A/N: It starts with an introduction type thing, then dives into the story. So, just tell me what you think about it. Any comments are much appreciated. Thank you! (Attention: This is NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT Black Twilight 2, nor does it have ANYTHING to do with that "piece of crack" fanfiction. So read this.)

Waltzing down the winding path

His footsteps imprint upon the route he has traversed every winter for the past fifteen years; his xenon irises more frigid than the silent snow slipping from the solemn sky.

To weigh the fork between the trees

He stops. Burlap boots penetrate the virgin snow, soaking through as he contemplates a divergence that had never been there before. Left…or right?

The way unchartered, obscured by fate

He hesitates when a chill rides up the red cloak he bears. Something in the wind shifts; the motionless world around him incites infantile stages of impulse – he slides deeper into the statuesque trap of indecision until he can almost distinguish the glittering eyes of glory, searing into him and urging him onward; onto the path to the left. Or…did that piercing aureolin stare originate outside his imagination? The wind shifts again.

An omen waiting in the breeze.

He dares to step forward. The tip of his left boot collides with the first fingerbreadth of deception, but his inexperienced toes don't yet know the difference between fidelity and falsehood. Another shift and the breeze beckons him.

Hoheo taralna

It whispers softly; chanting a promise.

Rondero tarel.

~3~

"Don't forget the wine, my love." The mother croons while feebly holding a full bottle, as purple as the tired bruises beneath each cobalt sphere, then lowers it into her child's small woven basket.

He gazes up into her eyes as his own electric blue irises shine below flaxen hair; his mother's faded strands scrape against his supple skin as if to draw the youth from his moon-kissed arm.

"Do you remember the way, my darling?" She slinks back, offering a listless smile before tracing the child's face with the withered fingers of a widow.

"Yes, mother." His voice is reverent - the speech of a still-young child who has never done wrong.

"Good, mind your manners with your grandmother." She looks into his eyes but sees the face of another.

Somehow, the boy knows that when she scrutinizes him this way, it's his dead infant brother she sees.

"And Alois," She shuffles towards the door, unruly and lusterless bangs casting shadows over her eyes. "Be wary of strangers."

"Yes, mother."

~3~

The creaking of the closing door leaves him at the mercy of the vacuous woodland; accompanied only by the billowing breath that escapes flushed lips, encased in only a cape as sanguine as the liquid shying from numbing veins, guided across the snow-veiled paths by intuition alone. Alois persists to let his booted feet sink into the thick conglomeration, his tender body drowning deeper into the darkening asylum as he treads through the shroud of steady snow - towards the hut that rests on the other end.

Two heavily lashed lids tilt towards each other, eyes straining to penetrate ashen sediment, pupils distorting and distending to distinguish – to verify – the sight those lucid orbs behold.

Before him, the path of leaves he knows lies suffocating under the thick white blanket – but that is not what vexes him. One path would immediately register in his memory as the correct place to place his feet. One path would undoubtedly lead him to his grandmother. One path, though covered, would still be clear enough to follow without trepidation. But two? There had always been one path after this clearing, - he remembers – nottwo. The weight of decision presses down on slender shoulders, constricts a callow chest.

Heat snakes up his spine with ribald respiration; something's watching him, searing skin and making it sizzle as the icy flakes meet his forearms.

It is then that the child glances sideways.

Limbs of dusted trees groan as more weight is added to their burden, but they hush along with the rest of the land as two golden irises push between the weary evergreens to capture the eyes of another.

The young one's breath hitches as liquid gold melts shallow blue. A blink from the boy to test his sight, and then, when he spots that predatorial, animalistic stare a second time, the slits within the trees mimic his wink. The eyes, along with the navigational doubt within the boy, are gone.

Faster now, he travels down the path to the right, footsteps flowing and flurrying through the thick snow as if the substance were dust. A few more beats of his heart and he's standing in front of a crumbling, pigeonhole of a house. Neither the disintegrating roof, nor the cavity-infested log walls – not even the sight of his grandmother, decrepit and twisting gapped teeth into a scowl above emaciated arms - can liberate his mind from those ravenous, enrapturing eyes.

"Go inside." She spares no second for formalities, flicking her gnarled wrist towards the open door behind her and waiting until the child ambles through it before briskly scanning the area for predators. Finding none but feeling no less uneasy, the silver haired beldam slides after her grandson into the hut, jutting her nose over the threshold once more – just incase – before locking herself in from the outside world.

A cauldron-esque pot burbles faintly over a faded fire, contributing to the esoteric atmosphere. Little fingers fold too tightly over the basket's handle. "I brought you bread, grandmother."

"You look horrible."

Alois persists. "And wine…mother sent you some wine as well."

"I should have known that useless woman wasn't feeding you." The pot in the corner threatens to spill it's scalding contents all over the dirt floor, the fire growing and encircling the burnt black bottom centimeter by centimeter until the old woman comes to beat it away with a spoon. "I suppose I'll have to allow you to stay for dinner." In truth, he would rather starve. "But don't get all soft on me; it's only because I'll never hear the end of it from the council if someone sees a scrawny and unfed kid coming from my house! Now sit."

"Grandmother," Above the phlebotomized meat slab, he compels himself to remain courteous, all the while resisting the urge to refuse the half-charred, half-bleeding deer dinner and leave altogether. But he knows he stayed for a reason. "That new path in the clearing before your house…the one to the left…" A pink pool emerges in the plate as pallid pads poke and pry at raw meat. The boy's eyes dance with phantom images of his grandmother tearing through the animal and tossing lumps of it into the pot; he doesn't notice the sudden rigidness in her posture – the immediate intimidation within those clouded pupils. "Where does it lead? What's at the end of it?" At her silence he pauses, placing the soiled fingers atop his lap and wiping the blood into the old woman's tablecloth as his eyes meet her pursed lips.

"It was made to keep hunters away from the villages on this side…that's all…" There's no doubt, as words are reduced to whispers, that she attempts to convince herself – not the child.

"So then," he presses, "do you think there are people living on that side too?" To appear apathetic, Alois' eyes drop to the wooden surface again where his nails draw circles around the plate. But, he quickly steals a glance at the other's reaction when his pupils slip to the corner of his narrowed lids.

Not a second passes before she snaps. "Don't be ridiculous!" Deeply creased fists clap against the table, blood from the meat splashing carelessly upon her frothing lips. Embarrassed, the crone combs a disheveled grey lock back into place and gently interweaves long fingers with a staggered breath. Above all, she clings to her refinement. "What I mean to say, is that if you come across anything from that side – human or animal," Another slip in the wrong direction, it crosses her mind like a calming ritual, and I might end up like that heathen that married my son. "It would be in your best interest to stay away."

With that, the child stomachs the dead deer, thanks his grandmother for the meal as he sets his mother's basket upon the table, and takes his leave.

"Miserable old wretch." Alois mumbles as soon as the biting cold reacquaints itself with his skin. "I hope you burn in Hell."

Moonlight saturates solidified snow, gracing the child with a glowing course beneath his feet that crunches and crumbles with the quickening pace of his heart. Where before he wavered, now he wants; those titillating irises, coveted and curious, drive him deeper towards danger and desire – just as gold should.

At last, when the second path resurfaces, the empty trail shining and solitary beneath its groaning evergreens – not a footprint of man or beast to mar its resilience, the boy slows. Disappointment is but a temporary wrinkle on his face, for just as he begins to distrust his own sanity, something catches his eye.

Out of the bushes – close enough to the untrodden path for him to know, springs the swift slipshod shape of a horrendous animal, grey as coal and whipping woolen sheets of heavy, unkempt hide through the gale. For the few seconds it steals the boy's sight, it exposes one thing; it's eyes, ravenous and enrapturing, would lure any man gluttonous for gold.

And as the wolf-like atrocity leaves Alois with only a whisper of wind in his hair and a gaping mouth as any indication that it had actually passed through, the boy stands stunned to silence for only a moment before continuing home on quivering feet, the atmosphere growing colder evermore.

A/N: So yep. That's the first chapter. It's just something new I'm trying, and if you don't review there's no way I'm gonna know what you thought of it, so if you want to leave me hate mail, that's fine...? I suppose? I mean, at least I'll know what you think. May or may not continue this...it depends on what you people think about it haha but seriously, please review so I can have a general idea of the reception of those words up there. Lol Thanks so much! =D

Disclaimer: (Can I put this at the bottom...?) I don't own Kuroshitsuji or Little Red Ridinghood. I'm pretty sure that story is so old the rights to it are pretty much ineffectual by now...

Side Note: For all two of you who read my first fic Black Twilight...I suppose you can say I'm THINKING about a sequel. It'll be up. Eventually. Whether you're there to read it or not. =_=; But thanks to everyone who did read and review it.