the mud, as grabbed by moving sands.

“No! We’ll never leave this place without the car!” she almost whined.

She started, feeling a hand touching lightly her right shoulder. She turned around, and brandished the sword she had on the hands. But she just froze; her “attacker” had seized her wrists and had neutralized her, without aggressiveness or violence.

“Ambre, calm down, it’s me!”

The voice of Camus!

Her eyes got progressively along with the weak light of the corridor, and she recognized the great stature and the serious face of Camus.

“God, you almost frightened me to death!” she claimed.

“Ambre, I am so glad to see you’re ok!” said Camus, his voice full with emotion. He didn’t let her time to answer anything, and attracted her in his arms.

Ambre didn’t protest or tried to move, too surprised by his behaviour.  The first time she had seen him, she had thought he was really handsome, but few hours of conversation with him – it's more correct to say absence of conversation – had just been enough for her to classify him in a special species: human deprived of feelings, perfect hybrid between a fridge and an ice cube. However, she was far away from thinking that now, too much happy to be against his chest and feel his breathing on her neck. It was a so pleasant embrace, reassuring, making her almost forget that it was war in this wooden pavilion. But which reminded her that she was a woman, before being a warrior.

What are you thinking about! You’re both in danger! It’s not the right time to flirt! She reprimanded herself.

She looked up, and her glance met the eyes of Camus. Two lakes of dormant water blue, hiding dangerous swirls. But perhaps this is the true danger... she thought, falling in a curious numbness, as the pressure on her waist weakened.

Camus stroke gently Amber’s chin, then her mouth, and finaly kissed her cheek. Ambre looked at him, hardly daring to breathe. Camus had a discrete smile. Then to his hands succeeded his lips. He kissed first Ambre’s nose, then her cheeks and her lips. His sapphire blue eyes didn’t leave anymore the two emerald prunels of the young woman.

The free hand of Camus slipped slowly on her back, following the perfect curve of her kidneys. He embraced the young woman with even more passion, imprisoning her closest to his body.
　

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