Once upon a time, a man named Tekaki "bonded" to a woman named Sekira (which is basically what some would refer to as marriage), after many years of working hard to convince her of his undying affection. About fifty years later, this happy couple had a little Fire Clan baby, and named him Kurakai. Two years passed, and then a little girl with white hair and turquoise-colored eyes was born.

At the age of ten, Kurakai was hit by the curse of the Fire Clan. In spite of Kurakai already being dead, his father rushed him to Layamon. A deal was made with the gods. They brought Kurakai back to life, at a price that wasn't specified at the time. Tekaki accepted the terms, without truly thinking things through. He just wanted his son to be alive...

And, so...after that day...Kurakai's fate (as well as that of his closest family) was sealed.

He had a fairly normal childhood, for two short years, after that. The only thing that wasn't super normal, was his having to defend his sister from bullies. She was treated as an outsider -- a "fake Fire Clansman", due to her hair and eye colors being different from all other of that clan. Kurakai was blind to the difference; Selestia was his little sister, and nobody could tell him otherwise. He had the typical "nobody can be mean to my sibling, but me" syndrome. Contrary to his desire to protect her, he often said teasing things, to her. It was never anything regarding her appearance, as he'd seen her cry far too many times, from that kind of thing.

Then...things took a very painful turn.

Sekira was caught cheating on Tekaki, though Kurakai never learned of any of this. All he knew was the aftermath. His sister saw most of it, though she has yet to reveal everything she witnessed: Tekaki lost it, during a heated, whispered disussion with her mother. Lashing out, he killed her in a blind rage. Selestia started crying, immediately -- she didn't understand what she just walked in on. Tekaki tensed, turning towards her with an unnatural look in his eyes. If she were to ever be able to describe it, she would say it looked as though he wasn't actually seeing her, but instead someone he viewed as an enemy.

Without hesitation, he lashed out at her. It was then that Kurakai walked into the room. His eyes took in the sight of his decapitated mother, his crying sister, and his father...covered in blood. It took a split second for his mind to put the pieces together. Without hesitation, the young Fire Clansman went into a blind rage of his own. After seeing red, however...he saw black.

And, when Kurakai came to, he was covered in blood and holding the removed head of his father. Selestia, even at the current time, still doesn't remember that Tekaki was going to kill her. Her mind, apparently, blocked all that out. Kurakai, however...remembers one thing quite vividly: his sister, huddled in the corner, crying while screaming that he was a demon and a murderer.

Orphaned, Kurakai and Selestia were sent to stay in a "group home", of sorts, for a while. Selestia wasn't talking to Kurakai, at this point. He wasn't doing anything to help that fact. In fact, Kurakai wasn't talking to anyone, really. Throughout the span of three years (he was fifteen by this point), rumors began to spread. The other children of the orphanage began calling him a monster- the word didn't faze him, until it was doubled with his hair being snatched, or him being spit on. After killing a third child in that orphanage, he and Selestia were sent to a village of the Storm Clan. The village was, primarily, for "troubled" children.

There, he met Dousuke and Shalana, a rare set of twins born into that clan, who appeared to not be fazed by being picked on for being "weird". The four became fast friends, due to their similar situations (they, too, had a mother who was murdered -- though, their mother died while giving birth to them). Things went well for the most part - that is, until a near-tragedy happened. One day, while Dousuke and Kurakai were playing in the water (and trying to learn to swim), a group of the kids that were notorious for bullying Selestia and Shalana (something that Dousuke and Kurakai liked to put a stop to) showed up.

The five boys decided to play a mean trick on the pair, so they put a dotrumus (something that most kids played with; it's a type of plant that gains a super deadly snake-like appearance once it enters water) into the pond. The dotrumus floated near Kurakai and a very young Dousuke wasn't thinking. People of the Storm Clan aren't affected by electrical attacks, so...he used an electrical attack on the false snake. It caused Kurakai's heart to stop, the second it hit him. He blacked out and nearly drowned. Once he came to, he was lying next to the pond...and the culprits were nowhere to be found. Kurakai didn't remember any of it, but Dousuke couldn't bring himself to tell his friend that he'd almost killed him...

Throughout the years, Shalana began forming a crush on Kurakai, who...started to return her feelings. Being around Shalana, his face would typically turn red and he'd feel super awkward. Dousuke started to tease him for it, just a bit. For...some strange reason, however, Kurakai started to get the feeling that his friend was angry about it...just a little. Dousuke would never explain, however.

Twenty years had passed quickly (making him thirty-five by this point); Kurakai, Dousuke, and Shalana became completely inseparable. Selestia and Shalana were just as close as those three. They hung out while the boys went to get into trouble do their own thing. It was towards the end of this time, that Shalana asked Kurakai to date her. After thinking it over, for only a day, he said "no", in spite of a part of him wanting to agree. When Selestia and Dousuke asked, many years later, why he hadn't agreed, he told them that he "had a bad feeling".

Ten years after being rejected, Shalana started acting incredibly strange; another five years later, Shalana started calling herself "Shea".

At the age of fifty-three, Kurakai had returned to the Fire Clan. Dousuke had vanished to do his own thing (start his own life), so they didn't talk as much around this time. Shalana was acting distance from Kurakai. As for Selestia, she rarely wrote Kurakai, but apparently kept in touch with Shalana. He was welcomed with relieved faces, and it felt...strange. He wasn't used to being looked at that way, after all. Immediately, the Fire Counsel began urging him to take up the leadership position, to honor his father's memory. Hearing it worded that way, he refused. No matter how many times they asked, he never stopped refusing.

Regardless of not accepting the title, he still did things for the sake of the clan. One example is him agreeing to bond to the "daughter of the Water Clan" (the daughter of the leader, to be more exact). This was to ensure that the Fire Clan would keep a powerful ally. His wife died the day after the wedding ceremony of an "unknown cause", which earned a negative response by her people. Fortunately, their leader refused to let the blame be placed on Kurakai...

Layamon, determined to find the reason for his only daughter's death, was the one to discover that Kurakai had been "marked" by the gods. According to Layamon's reading of the stars- in exchange for remaining unbound to a family, he would play an active part in something important. The amount of time that would pass before that, however, was left unspecified. Utterly furious at having his fate decided, for him, he began to do even less for the clan. He would no longer be a tool in anything. He was his own person, and his future was for him to decide.

Years later, at fifty-six, he discovered that Shea attempted to kill Selestia, for the sake of getting Kurakai's attention. It worked, rather well. Kurakai went after Shea, without hesitation, which didn't end well for both of them. Just as he was about to land the finishing blow, however...he realized his desire to kill her wasn't as strong as he'd thought. She was still Shalana, to him -- someone he cared about and grew up with.

By this point, Kurakai had become a rather infamous hunter. While he would never admit it, he wasn't handling the not talking to his sister thing very well. He missed her...and killing people with bounties on their heads seemed like the way to deal with it. In a sense, it helped him, quite a bit.

Five years passed, with Shea remaining inactive. Then, out of nowhere, Kurakai received a message, from Shea. She told him that, if he didn't agree to marry her, that she would kill him and everyone he loved. Kurakai readily agreed. Unfortunately, for Kurakai, Shea discovered that he had the curse. She easily put the dots together, realizing that Kurakai had agreed to marry her, just so she would die after they were bonded. Lashing out in sheer anger, she put him in critical condition. It took two weeks for him to recover...and Selestia didn't handle the news of his brush with death, very well.

Kurakai received a letter from Selestia, and it was her asking to meet him. This would be the first time they actually talked, since Tekaki's murder. Selestia explained that she never stopped loving him, as her brother, but had been terrified of him, at that time. She promised that she hadn't been avoiding him, for the sake of avoiding him. She had been using their time apart to thoroughly research the curse of the Fire Clan, as well as Kurakai's curse. She still remembered him saying, as a child, that he wanted what his parents had...

Three years later, they'd become close again.

By the age of one hundred and three, Kurakai had earned a name for himself. If someone's name wound up on the list of those with bounties? He was bound to hunt them down and kill them. There was...practically no getting out of it. His skills had already begun to match with the famed Tekaki. Which...another seventy-five years later, they had come to match them. He spent all that time training to improve his fire-wielding capabilities. He was a force to be reckoned with, and it would take a fool not to see that.

And that was the very reason Kurakai could be called a fool. He didn't recognize his powers as anything spectacular, nor did he find himself to be anyone worthy of any kind of attention. Selestia spent many of these years trying to change his mind. Dousuke, too. Neither of them have ever managed to get through to him on this. At times, it even resulted in a fight between them and Kurakai. Of course, his sister and best friend being as stubborn as they are, they never let Kurakai go long without speaking to them, afterward...

By the age of one hundred ninety-six, the Fire Clan had diminished to a mere two hundred people. It was at this time that Kurakai, Selestia, and Dousuke consulted with Layamon. He told them about the war of the Halflings.

At the age of two hundred sixteen, Kurakai received a letter from a man who claimed to be Selestia's real father...and he wanted to meet his daughter. Kurakai was quick to hide it from his sister, due to there being no way of knowing the man's intentions. Why hadn't he contacted her, directly? What was he hiding? Without telling her anything, Kurakai went to see the man.

As it turned out, the man (named Lekarus) was...anything but suspicious. He had truly loved Sekira. After finding out that she had died, he'd fallen into a depression. He'd been keeping an eye on his daughter, throughout the years. If not for fear of her rejecting him, he would have contacted her, directly. He simply wanted to speak to her brother, first...and get to know him. Lekarus had hoped that Kurakai would be able to tell him some things about her -- Kurakai refused to, however. Telling him to contact her, directly, he left. A month later, Selestia showed up, tears in her eyes and an excited smile on her face. She'd met her real father...and didn't seem to hold any bitter feelings towards him.

...Then, another month later, Lekarus was dead; he'd been sickly.



~*~FUTUREVERSE~*~

Meeting Val:

-Kai attacks Shea because she's a bitch and brings his dead dad back to life to lol in his face, for a bit. Basically this all Ends Badly, for him. He almost dies and winds up having to go into the "human world". There, he meets a human kid named Val who was on the edge of death...just like him. They agreed to help one another.

-Little did Kai know that Dousuke had come just as close to death, not long after. He wound up in the same place as Kurakai, but collapsed next to a child in the park. Just as he died, he managed to "merge" with him.

-Child's name was Ki-Ran and he had been a curious human boy who had been abandoned as a toddler in that very park. Not long after being abandoned, he'd crawled his way through the border. Someone from the Earth Clan had found him, and brought him home. Ki-Ran had grown up there, but found his way back through the border by following Dousuke.

-ANYWAY, years later, Val and Ki-Ran wind up meeting. They become friends and wind up being chased through the border together, where they're greeted by Shea. She forces Layamon to separate the humans from the Clansmen. Process nearly kills Val and Ki-Ran (who comes closest to death out of the two of them).

-Layamon is killed because he decides to help Val and Ki-Ran escape back home.

-Kurakai doesn't handle that death well, and burns down a rather large forest and kills several hundred people.

-Kurakai and Dousuke wind up helping the humans later on, in defeating the evil king that exists in their world, but only because the gods nudge it to happen. King dying offsets things in their world, but they can't figure out why, right off the bat.

-Then a few years later, the humans attempt to help them kill Shea. Shea winds up killing Val, who dodges in front of an attack directed at Ki-Ran. Ki-Ran is killed a week later by Shea, anyway.

-Dousuke is finally killed via Shea absorbing all his powers.

-Kurakai loses his shit, for a little while. He is approached by Yinari after he burns down five villages and three forests. Yinari's all "OKAY YOU CAN STOP FOR A SEC, BECAUSE I CAN SNATCH DOUSUKE OUT OF A TIME RIFT SO HE CAN HELP YOU KILL SHEA. AS AN ADDED BONUS WE'LL BRING LAYAMON BACK."

-To which Kurakai is like, "LOL NO BITCH GTFO YOU'RE CLEARLY LYING."

-Years later, she winds up casually proving it by bringing those people back to life. Selestia is super happy, but then she dies and Yinari refuses to bring her back, due to how she'd involuntarily Interfere with their attempts at killing Shea.

-Kurakai kills another several hundred people, plus an entire school and orphanage, after finding out.

-Shea dodges them for many years, but they finally are able to fight her. Some of the BAD gods decide to intervene and give Shea powers to control time and space, just to sit back and see if that would get Yinari to More Directly Get Involved........and she does.

-Still, it's not enough. Kurakai winds up pissing Shea off enough to have her powers go BOOM, and the entire universe goes :(

-Kurakai wakes up to find himself in a completely warped version of Alteria, where everything is backwards and he's...for some odd reason, Shea thinks he's on HER side. According to her, he's been helping her. In fact, everyone agrees that he's not a good guy. Slowly, memories of him being on her side begin to fill his mind.

-Fifty years later, Kurakai's no longer questioning it and is on Shea's side, completely.

-But, then, Yinari manages to step in, again, and knows how to set everything back to normal. As it turns out, every attempt she's made to right everything has been interferred with by the other gods who are eager to see her Futuresight be wrong, for once. With one last attempt, she works to fix it. With Dousuke's aid, they return to the past and Dousuke kills Kurakai after he's been brought back to life by Layamon, all those years ago.