Eyes
The first time it happened was purely by accident.
Kagato had stood over the man’s body, catching his breath as the glowing green shard of energy dissipated from his hand. The fighting had been intense; his opponent was skilled and sure, but Kagato had been more cunning. Now he was bleeding his life out on the field, his fingers grasping weakly at the blades of grass with his sticky bloodstained hands. Kagato waited patiently for the man to die, calmly watching as the crimson liquid gurgled out from the mortal wound he had dealt, hot red bubbles forming and bursting as the man slowly drowned in his own blood.
Death was tiresome, really. By then, it had stopped surprising him or even interesting him, not like it had been the first few times. Kagato politely averted his eyes as the man struggled in his final death throes, his limbs thudding against the ground as he cried out, his voice half-strangled by his pain. The blue sky had seemed to stretch on endlessly, pure and untainted by clouds.
Turning back as silence fell across the field, Kagato had knelt to close the man’s gaping eyes, as was proper respect for a worthy opponent. In those days, he had reveled in the use of his new hands, ghostly apparitions that he never bothered covering. A near lifetime of secondhand sensation was enough for him; he had felt that there was no point in wearing gloves anymore. He reached down with his spectral hand.
And that was when it happened. As Kagato touched the man’s eyelids, to press them down over the wide-eyed startled blue eyes, somehow he slipped. A miscalculation by millimeters, but that was enough.
Suddenly, Kagato was somewhere else. Darkness, a formless void that was shattering into flying pieces as he watched, cutting and tearing at him, a sound like screams of anguish, of hatred. As he watched, unable to do much more than that, everything shifted about him, changing perspectives. He caught bits and fragments of this man’s life, his childhood, his dreams, how he used to like to eat his fruit with the skin intact, how every winter he would open the windows wide during the first snowfall to welcome in the wind, and how…
Kagato struggled, forcing the images away, trying to understand what had happened, how he had gotten there. He tried to protect himself as the fragments threatened to take over his sense of self, memories whirling about him in a storm of sharp points and shards, ripping at his mind. But they were dissipating fast, and realizing that he inwardly smirked, knowing that they couldn’t hurt him.
But then something touched him and cut through him like a knife. Horror. Unbelievable agony. Kagato could see himself as though he were someone else; his pale eyes intensely focused and lips parted in a near-smile as the blade screamed through his body, searing coldness, flesh torn asunder and blood spilling as he cried and fell and then there was pain and blinding darkness and the blue sky and…
He had somehow managed to pull away, choking and gasping, half-retching as he stumbled away from the body, his usually immaculate clothing stained and spotted from the pooling blood as he tripped over himself trying to get away. Kagato panted, dizzy, his vision blurred as his half-starved lungs took in oxygen as if in those few minutes his body had somehow forgotten that it should have been breathing.