The mansion, a grotesque marriage of southern plantation opulence and stark Victorian gothic, burned like a pyre against the bruised evening sky. Flames danced like spirits, licking at the white columns and devouring the ancient elder tree. Its gnarled limbs reached towards the heavens, burning with furious, unnatural intensity. Each crackle and pop was a lament for the dead. The fire was no accident, but a brutal act of hate.
The massacre had been swift and merciless. The manicured lawn was a tableau of horror, littered with still forms of men and women, their bodies a stark contrast to the verdant grass. Blood pooled in the twilight, dark as oil, and the air was thick with the stench of burning flesh.
Admist the carnage, a small child wept, her cries thin and broken. Half of her face was a raw, red wound, her delicate skin seared by the fire's breath. Her tear-filled eye saw only a blur of red and orange, the world reduced to a symphony of pain. She was alone, a tiny, terrified island in an ocean of death.
From the smoke and shadows, figures emerged, gathering together, their faces etched with horror. An old lady, her face a mask of chief-like authority now twisted by grief, clutched the severed head of her husband, her eyes fixed on the inferno. Beside her, a maid, her pristine uniform now tattered and stained, held her bleeding stomach, her own life ebbing away with each ragged breath taken.
An old butler, his face carved by age and grief, knelt, attempting to comfort the little girl. A deep gash bleed sluggishly from his temple, and his movements were a testament to his pain, yet his gaze was fixed in the child. The last figure was a young boy, his expression hardened beyond his years. He held the stump of a missing arm close to his chest and reached out, taking the little girl's hand. His single eye burned with a cold fury. They where all that was left. The last embers of an ancient lineage. In the silence that followed the slaughter, the boy whispered a vow, "they will pay. Every last one of them."