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Rerum Primordia

It begins with a girl, who is pulled down a well. Her name is Higurashi Kagome, and she has lived a normal life from the moment of her birth until this moment. Now she is spinning through time with the claws of the demon that has grabbed her pressed sharp against her skin, digging deep for the red, vital blood. Inside her head, her grandfather's voice echoes in calm tones that she finds unfitting to her situation.

"...our ancestors threw the bones and bodies of demons into the well, and they would disappear, never to be seen again."

Kagome falls through darkness, and then through light – and then, once again, through darkness. The claws stay on her as she falls, and when she lands in the dirt she lands hard on the thing that grabbed her. The impact dazes her brain and makes her dizzy, nauseous – only her memory of her grandfather's words remains, solid as the chitinous writhing beneath her.

Am I...disappeared?

Color resolves into darkness; darkness resolves into day, distant above her.

Am I...never to be seen again?

Numbness becomes tingling becomes pain.

Mama? Souta...grandfather...

Kagome hears a voice, but it is not her family come to save her. It is feminine and sleek and deadly; it purrs at her, and she feels slick wetness caress the curve of her ear, the line of her throat –

"Shikon no tama...shikon no tama, give to me...the shikon no tama!"

"Shi...kon?"

The wetness curves around Kagome's throat and out of the corner of her eye she sees it is a tongue – impossibly long -

"Shikon no tama – shikon no tama!"

And then there is unbearable, blinding pain, like a knife driven into her side. Something within her that she did not know she had is taken; something bound both to her body and her soul is ripped away. The claws that grabbed her have already flung her away, and she comes out of the well and crashes to the ground beside it on her injured side.

She screams in agony and she screams in terror, screams even as a great flare of pink light rises from beside her, within her, streams in equal measure from her blood and that which has left her bleeding, held in terrible hands -

The light explodes upward and outward.

Kagome screams again, feels her body peppered with shards of heat. She sees the light growing, swelling, continuing -

Then there is darkness again, the welcome, unconscious darkness.

A/N: Welcome! Introducing...Quod Si Amor Vincit Omnia - "What If Love Conquered All?". In which we begin from the beginning, and things grow strange almost at once. Chapter one's title, Rerum Primordia, means "the origin of things". I shall be posting a second chapter today, because one chapter is a terrible tease, and then we shall have one a day!
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