Arsonist's Lullaby

Prologue

 Smoke billowed thick and tumultuous, puffing its chest into the star scattered sky like invasive ink on silk. Orange flames glinted onto wet pavement, cracking and screaming as they consumed the Phantomhives' entire fortune. Two wide, blue eyes streamed putrid, angry tears as they watched their home evaporate into the night air. They belonged to the single heir of the family, a raunchy, ill-behaved boy. His knuckles and palms were bruised and bloody from pounding against the thick, oak door of his parent's bedroom... lungs thick and hot with smoke. His navy colored silk pajamas were charred and disheveled, hanging off his body in thick strips of weak fabric. He sputtered, overwhelmed coughs and sobs coming out short and violent.

He fell to his knees alone on the grass, brown hair falling as curls into his eyes. Dirt and charred grass collected underneath his fingernails and clung there like poison. Neighbors gathered around, helpless but to watch the theatrics being put on before them. A woman with curlers falling from her blonde hair said panicked to her husband, "run inside and call the department!" By the time sirens would be heard in the distance, the boy's house would be nothing but ash. His chest swelled big and cracked with fury, eyes burning and blurring the image before him until the manor was nothing but a candle's flame in the darkness of an empty room.

The whole street was gathered within the next moments, silent and mourning, witnessing the death of something none of them ever dreamed to own. Ciel witnessed the death of his childhood. He'd heard their screams through the door, watched the black figure emerge after he had freed himself of smoke, and flee like a speck into the darkness yonder, towing his inheritance in those filthy hands. A new, anxious secret blazed behind his temples, burning its self into his brain as he tried to absorb it. He could do nothing but run. And now he could do nothing but watch with the rest of the crowd, blood seeping beneath his fingernails and mingling with the ash with how tightly he squeezed his little fists.