I dont own, nor do I claim to own, Vampire Knights. I have no relationship/agreement with the owner/owners. This story was written for no purpose other than personal enjoyment.

LiteraryEden

End of Days

Chapter 1

Read and Review. Use your voice.

Ache kissed arbitrary patches of darkness across his wounded heart, smothering down a violent passion. With rancor, it twisted, warping and weaving until the affection was reduced to nothing more than distorted disaster. It twanged with feeble sorrow inside his chest, slowly dying within the walls of its beating prison. It would obliterate rather than salvage his soul.

Raw vacancy hollowed his eyes, drenched their fire, until all that had once been a thriving, burning existence was shriveled down into nothing more than a worthless carcass of a man.

She was there, graceful in her resolve, the beauty of her figure so magnificently perfect he had half a mind to believe in angels. He watched her as she stood, sun hot and blinding against her cream skin, her long hair messed from the breeze. She lifted her ruby gaze to his and he scowled, tightening his grip on the relentless obsession he harbored for her. But no matter how hard he struggled, or how tightly he forced his heart to twist - she would not wring out.

Her scent carried to him with the breeze, fluttering against his senses and warming his frozen soul. He gritted his teeth, willing the sensation away. Instead it flourished, sparking a hint of the flames so recently snuffed in his eyes. Zero rolled his head back, one hand tightening into a fist. His knuckles blanched white, the skin stretched thin over bulging bones as heat thundered through his veins. The unwelcome awareness coursed through his body like a flame, his desire's rebellion to his hatred a commanding blow to the gut.

His name fluttered like a prayer from her lips and he cracked an eye open, regarding her with much sought after control. With her feet apart and her shoulders tense, she observed him coolly from across the pavilion, her mouth pouted in that flower petal way he loved so much.

The scenery around them was quiet. Dead. The trees deformed and shriveled by the unforgiving sun and the effects of human warfare. The grass was like straw, the surrounding lakes shrunken and stinking with rotting fish corpses and algae. Cross Academy's powerful sandstone had crumbled years ago and it lay about them in ruins, the withered remains of moss spread over them like varicose veins. This brown, weathered wasteland was all that remained of Earth and Zero wanted to laugh at the perfection of the moment - and the irony.

Yuuki and himself were all that was left. Everything, everyone else was gone; the vampires, the humans - all spoils of war swallowed up by the vengeance of Mother Earth. In battle, they had scorched her trees, slaughtered her innocent, soaked her soil in blood, and she had taken their lives as compensation. Yuuki and Zero were the last of anything as far as he knew; the last two beings on Earth. How fucking quaint.

"Zero."

He could taste her irritation and he glared, his hatred simmering to the surface; calm, collected irritation. She wasn't his Yuuki anymore. And then he barked a laugh, running a hand through his silver hair; she had never been his Yuuki.

He watched her watching him, her red eyes carefully calculating his movements, sizing him up. The scrutiny was familiar, something he'd been experiencing for half a decade from her kind, something he'd been doing himself since the Revolution. After that night, there were no more rules. No lists, no conferences, no pleasantry parties. Just fangs and blades and guns. And blood, lots and lots of blood.

Zero chuckled darkly, tugging his Bloody Rose from where it was tucked safely away in the back of his pants. So much for eliminating the Council, Kuran.

The fight for power had quickly become a massacre, vampire turning on vampire and human on human. Once the truth about the undead had leaked to the living, there had been mass paranoia. All sense of trust and complacency had died away in humanity's heart and terror had been quick to take up the residency. Their governments fell first, next their churches, then morality. Anarchy had come quickly then.

It was the chaos that led to their extinction. In the panic and disarray, the Level E vampires had found their opening, and the humans fell like flies. After they were gone, the Level E's turned on themselves. It had all taken little over a year.

And then there were the Purebloods. The rivaling families grew greedy in their new world, and so they had swarmed one another's residences, killing and harvesting power. They had destroyed themselves in their conquest for control, and now they were were all dust, even Kaname Kuran.

But not the girl standing before him. How she'd managed to survive, he hadn't a clue, but he was thankful. Each and every day since the rebellion he had pleaded for her safety, had begged whatever god above or below that she would somehow live. And so she had. Just long enough for him to kill her himself. Zero smirked and cocked his gun.

Updated: 6/8/2014.