To hot to touch!

That night I had the most vivid dream I'd ever experienced. Kouki was naked and dead at my feet and I felt no shame or pain, only a strange joy. I walked through the Takahashi manor and found everyone there dead as well, all lying sprawled out and stark naked, with just a streak of blood leaking from their lips the same as my sister. As I walked the town everyone in the entire village had suffered the same fate and I was the only one still standing.

Then flames arose from their corpses, making them dance with light, and all the flames took the form of the person it came from and they circled all around me. Then they all dropped to their knees and bowed before me as if I was their lord. I moved through the sea of prostrated fiery people, all praising and worshiping me, and I felt terrific and alive. Then I grabbed one small young fiery woman, unsure who it was as they all looked the same in hues of red and yellow fire, took her in my arms, and kissed her. The fire in that kiss filled me up and I breathed her whole form into me, feeling her soul-feeding me more than any food I'd ever had.

The taste and feel were intoxicating and once she was gone I took another. This one tasted different. The first had been exotic and spicy, while this one had been sweet with a strange devious flavor to it. Both were delicious, but before I could take another a scream snapped me up and I realized something was wrong.

My eyes opened and I saw it was not yet morning, but there was a flashing yellow light all around me. Kouki was screaming and shaking me, but I was still half in my dream and didn't understand why she was so scared. Then with the smell of smoke tickling my lungs I finally broke free from my deep slumber and saw our house was on fire.

I grabbed Kouki's hand and together we rushed outside and saw that it wasn't just our house, but half the manor was in flames. I rushed over to the barrel of water we had for just such emergencies, filled a bucket, and began to splash water around, but strangely the wind seemed to blow out half the fire quickly as if it just didn't want to burn anymore.

Once it was out on our home I turned to Kouki and urgently said, "Go fetch Natsumi, I'm going to see about the Takahashi's!" She nodded and took off at a run past the manor as I went around its back with my pale toward the koi pond. The fire was fairly contained on just one section and again it just seemed to die off with only a few splashes of water. I couldn't figure out why, but maybe there had been some rain in the night that had helped wet the wood. I didn't think so, but nothing else made any sense.

As it was almost out Setsuko and Azami came out from the gardens where they had fled. They must have been woken up and escaped safely, but there was no sign of their **** Chizu. "Where is Chizu?" I demanded, but neither answered so I went running inside the still-smoking building.

Azami shouted something to try and stop me, but I ignored her. I wasn't sure where she slept, but I knew she didn't have a room proper as far as I could tell. There was a basement and the flame damage seemed to have come from down there. I explored deeper, careful on the sooty stone steps found a half-melted candle that I lit on a smoldering plank. I hadn't been in here in ages, and it looked much different now.

In my youth, my grandfather had once used it as a wine cellar until dad drank up all the large collection of wines before selling the house to the Takahashi family. Now it was open and filled with some odd wooden chairs, stools and planks, most with leather straps or chain manacles. One wall has a variety of various tools, most of which didn't look like they served any purpose. Most were long tonfas of various shapes and thicknesses, but there were whips and straps, and then it came to me. This was a sex dungeon filled with perverse implements of **** and defilement.

My eye caught on a large pile of black ash against one wall with a strange 'X' singed against it between four chain manacles that were coated in soot as well. My gut wrenched and I knew as I reached down what I would find, but I just had to see for myself. I pushed my fingers into the black flaky charcoal and immediately hit something hard and smooth. I dug at it and pulled it up to see the white flash of bone reflected in the candlelight brightly as a skull came to the surface.

I jumped back, scared even though I had suspected it, but just the reality of it had been too much for me. "Matsumoto!" I heard someone yelling from above me, and I turned, eager to escape out of that cursed place as fast as I could.

I almost ran into Natsumi who had called out my name as she probed around the charred house, obviously looking for me. "Come with me," she ordered and I just nodded and silently followed her back to the pond where Kouki was talking with an angry Azami while a mute Setsuko just stood nearby sobbing.

"I know your bastard brother did this!" the older woman yelled at my sister.

"I swear, he was asleep and almost died in our own house fire," she explained, but Azami was only half listening.

"And you probably helped him!" She tore into Kouki. "Your father should have drowned you when you were born!" Anger boiled up in me and I ran right up to Azami and shoved her hard into the shallow koi pond. She hadn't seen me coming and Natsumi was too slow to realize what I was going to do.

She shrieked and I thought it a fitting irony that she had mentioned drowning as she flailed headfirst into the water. Natsumi caught up and threw me to the ground as Azami came up unhurt thrashing to stand in her long and now transparent nightgown, the cold water making the whole thing stick to her body, showing off her now pointy nipples on her large breasts. After a moment she resigned to just sitting and spitting out a mouthful of water she had taken in.

"You leave my sister and me alone!" I yelled at the bitch. "We saved your house and you probably started it in the first place when you murdered Chizu!"

Natsumi then turned back to me seriously, "What do you mean Matsumoto?"

Azami was still shocked and just sputtered as I leveled my accusation. "I found the source of the fire in the basement with the remains of Chizu." I gulped down trying to swallow the hard lump in my throat, but just couldn't do it so continued speaking. "She'd been chained up in the cellar and set on fire." Then I looked right at Azami in the eye, "She'd been reduced to ashes and bone!"

"What?" she stammered, but seemed unsure of what to say, then started explaining herself to Natsumi. "Yes, she was being punished and I had her chained up, but there was no fire involved!" she explained to try and weasel out of her guilt.

Natsumi however just looked at me and said, "Show me." I lead her back into the house and to the basement and showed her the ashen remains with the skull poking out. She looked around it and all over the rest of the room, but I didn't know why. I almost asked, but she looked very serious and worried, plus I didn't want to interrupt her, lest she decide to break one of my arms.

After a few minutes she came back up to me and I got up enough courage to ask, "What's wrong?"

"This is impossible," she muttered, but seemed to speak aloud to help her think, not actually to me. "To get a fire hot enough to turn flesh to ash and scorch bones like this it would take a bonfire that would have burned down this whole house down, but here the fire has been tightly contained and barely caused any damage to the house at all." Then she turned to me, "What do you know about this?"

"What?" I asked confused, "I already told you I…"

"I know you're hiding something," she spat at me. "The Daishi house was also burned to the ground and you were seen talking with her yesterday."

"Hazuka?" I asked, worried now. "Is she okay?"

She gave a sidelong glance to the pile of ash that was once Chizu and I knew the answer. My stomach lurched and I didn't feel at all well, but she kept pressing, grabbing my arm, "What aren't you telling me?"

My stomach growled, very upset with her accusing me when a little voice inside me whispered, <So hungry…>