Heart Of Fire; Veins Of Ice | Kimetsu No Yaiba Fanfic (Kyojurou's POV)

Chapter 13

Kyojuro was dreaming.

He stands in the centre of a frozen lake, surrounded by nothing by empty space and falling snow. The horizon stretches on to infinity, flat, dull land his only companion, other than the harsh cold. The frigid, biting wind numbs his senses as he walks. The ice beneath his feet is thin and translucent, nearly transparent as he could see his reflection of himself in it.

Freezing rain poured down on him, forming ice as it came in contact with himself. He breathes, as he can nearly feel the warmth of fire protecting him, wrapping around his limbs and melting off the ice formed by the rain. The heat was familiar, kind and a reminder of who he was before, as it enveloped his limbs and warmed his mind.

As he warms his limbs, he draws his sword, the nichirin blade red like the colour of the setting sun, and the orange sky. It hums in his hand, as he readies it in the face of an unknown opponent.

The ice cracks beneath his feet.

Melting from the warmth, he sprints across the frozen lake, as the glass like ice beneath his feet shatters and cracks, and the freezing rain comes down harder on his skin. It freezes the cracks, as he finds time

Beneath his feet, he sees through the glass, a forest of wisteria trees, and the figure of his mother.

He pauses, as he falls onto one knee and touches the ice, testing its stability, and he's enraptured by the beauty of his mother amongst the Wisteria trees.

They stand on the flip sides of where he was, his mother in a mirrored reality altogether, a world beneath the ice. A world he can never go back to.

The freezing rain blurs his vision, looks up and into the endless horizon.

A figure, dressed in that strangely familiar snow white cloak, with patterns of ice and silver, was facing him. They wore a white hood of the same design, as they walked to him through the numbing rain. He raised his sword against them, as they walked closer and closer, permafrost spread from their boots and across the ground, forming the patterns of snow flakes across the ground, as frost creeps into his limbs.

The cold seeps into his bones, as it freezes his blood, and he can feel himself turning sluggish in the rain. Ice forms on his skin, and along his fingers and the hilt of his blade, and as the figure draws near, they stop before him.

It waits.

His eyes fall on the reflection of his blade, the moment before he would strike.

And in his reflection, he sees a pair of slitted golden demon eyes in his own.