Chapter 1:

When the Light Shines

"Circumstances in life often take us places that we never intended to go. We visit some places of beauty, others of pain and desolation."

-Kristin Armstrong

There was nothing to stimulate his senses. No light for him to see by, no touch for him to wake his nervous system, no sounds for his ears to pick up, no scents for his nose to take in – nothing. He was surrounded by the inky black darkness that made up the void he had turned into. The only thing about him that remained the same was his mind, and he was slowly begin to lose that. As he worked through hundreds of years of memories, he could always feel the nagging at the back of his mind; the feeling of something clawing and tearing at him in attempt to take over what little control he had left.

He was alone; he would always be alone, forever trapped within the void that was his and his alone. He was the void, and the void was him. The sins of his past, when he had been alive and held a corporeal form, had been too many in number and far too great for the Kami-sama to overlook. Those sins, while numbering so high... He could remember every one of them. And now he realized he had never truly understood the depths of those sins to atone for them while he had been amongst the living. His judgement had been swift in the form of death and his atonement would be to forever remain locked away within this void. This empty, black void.

It was the least he deserved, he bitterly told himself on more than one occasion.

His death had made him truly understand how much of a sadistic, twisted, and evil bastard he had been. He slaughtered entire villages without pause, without distinction between age and gender. On top of that, before his death he was trapped on an island, and to keep himself from fading from existence, he sacrificed hanyou children to sate his own greed for power.

The men he called his brothers, who were not really his brothers at all, had been in the same position as he before they met their own deaths. One after another they fell to the hands of those who wielded the light. The final fight had been their last attempt to survive, but it wasn't enough.

Now he could only wonder if his brothers were trapped within voids as well, going through their own imprisonment for crimes that, truthfully, they would have never committed had they never met him. Or were they given peace? Were they absolved of their crimes? He had no way of truly knowing, but he hoped beyond hoped they were given at least some sort of happiness in the afterlife.

It was only because of him, Ryura the Dragon, that his brothers had walked the path they had. He convinced every single one of them to take hold of the power that would have the world bending at their feet, to turn it into a world that would never harm them again. Kyora the Phoenix, Jura the Tiger, and Gora the Tortoise – each of them had been wounded by the world and in their own ways, hated that world for what they were unjustly put through; for what they had to do in order to survive. They had done anything and everything to keep themselves from dying, even going as far as listening to Ryura and his hairbrained ideas.

They had taken the four spheres of power into themselves. That one action, that singular seemingly insignificant action, had led to their fall, to their deaths.

Ryura had damned them all.

He hated not only the world, but everything it represented, and he wanted to destroy it and bring about its end. He wanted to see the world suffer just as much as he had. He wanted to rip parents away from their children, to destroy a family, just so they would know his pain.

His first sin. His bloodthirsty, petty sin...

If this was to be his punishment, so be it.

Youkai were never meant to be idle creatures. They were violent at their core, and that violence was to be tempered over their long lives into steel that fed wars, words that fed politics, emotion that fed love, and knowledge that fed wisdom. Youkai were creatures of the earth – primal spirits in human form. They were nature's children. They were balance. They were chaos. They were law. The world could be seen through their eyes, and the universe through the eyes of their children. They lived unaging through the centuries until they felt their time was over, and then they would return their souls to nature, only to be reborn again by the Kami-sama themselves.

Daiyoukai were the apex of their race, no matter their breed. The most powerful, the Alphas, the rulers. He had been one too, so very long ago, and oh how far he had fallen.

He was to be strong, to be wise; understanding. Intelligent and patient. Cunning and fierce. He was to protect what was his. And he had failed.

Daiyoukai were few and far between, unlike the other levels of youkai. There were the mindless, ruthless, and blood hungry youkai. Then there were other youkai who could be considered on par with humans; they were the most common. Daiyoukai, however, were born and raised to be leaders, generals. They were meant to see to the development of their entire race. There was only one family who would produce Daiyoukai within each specific breed of youkai, and his family was the family who bred the Daiyoukai of the Air Dragons.

Yes, this was a fitting punishment indeed. He had been stripped of all that not only made him youkai, but made him Daiyoukai as well. He was simply...nothing, now.

Ryura remained as a void for what, to him, felt like centuries, yet with no real way to judge the passing of time he was never for sure. His mind eventually succumbed to insanity, and by this point it was most welcomed. He drove himself purposely insane by reliving the events that led him to the state he was in now. The face of every person, no matter their race, he had killed flashed through his mind.

Power. Wealth. Daiyoukai. Jewels and spheres. Blue, red, white, green. Dragon, phoenix, tiger, tortoise. Lightning, wind, fire, earth, cannons. Speed, strength, intelligence, wisdom. Daiyoukai, youkai, mononoke, hanyou. Kyora, Jura. Gora. Inu-hanyou, monks, youkai slayers, kitsune, Miko.

He had truly gone insane.

It lasted for what felt like eons before he was finally brought out of his insanity and lingered on the borders between it and sanity, of calm minds. He didn't even know it was possible until he grew tired of being crazy. He remained as the void and shortly after bringing himself back from the madness, he began to wonder if it had been such a wise idea to actually end that insanity. Now what was he going to do?

Ryura grumbled within the depths of his mind and decided he would do the one thing he refused to do before now. He relived his death, and the death of his brothers. He remembered, one at a time, the claw marks from the hanyou children's backs disappearing, letting him know how quickly his brothers were being picked off by an Inu-hanyou and his extended, odd pack consisting of a male monk, a female youkai slayer, a kitsune child, an oddly dressed human Miko, and a fire nekomata. Then there was Sesshoumaru, the Inu Daiyoukai of the Western Territories of Nippon who had joined in the fight as well; at least to remove Kyora from the equation.

Why in all the layers of Hell did he think a group like that wouldn't be able to defeat him and his brothers? Had he truly been that arrogant and naïve? He must have been, considering he was dead.

Even though he and his brothers had been trapped on that island, Ryura was not ignorant on the events happening outside. He felt the shift of power when the Shikon no Tama re-entered the world, and he had felt it break into hundreds of tiny little pieces. Ever so slowly as time passed on, he kept a close check on the feeling of power radiating from the Shikon no Tama as it was pieced back together.

Ryura knew he was not the only one who could feel it, either. Every Daiyoukai would have been able to feel the power of the Shikon no Tama, even once it began to become corrupted. He could never pin point its exact location, but the dark thrum of energy called to him in such a way that he knew, had he been able, he would have sought it out for himself. More power for himself and his brothers. Why would he had denied it when he was alive?

But when he felt the presence of the small, almost tiny, piece of the Shikon no Tama that was pure heading for the island he had been trapped on, he should have taken a little more caution. The only person who would be able to keep the Shikon no Tama that pure was none other than the Shikon Miko herself, and she had been the oddly dressed Miko who accompanied the Inu-hanyou, Inuyasha, and his pack.

Not once but twice had he encountered the Shikon Miko, even if her soul had been reincarnated into the woman who stood up to him on Horai Island. The first time he encountered the Shikon Miko was fifty years prior. Inuyasha had been with her, too.

Was he the Guardian of the Shikon Miko? To Ryura that seemed to be the case. There was no other way to explain why Inuyasha had been guarding not one, but two incarnations of the Shikon Miko. The soul who had been cursed to guard over the Shikon no Tama until it could be wished from the world by the one perfect wish, and so far no one had figured out what that wish was, and so, the soul was constantly reborn. It would never stop, the soul would never be freed until the mind of the woman who the soul now inhabited could figure out that wish.

He knew of the power the Shikon Miko was supposed to possess, which is why he had attempted to kill Kikyou, he faintly remembered her name, in the past. Thankfully she had been more worried for the hanyou Inuyasha than she was killing Ryura. And again, thankfully, her reincarnation had been woefully untrained, else the arrow that struck his sword, Raijinga, would have not just stopped his attack, it would have completely obliterated his soul. While he disliked being a void, it was far better from ceasing to exist at all.

A hot, tingling sensation filled his mind as he thought of the current Shikon Miko. Confusion soon followed after, replacing the tingling with its nagging feeling, as he tried to wrap his mind around what was happening the sensation had returned. What was it? He had never felt such a thing before. It felt like his mind was on fire and he could do nothing to stop it.

He heard the howl of a fire's backlash and he quickly wondered if this was the end for him, if the Kami-sama had decided there was no hope for his soul and were coming to destroy it instead of letting him suffer as a void until they felt he was redeemed enough to be given another chance at life, to be reincarnated.

Panic filled him, then. He didn't want to disappear. He didn't want to truly cease to exist. He wanted to survive, to redeem his soul and find his brothers and help them redeem theirs. He wanted to make up for all the heinous crimes he had committed. He wanted to live.

A deep, rumbling chuckle filled the void that was Ryura, and the panic he felt increased tenfold. It was happening. They were coming to destroy his would. He had to find someway to fight back, to survive; he had to stop it.

"Calm yourself, young one." The voice, oddly familiar, was strong and sure, deep and comforting.

Ryura's vision was suddenly brought back to him as an ethereal golden glowing hand swiped over his face. The glowing power remained behind in swirls of golden smoke that traveled down his body, and ever so slowly, Ryura began to feel.

He felt the cool rush of fresh air entering his lungs. The organs expanded painfully, but the pain wasn't a bad one to experience. It was as if he had been drowning, and suddenly was saved. His lungs were starved and he sucked in the sweet, chilling air as if he were a man dying of thirstWithin his chest a dull thump that was his heart returning back to life beat away against his ribs. Quickly the beat sped up until it felt like his heart was going to explode and he clenched his clawed tipped fingers around the cloth that covered his chest.

He had a body.

The same chuckle, this time slightly louder, reached his ears, and Ryura used what little light was in the space he floated in to look around, trying to find the being that seemed oh so familiar to him. The power, the voice... It was too uncannily familiar. A name was just on the tip of his tongue. A blurry face rested at the back of his mind, yet still Ryura could not recall.

"Ryura the Dragon."

His head snapped in the direction the voice originated from. He could see the faint outline of a broad shouldered man off in the distance, but he was too far away to make out any real features of the being. He tried to call out to the being, but found his voice too dry to make a noise. He could grunt, but as he tried to speak again, his voice came out in cracked, almost broken sounding, croaks and gurgles.

"That will pass," the being said. "I was much in the same position as you when I returned from the void."

Returned from the void? What was the being talking about?

The nagging sensation returned, telling him that if he looked just a little bit deeper in his memories, he would know immediately who this being was. Ryura pushed further into his memories, even broke the barrier on memories he had locked away so very long ago. He searched and searched until his blood red ruby colored eyes widened dramatically.

Ryura couldn't believe it, this was impossible. There was no way he should be in the void. He was too kind, too caring, too fierce to exist in such a place. This was a place of punishment, of suffering and damnation. That man did not belong here.

"Lor-Lord Tou...Touga," Ryura managed to finally say. That name, that single name, was the first words Ryura had spoken in centuries.

"I must say I am pleased you remember me, Ryura the Dragon. It has been such a long time since we last saw one another. You were roughly twenty summers old when I last laid eyes on you, if I remember correctly," Touga rumbled.

Ryura swallowed hard past the lump in his throat. "In...Inu... no... Tai... Taisho."

As Touga's true title left his mouth a blinding white light filled the darkness. Ryura squinted and slapped a hand over his eyes, hissing at the pain. So long had his eyes gone without light that now they were so sensitive the light literally burned them. It took his eyes a long while to adjust until he could finally uncover them. His pupils narrowed into vertical slits now, he could lay his gaze on Touga, the Inu no Taisho. Sesshoumaru and Inuyasha's father.

The Great Dog General was sitting across from him, hovering in the vast, endless white. His face was the same as Ryura remembered it, except his eyes held a light of sadness in them. The smile he wore was small, and his brows were slightly furrowed together to give the Inu Daiyoukai an almost pained expression.

"What were you thinking?" Touga asked him softly. "Or were you not thinking at all?"

Ryura licked his lips, trying to rid them of the dryness he felt, before attempting to answer. "I... I do not..." he paused to clear his throat. "I do not... know."

"I thought as much," Touga said with a small nod of his head. He looked away from Ryura then, staring at nothing. "You have much to correct, son of my friend, yet this is not the way to go about it."

"What?" Ryura asked hoarsely.

Touga's eyes drifted back over to the Dragon and the smile left his face. "We, the Kami, have come to a decision."

"We...?" Damnit, couldn't he say anything more than one liners without his throat feeling like it was on fire?

"Yes, we. I have ascended, Ryura. I am now one of the Kami." He said this as if he was discussing the weather, "It was decided after my death that youkai who keep the balance of the earth that the Kami so love, should be welcomed amongst the ranks of the Gods."

Touga rose to stand and gestured for Ryura to do the same. He gave Ryura no time to properly respond to hearing the news of his ascension.

Ryura's legs tingled and prickled in an uncomfortable manner and he couldn't find the strength to stand. To go along with the uncomfortable feeling his legs, it seemed they had also decided to turn into rubber while he wasn't paying attention. As he panted with the exertion of trying to stand, he could only glare at Touga once the Daiyoukai turned Kami began to laugh loudly.

"Forgive me. Seeing you act as if you are a new born colt was too much to resist," Touga said once his laughter died down into small chuckles.

To make up for laughing at the man, Touga used his long legs to step closer to Ryura with an arm outstretched. Ryura glared at the proffered hand. He sighed shortly after, the glare leaving him, and he reached up to clasp hands with the Kami. Being pulled to his feet, Ryura gave a nod of thanks as he stood on wobbly legs.

Touga moved his hand further up until it was resting in the crook of Ryura's elbow, only to have the Dragon Daiyoukai repeat the same motions. It was the stance of two Daiyoukai who were about to enter an agreement with one another. Where their clawed hands rested it would be easy for either one of them to cut through an artery, and as such, the stance showed trust. It didn't matter if both of them could not be killed, seeing as one was a Kami and the other was already dead, the trust behind it remained the same.

"Ryura the Dragon," Touga began as gold met red. Eyes locked on the others, Touga continued. "Daiyoukai and Patriarch of the House of Storms, once Lord over the Eastern Territories of Nippon. You are hereby released from your imprisonment, and you will be returned to Earth. This decision has been made to give you a chance to redeem yourself and your very soul. Should you fail, this one and only chance will be swiftly stripped from you. If you fail, you will never live again. We will be your judges. Live your life and live it well. You will not be given another opportunity to prove yourself."

Ryura's eyes had widened and he was staring at Touga as if he didn't believe him. He knew Touga didn't lie, it was below him and dishonorable, but the information was still a lot for Ryura to take in. He did the only thing he could, since his voice had failed him. He bowed his head, keeping his hand clenched tightly around Touga's elbow. His body was shaking with unspoken emotion, and he knew he would never, ever be able to thank Touga, or the other Kami, enough for this chance.

With his head bowed and his eyes closed tightly he missed Touga's stern look fade into a soft smile as the Daiyoukai turned Kami disappeared. The white light around Ryura exploded in a corona of colors bursting forth from seemingly nothing to bleed together and form shapes and shadows, leaving nothing behind of the void that Ryura had been in for so long.

It wasn't until he felt himself falling that Ryura realized what was happening. His head snapped up, arms shot out to both sides, and his body tensed for an eventual impact. His clawed hands tried to grab for something, anything, to stop his descent but all he found was empty air. Red eyes frantically searched back and forth, flickering in every direction, looking for something. He could feel the wind rush past him, stinging against his face in a way he thought he would never feel again.

The pain brought him out of his panic and with a small smile gracing his face, Ryura let himself fall.

A.N.: A little different, eh? I'd like to note that this story will roughly follow along the storyline of Inuyasha with a few things switched around for my own sake.