The light fades from his mother’s eyes.

His hand slips beneath the collar of her kimono. From the valley of her breasts, he retrieves the Jewel of Four Souls.

Its glow is muted in his hold.

He considers it briefly, his grip relaxing on his mother’s broken throat. Her vacant gaze draws him in—pinpoints of darkness mirrored in amber, inexorable in their pull.

He lowers with her as she breaks the pool’s glistening surface. Her hair weaves around her like spider silk. Blood blossoms from the corner of her lips, the clear water tinging rose.

As she sinks to the bottom, the palace begins to shake.

The moonstone floor splits and shifts. Ivory columns snap and crumble. Gilded tiles smash to dust as they fall.

Waves slosh from his mother’s watery grave. Centered close above it, the moon blazes, red as her blood.

He turns from his grandfather’s anguished fury. As the palace collapses inward, he reclaims his swords and returns to the world of men.

Standing once more upon a pinnacle of rock, he contemplates the Jewel in his hand.

Shadows swirl in its glassy depths. Bands of darkness gather and disperse—like memories forgotten, like chains erased.

He frowns, hackles rising.

I should destroy it, he thinks.

Destroy Me, the Jewel proclaims, and you will unravel Time.

Images pass before him. Visions of the past—and of the future. He sees a child with blue-grey eyes, a hilltop shrine, the well within and the girl falling through it, the Shikon no Tama burning behind her breast.

Now do you see, Sesshoumaru-sama?

The Voice is gloating. His jaw clenches in indignation.

You are bound to Me, as the girl is bound to you.

Mocking laughter rings in his ears. The sound dies as he crushes the Jewel in his fist.

With a brittle shriek, it fractures in two.

He smiles darkly.

Perhaps you are right, he concedes. Perhaps you must be restored to her.

But not yet.

Casting one half into the roiling sea, his gaze turns East once again.

Not yet.

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi